Beyond Indigenization: Christianity and Chinese History in a Global Context 9004532110, 9789004532113

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Beyond Indigenization

East and West Culture, Diplomacy and Interactions

Edited by Chuxiong George Wei (Hong Kong Shue Yan University

volume 15

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ewcd

Beyond Indigenization Christianity and Chinese History in a Global Context Edited by

Tao Feiya Translated by

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover image: The first church in Guiyang: Guiyang North Catholic Church, Guizhou Province, built in 1875. Published in La Chine (France, 1896). The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042139

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2467-9704 ISBN 978-90-04-53211-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-53212-0 (e-book) Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acidfree paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements List of Tables Notes on Contributors oduction 1 Feiya

Part 1 The Sinicization of Scripture and Thought onology of the Tang Dynasty Jingjiao Nestorian Theologian Jingjing’s Writings and Translations in Relation to His Thought 25 ountainhead of Chinese-Language Christian Theology: Matteo Ricci’s “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” and Proof for the Existence of God 46 erpretation of the Chinese Classics in a Cross-Cultural Linguistic Context: a Case Study of Antonio Caballero’s How Catholicism Sealed in Ancient Confucianism Liwei Transmission of Catholicism to the East and the Restructuring of Early Qing Literati Thought: a Study on the Intellectual Tide of “Venerating Heaven” 92 Yunhua erpretation and Divergence: Responses to the Dissemination of Jesus’s Image in Ming and Qing Society 116 iao oetry of Heavenly Learning during the Ming-Qing Transition 150

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Contents

Dismantling Followed by Construction: the Writing Strategies of Karl Gützlaff’s Chinese Christian Fiction 177 John Tsz rom Children’s Instructional Textbook to Missionary Tool: the Publication History of the Christian Three-Character Classic from 1823 to 1880 202 e of Martin Luther in Late Qing China 225

Part 2 The Diversity of Conflict Catholic Virgins in the Late Ming and Early Qing

“Chastity” and “Sex”: a Case Study of Culture Clash in the Fu’an and Suzhou Religious Incidents (1746–1748) during the Qianlong Period 267 906 Nanchang Religious Incident and the Chinese-Western Press War in Shanghai 291 Xiongwei 13

etition: the 1895 Christian Missionary Memorial to the Qing Emperor 312 Feiya

Part 3 Relations between Religions eflections of the Relationship between Buddhism and Christianity during the Early Modern Era in The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal Xiongwei Wenhui

een Islam and Christianity in the Republican Era from the Perspective of Christian Missionaries: a Study of Isaac Mason’s “Conciliatory” Strategy of Literary Evangelizing 361

“Charismatic Movement” in Republican Era China 387 Yongguang 17

ole of China in the Dissemination of Christianity to the Korean Peninsula in the Early Modern Era 404

Part 4 Beyond Religion Language: the Search for a Chinese Research Methodology by Comparative Linguistics and Nineteenth-Century Sinology 427 Yan 19

ernational Reform Bureau and the Origins of Collaborative International Drug Prohibition: a Case Study of the 1909 “International Opium Commission” 450 Yong’an Weihua Index

Protestant Missionaries in China 477

Acknowledgements As the editor of this volume, I am extremely pleased with its publication and would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to the following people and institutions: The Shanghai Municipal Commission of Education, for funding the “Plateau Discipline of Chinese History of Shanghai University” project; Dean Zhang Yong’an and Vice Dean Ning Zhenjiang of the Liberal Arts College of Shanghai University, for their timely assistance in raising funding for publication; Song Yuehua, the Humanities Division Director of the Social Science Academic Press, Li Yanling, International Division Director, Liang Fan, International Division Chief Editor, and Managing Editors Lü Qiusha and Sun Meizi, for their support of the plan to publish an English edition of the Journal on the Study of Religion and History. As in the past, Xu Siyan, Senior Editor Emeritus, has always provided much encouragement. Thanks to the important contributions of Guo Hong, Xiao Qinghe, and Yang Yuanmeng this book was guaranteed smooth completion. Thanks also goes to all the authors of the essays presented in this volume, especially for their vigorous revision of their chapters; as well as to our translator, Max L. Bohnenkamp, who made meticulous efforts to ensure a high-quality translation of this collection containing various topics and covering a wide time span. Finally, my very special thanks goes to Brill Academic Publishers, as well as to Professor C. X. George Wei and Dr. Qin Higley, for it was due to their initiation and support that Englishlanguage readers can now have the chance to acquaint themselves with this scholarship produced by Chinese scholars of the field.

Tables 1.1 Summary of preliminary conclusions 42 10.1 Virgin maidens apprehended during the Fujian Religious Incident 254 ehended during the Suzhou Religious Incident 257

Notes on Contributors Chen Zhe is Professor of the Department of History at Sun Yat-sen University. Dai Guoqing is Associate Professor in the School of History and Culture at South China Normal University. Ding Yan is Associate Researcher in the Research Institute of Science Technology and Humanities at Guangdong University of Technology. Guo Hong is Associate Professor of the Department of History at Shanghai University. Ji Jianxun is Associate Professor in the Comparative and World Literature Research Center at Shanghai Normal University. Kang Zhijie is a researcher in the Macao Studies Research Institute at Jinan University, in John Tsz-pang is Associate Professor of the Department of Research on Culture and Religions at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. is Associate Director of the Office of Academic Affairs at Nanjing University’s Jinling College. Yunhua is Professor of Comparative and World Literature at Shanghai Normal University. is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Shanghai University.

Feiya is Professor in the Department of History at Shanghai University. Liwei was Associate Professor in the School of Chinese Classics at Renmin University. Wenhui is a Master’s Degree Student at Shanghai University. iao is Professor in the Department of History at Shanghai University. Weihua is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Shanghai University. Xiongwei is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Shanghai University. is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Fudan University. Yongguang is Associate Researcher in the Institute of Religion at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Yong’an is Professor in the Department of History and Director of the College of Liberal Arts at Shanghai University. is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities at Tongji University. is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Qinghua University.

Introduction Tao Feiya The study of Chinese Christianity is an international academic discipline, one in which Chinese and Western scholars discuss the history of Christianity in China as it appears from their own perspectives. In mainland China, this discipline really only commenced after the 1980s, to become one of the most active, theoretically-engaged, and fast-changing academic fields of the “Reform” period. A wide variety of approaches to the study of Christianity has been debated and exercised influence in China, from Marx and Lenin’s notion of religion as the “opium of the people” and related ideas of cultural conquest, to theories of cultural interaction and modernization.1 Likewise, this has been a topic of much concern to Euro-American scholars, for example in the case of the deep discussions on the issue of cultural imperialism offered by R. G. Tiedemann and Ryan Dunch.2 However, these theoretical approaches have still not focused much on Christianity as a particular category of religion in history, but have rather mainly examined its social function. As a result, new models for responding to fresh questions and concerns are needed to return to the study of this phenomenon from the perspective of religion itself. The study of Chinese Christianity as religious history got its earliest start in the United States. As early as 1984, John K. Fairbank supported the research program of Daniel H. Bays on the subject of “Foreign Missions and the History of Chinese Christianity.” Bays felt this research could make its greatest contribution by concentrating on the history of Chinese Christianity as a story 1 Zhao Fusan 赵复三, “Jiujing zenme yang renshi zongjiao de benzhi 究竟怎样认识宗教 的本质 [How Precisely To Understand the Nature of Religion],” Zhongguo shehui kexue 中国社会科学 [Social Sciences in China] 3 (1986): 3–19; Luo Rongqu 罗荣渠, “Xiandaihua lilun yu lishi yanjiu 现代化理论与历史研究 [Theories of Modernization and Historical Research],” Lishi yanjiu 历史研究 [Historical Research]  3 (1986): 19–32; Luo Zuofeng 罗作风, ed., Zhongguo shehui zhuyi shiqi de zongjiao wenti 中国社会主义时期的宗教 问题 [The Question of Religion in China During the Socialist Period] (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue chubanshe, 1987); Wang Lixin 王立新, “‘Wenhua qinlüe’ yu ‘wenhua diguo zhuyi’: Meiguo chuanjiaoshi zaihua houdong liang zhong pingjia fanshi bianxi ‘文化侵 略’与‘文化帝国主义’: 美国传教士在华活动两种评价范式辨析 [‘Cultural Invasion’ and ‘Cultural Imperialism’: An Analysis of Two Modes of Evaluating American Missionary Activities in China],” Lishi yanjiu 3 (2002): 98–109. 2 R. G. Tiedemann, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China. Vol. 2, 1800–Present (Leiden: Brill, 2001), xi ; Ryan Dunch, “Beyond Cultural Imperialism: Cultural Theory, Christian Missions, and Global Modernity,” History and Theory 39, no. 3 (2002): 301–325.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004532120_002

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in which the Chinese people themselves were the main protagonists, one where the foreign missions and missionaries only appeared when they were relevant. The collection of studies that Bays edited included topics in which Chinese people were central, such as the dynamics between Christianity and the Qing court, Christianity and minority peoples, Christianity and Chinese women, and Christianity and the indigenous Chinese church.3 In 2003, Bays and Grant Wacker co-edited and published a collection of essays that shifted its research focus to the study of the activities and influence of American missionaries in the United States.4 Nevertheless, in the new book that he published in 2012, Bays still placed the emphasis on Chinese Christians, stating: “the Chinese Christians were first participants, then subordinate partners of the foreign missionaries, then finally the inheritors or sole ‘owners’ of the Chinese church. It was also a ‘cross-cultural process,’ the result of which has been the creation of an immensely varied Chinese Christian world in our day,” emphasizing the passage of Chinese Christians from supporting roles to dominant ones in the Christian movement in China.5 Nicolas Standaert has stated that this study was a classic that shifted the paradigm of research on Chinese Christianity: “One may describe this shift as a change from a mainly missiological and Europe-centered to a Sinological and China-centered approach.”6 Nevertheless, in the process of this paradigm shift, the Chinese scholars Zhang Zhigang 张志刚 and Zhuo Xinping 卓新平 very astutely proposed their theory of studying the Sinicization of Christianity in historical context.7 This was based on the observation of a certain partiality shown by many previous studies that focused on the secular, worldly dimensions of the Christian enterprise in China, in hope that such a theory could broaden considerations to include more of the religious side of the issue. Under Zhang and Zhuo’s emphasis, what could be called the Sinicization of Christianity referred to the 3 Daniel H. Bays, ed., Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Standford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), ix. 4 Daniel H. Bays and Grant Wacker, eds., The Foreign Missionary Enterprise at Home: Exploration in North American Cultural History (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2003). 5 Daniel H. Bays, A New History of Christianity in China (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2012), 1. 6 Nicolas Standaert, Handbook of Christianity in China, Vol. 1, 635–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), ix. 7 Zhuo Xinping 卓新平, “Jidujiao zhongguohua yu Zhonghua minzu mingyun gongtongti jianshe 基督教中国化与中华民族命运共同体建设 [The Sinicization of Christianity and the Construction of a Collective Destiny of the Chinese Nation],” Zhongguo zongjiao 中国宗教 [China Religion]  1 (2017): 42; Zhang Zhigang 张志刚, “Zongjiao ‘zhongguohua’ yili chensi 宗教“中国化 [Thoughts on the Reasoning Behind the ‘Sinicization’ of Religion],” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu [Studies in World Religions] 3 (2016): 21.

Introduction

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developmental process of Christianity’s accommodation to and interaction with Chinese society and culture, including such aspects as scripture (mainly referring to the Bible), ritual, thought (including doctrine and theology), organization, and activism; from the perspective of the church this was a type of “indigenization” or “nativization;” from the perspective of Chinese officialdom this was a type of “accommodation.” This point of view highlighted the importance of the Chinese people themselves as agents in the process. Furthermore, this view accorded with the truth of the matter. In the process of the development from foreign missions to indigenous churches, Chinese Christians played the important role. The situation during the Tang dynasty is still not entirely clear today, but although the Jingjiao 景教 Nestorian Christian clergy mentioned in the Memorial Stele of the Propagation in China of the Nestorian Religion from Da Qin《大秦景教流行中国碑》do not have Chinese names, this does not prove that there were no Chinese people assisting when Jingjiao flourished and its “teachings flowed in ten directions and filled temples in a hundred cities.” At the very least, Lü Xiuyan 吕秀岩, who helped compose the text on the stele, was sympathetic to the Jingjiao religion. During the Yuan dynasty, the spread of Jingjiao and Catholicism involved mostly ethnic minority peoples and the imperial court. With the arrival of Catholic religious orders, such as the Jesuits, to China in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Chinese intellectuals began playing an important role of participating in the propagation of Christianity. Matteo Ricci and other missionaries of various Catholic orders had their groups of Chinese collaborators. Among them were the so-called “Three Pillars of Chinese Catholicism” (三柱石), Xu Guangqi 徐光启, Yang Tingyun 杨庭筠, and Li Zhizao 李之藻. By the time of the calendrical controversies that erupted at the beginning of the Qing dynasty, a group including Li Zubai 李祖白 and other Chinese Catholics had already been martyred.8 There was one-hundred and twenty years from the prohibition of Catholicism during the reign of the Yongzheng 雍正 Emperor to the lifting of the prohibition under the Daoguang 道光 Emperor. During that time, besides a few Catholic missionaries who occasionally braved great risk to secretly enter China and spread the faith, the survival and development of the church depended entirely upon the sustenance of Chinese believers, as in the example of Li Ande 李安德, 8 Xiao Qinghe 肖清和, “‘Dadao youlai tianxia gong’: Qing chu rujia Jidutu Li Zubai xinkao ‘大道由来天下公’: 清初儒家基督徒李祖白新考 [‘The Great Dao is for the Universal World since the Original Time’: New Research on Confucian Christian Li Zubai in Early Qing],” Hanyu Jidujiao xueshu lunping 汉语基督教学术论评 [Scholarly Review of Chinese Language Christianity] 23 (2017): 135–175.

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who propagated the faith in Sichuan 四川, as well as others.9 After the Daoguang imperial court rescinded the ban on Catholicism, this approach saw even more growth all the way up to the Republican Era, when the Chinese clergy in the Catholic system were able to overcome the obstacles internal to the Church to gradually rise in status, ultimately taking over the administration of the Church in China entirely in the 1950s. When Protestantism began to be disseminated in China in the late Qing dynasty, the efforts of nearly all of the missions and missionaries benefitted from the collaboration of Chinese aides and co-workers. Under the relatively more broadminded atmosphere of Protestantism, the names of famous Chinese preachers began to comprise a very long list, beginning with Liang Fa 梁发, and Chinese Christians began to participate in Church administration quite early, forming by the early years of the Republican Era what Bays has called the “Sino-Foreign Protestant Establishment.”10 After missionaries left China in the twentieth century, the Protestant Church’s continuing survival and burst of growth in the 1980s was due to similar factors. Chinese Christians have been the main force behind the reception of Christian scripture and thought and their transmission to the Chinese people. The efforts of some local person must have been behind the use of such elegant classical language to describe Jingjiao Nestorian Christian thought and history. The late Ming and early Qing collaborations of the Chinese literati with the Jesuits to produce Chinese-translated Christian scriptures also already contained a type of indigenous interpretation. While the Catholic translation of the Bible into Chinese was somewhat conservative, from the Daoguang period on there were Wang Duomo’s 王多默 translation of the four Gospels, entitled the Complete Edition of the Four Histories《四史全编》, and his Biographies of the Disciples《宗徒行实》, as well as Xu Bin’s 许彬 version of the four gospels, called the Holy Scripture of the Four Holy Histories《四圣史 圣经》, and the beautifully worded rendition of the New Testament translated by Wu Jingxiong 吴经熊 in the Republican Era. Many Protestant missionaries also contributed to the translation of the Bible, beginning with Robert

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Bin Jing 宾静, “Yong Qian jinjiao shiqi de Tianzhujiao huaji shenfu 雍乾禁教时期的天 主教华籍神父 [Chinese Catholic Clergy during the Prohibition against the Catholicism in the Reigns of Yong Zheng and Qian Long],” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 2 (2007): 124–133, 158; Robert E. Entenmann, “The Lefebvre Incident of 1754: The Qing State, Chinese Catholics, and a European Missionary,” in A Voluntary Exile: Chinese Christianity and Cultural Confluence Since 1552, ed., Anthony E Clark (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2013), 59–76. Bays, A New History of Christianity in China,

Introduction

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Morrison, ultimately producing the collated edition that is still in use today.11 For every edition of the Bible that was translated there were in fact many Chinese participants. For instance, the participation of Wang Tao 王韬 and his father in the translation of the Delegates Version of the Bible added much linguistic value. The inauguration and development of Chinese-language Christian theology also depended heavily on the efforts of Chinese Christians, such as Zhao Zichen 赵紫宸, Jia Yuming 贾玉铭, Zhang Yijing 张亦镜, Wu Leichuan 吴雷川, Wu Yaozong 吴耀宗, Wang Mingdao 王明道, Jing Dianying 敬奠瀛, and Ni Tuosheng 倪柝声, who all left behind a rich legacy related to the Sinicization of Christianity.12 Chinese Christians were also the first founders and promoters of the movement for an independent Chinese church and for the indigenization of Christianity.13 The first type of independent churches emerged gradually out of the foreign mission system to comprise self-organized congregations which maintained connections to the missions, such as the new Chinese Alliance Church 华人宣道堂 that came out of the American Baptist Church mission, established in 1873 by Chen Mengnan 陈梦南 in Guangdong 广东, the “Gift of Grace Church” 酬恩会, first established by members of the Presbyterian Mission in Shandong 山东, the Chinese Christian Union 中国基督徒会, set up in Shanghai by the American Presbyterian Church members Gao Fengchi 高凤池 and Song Yaoru 宋耀如 in 1902, and the China Christian Independent Church 中国耶稣独立会, founded in 1905 by Yu Guozhen 俞国桢, also of the American Presbyterian Church. In 1910, Zhang Boling 张伯苓 and others belonging to the American Congregational Church in Tianjin 天津 set up the China Christian Church 中国基督教会. A second type of independent church originally came out of the efforts of some administrators of nationwide foreign mission organizations to establish parallel national groups headed by Chinese Christians, such as the Anglican Holy Catholic Church in China 中华 圣公会, the Chinese Independent Presbyterian Church 中华自立长老会, the Chinese Baptist Church Association 中华浸礼协会, the Central Conference of Chinese Wesleyan Churches 中华卫理公会中央会议, and others. Among these there was also the Chinese National General Conference of Christian Churches 中华基督教全国总会, founded in 1927 by Chinese members of the 11 12 13

Cai Jintu 蔡锦图, Shengjing zai Zhongguo 圣经在中国 [The Bible in China] (Taibei: Daofeng shushe, 2018). Lin Ronghong 林荣洪 [Wing-hung Lam], Zhonghua shenxue wushi nian, 1900–1949 中华神学五十年, 1900–1949 [Fifty Years of Chinese Theology, 1900–1949] (Hong Kong: Zhongguo shenxue yanjiuyuan, 1998). Duan Qi 段琦 Fenjin de licheng [A Course of Courageous Advancing] (Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2004).

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English, American, and Irish Presbyterian churches. A third type of independent church was represented by organizations that had severed ties with the foreign missions and that were run entirely independently by Chinese people, such as the True Jesus Church 真耶稣会, the Jesus Family 耶稣家庭, the Beijing Christian Tabernacle 北京基督徒会堂, and the Christian Assembly 基 督徒聚会处, among others. Researchers believe that the movement of Chinese Christians’ struggle for an autonomously managed and independently established Chinese Christian church from the latter half of the nineteenth century truly stands out as something rare in the history of Christianity’s dissemination around the world.14 Although Chinese Christians made continual strides in the establishment of churches in China, paradoxically they never had a positive reputation as a group in Chinese society. In the late Qing dynasty, they were pejoratively called “religious folk” (教民), while in the Republican Era they were saddled with the label of being followers of the “foreign religion” (洋教). During the period when China sustained much abuse and humiliation at the hands of the Western Powers, Christians’ loyalty to the nation easily came under suspicion. In a few films produced in China between the 1950s and ‘70s, Christians were even frequently portrayed in the roles of villains. While there were many causes for this, one of the main reasons from the point of view of history is that Chinese Christianity has always received too little study and exposure. Chinese Christians are still positioned in history like a musician half-hidden on stage by the instrument that they are playing, a problem that persists in both Chinese and Western scholarship on the history of Chinese Christianity. As a consequence, there is still a lot of room for further research on the most active Chinese figures in the history of Chinese Christianity from the perspective of the Sinicization of Christianity. In recent years, such research has gradually begun.15 However, it is also worth pointing out that research on the Sinicization of Christianity within the Chinese Christian movement does not equate to excluding the role of missionaries. In fact, research on this aspect has received quite a lot of attention in Chinese scholarship on the subject.16 Rather, 14 15

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Luo Weihong 罗伟虹, ed., Zhongguo Jidujiao (xin jiao) shi 中国基督教(新教) 史 [The History of Chinese Christianity (Protestantism)] (Shanghai: Shanghai shiji chuban jituan, 2014), 319–329. Lin Jinshui 林金水 and Guo Ronggang 郭荣刚, eds., Jidujiao zhongguohua yanjiu chutan 基督教中国化研究初探 [Introduction to Research on the Sinicization of Christianity] (Taibei: Yilin shufang, 2014); Zheng Yangwen, “Introduction – Christianity: Towards a Theory of Sinicization,” in Sinicizing Christianity, ed., Zheng Yangwen (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1–30. Tao Feiya 陶飞亚 and Yang Weihua 杨卫华, Jidujiao yu Zhongguo shehui yanjiu rumen 基督教与中国社会研究入门 [Introduction to the Study of Christianity and Chinese

Introduction

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in the cases where missionaries were also important historical actors, they too should share the stage of history together with the Chinese people, as long as it does not recapitulate past accounts that cast the Chinese as hidden figures.17 1

The Sinicization of Scripture and Thought

When Christianity arrived in China, the first necessary step was to make the key concepts and rituals of Christianity into something that the Chinese people could understand and accept. One of the main methods for this was to have this foreign religion draw upon and utilize the resources of traditional Chinese thought. Foreign missionaries were of course the earliest agents to introduce Christian texts through such a process. The most influential early text that is still extent from this perspective is the Memorial Stele of the Propagation in China of the Nestorian Religion from Da Qin of the year 781 CE, whose author was the Persian theologian of the Jingjiao religion known as Jingjing 景净. Zhu Donghua’s chapter in this collection investigates the chronological order of Jingjing’s writing of the Nestorian stele and the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra on the Six Pāramitās 《六波罗蜜经》 that he co-authored, analyzing the changing features of Jingjing’s theological ideas at different moments in this chronology. Notably, Zhu argues that Jingjing’s translation of the Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties《三威蒙度赞》utilizes a large number of terms from Buddhism, including such items as “true nature” (真性), “substance” (依止), “dharma-king” (法王), and “salvation and perfection” (救度). In connection with the Jingjiao Nestorian stele, Jingjing was clearly not only the earliest Nestorian theologian to come to China, but should also be regarded as the earliest agent to utilize Chinese culture to Confucianize Christianity, which makes the issue of whether the Chinese cultural basis he relied upon was more Buddhist or Confucian in character a question worthy of careful consideration and not just left to vague discussion. The Jesuits faced a similar issue in the late Ming dynasty, but their approach went a step further. Matteo Ricci chose the terms “Heaven” (天) and “Sovereign-on-High” (上帝) from the pre-Qin dynasty Chinese classics to translate the Christian notion of the Lord of Heaven (天主), or God, in an attempt to combine Catholicism with the Chinese cultural tradition. This method was similar to the late Qing intellectual notion that “Western learning originated in China” (西学中源). However, the selection of

17

Lai Delie 赖德烈 [Kenneth Scott Latourette], Jidujiao zaihua chuanjiao shi 基督教在华 传教史 [A History of Christian Missions in China], trans., Lei Libo 雷立柏, Jing Ye 静也, Qu Xuntong 瞿旭同 (Hong Kong: Daogeng shushe, 2009).

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terms for translating the name of the Christian divinity in China elicited a huge debate, something described in English as the “Term Question” or “Term Issue,” which scholars have previously comprehended rather superficially under the rubric of the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” (帝天说) as simply a question of how best to translate the name of God in China. Ji Jianxun’s chapter launches a different discussion from a new angle by seeing the problem of “Naming God in China” as one of “Proving God in China” instead. Ji thinks that this was not only a matter of inventing a strategy for the localization of religious terminology to solve a theological dilemma, but rather represented an attempt to prove the existence of God that was fully permeated by the two great interpretive systems of the study of the Chinese classics and Christian theology. The orthodox ancient Chinese view of the “Sovereign-on-High” was based on “natural law,” therefore the proof for the theory of God in the late Ming had to be based on the use of natural theology and historical context. The “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” argued that the God of the West and the “Sovereign-on-High” of the East were concepts that were “identical in essence yet different in form” at the root of both of these great civilizations, a view that undoubtedly brought new developments to the theorization of divinity in Asia, signaling the very origin of Chinese-language Christian theology. Similarly, within the continuing process of Christianity’s acculturation to China, the methods of other missionaries showed great variety, which Wu Liwei explores in her chapter on a text by the early-Qing Franciscan missionary Antonio Caballero, entitled How Catholicism was Sealed in Ancient Confucianism《天 儒印》. Wu believes that the discrepancies that arise between the interpretations of the Chinese classics by figures from different cultural backgrounds within a process of cross-cultural communication can have the value of producing something entirely new and that Caballero’s How Catholicism was Sealed in Ancient Confucianism offers precisely just such an exceptional case for consideration as a cross-cultural hermeneutic topic from this new perspective. Wu points out how Caballero selected passages from The Great Learning《大学》, The Doctrine of the Mean《中庸》, The Analects《论语》, and the Mencius《孟子》in an attempt to produce new interpretations of Confucianism from the angles of monotheism and Catholic morality and ritual, in which Confucius’ teachings became a commentary on Catholic doc trine. This was yet another example of a missionary method of acculturating Catholicism to China. How did Chinese people receive or internalize all the things that Christian missionaries were telling them? Liu Yunhua’s chapter offers a deep analysis and summary of the restructuring of early Qing literati thought in relation to the transmission of Catholicism to East Asia, showing that when Catholicism

Introduction

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arrived in China during the late Ming dynasty it inspired the strivings of one group of Chinese literati to “learn to serve the Lord of Heaven” (学事 天主), thus causing Confucianism to embark on a trend of “religionization” under the banner of “Venerating Heaven” (敬天) and ultimately forming the main current of “the religionization of Confucianism” in the early Qing. Notably, Liu’s research shows how this group of Confucian literati, who had not accepted Catholicism, attempted to reconstruct the indigenous system of thought around the concept of “Venerating Heaven,” adding a new dimension to such methods of contemplative self-cultivation as silent meditation, introspection, and self-restraint, in which “Heaven” participated as a supervisory “transcendental other,” externalizing and making practical the notion of “Venerating Heaven” through a process of ritualization, which to a certain degree imparted a heteronomous character to “Heaven.” This represents a unique case of the internalization of Christianity by Chinese intellectuals who were not converts, which researchers up to now have rarely noticed. The interpretation and divergence of themes that took place within the process of interaction between Chinese and Western culture, thought, and knowledge also includes the issue of the image of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, which has attracted the attention of scholars such as Nicolas Standaert, Craig Clunas, D. E. Mungello, and Chu Xiaobai 褚潇白. In this collection of essays, Xiao Qinghe’s chapter offers a case study based on the interpretation of the image of Jesus in important texts like the Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty《进呈书像》, pointing out and analyzing a set of questions: Why did the image of Jesus in such texts become an important item inspiring the anti-Catholic efforts of figures such as Yang Guangxian 杨光先? How did the “glorious” image of Jesus venerated by the missionaries come to be condemned by the Chinese literati as a “rebel” and an evil spirit? What influence did the formulation of the image of Jesus during the Ming-Qing transition have on the late Qing? Xiao’s chapter argues that the image of Jesus was already “fragmented,” which caused misunderstandings among people during the Ming-Qing transition and became the primary obstacle to their acceptance of it. This idea of a kind of “Chinese and Western religious difference” is similar to Jacques Gernet’s notion of Chinese and Western cultural differ ence and, while the issue warrants debate, the interaction between religions in this case is undoubtedly provocative. Dai Guoqing’s chapter discusses the image of the Virgin Mary in Chinese poetry, pointing out that the arrival of Catholic missionaries in Asia during the Ming era was accompanied by the Catholic Church’s heavy promotion of the veneration of the virginal mother and the introduction of her theological image to China, which aroused a significant response among the Chinese friends of Christianity. Members of

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the Confucian literati sympathetic to Christianity during the Ming-Qing transition, such as Xu Guangqi, Zhang Xingyao 张星曜, and Wu Yushan 吴渔山, competed with each other in celebrating the Virgin Mary in their "Poetry of Heavenly Learning” (天学诗). This not only promoted the theological image of Mary, but also inaugurated a method of indigenized poetic religious propagation which has been continuously passed down to become one of the earliest literary forms of the Sinicization of Catholicism. The aforementioned studies all basically address cases in which missionaries and the Chinese people were oriented towards one certain set of Catholic texts and the same images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, within a single historical period. The authors have borrowed and combined the methods of textual analysis from historical and religious studies to reveal how, within the mentalities of these Asian and Western people, there was not merely a unidirectional movement from “acculturation” to “internalization,” but that there always was some tension between the two processes. Protestant missionaries arrived in China after the Catholics and like their predecessors they attempted to acculturate Christian knowledge to the Chinese cultural environment. To that end, beginning with the example of William Milne, they placed heavy emphasis on the production of Chinese-language fiction, establishing a tradition that Protestant missionaries continuously employed thereafter. John Tsz-pang Lai’s chapter examines some of the chief examples of Chinese-language Christian fiction, the seven novels of Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff, including The Doctrine of Redemption《赎罪之道 传》. Lai believes that Gützlaff’s method for writing Chinese-language Christian fiction can be characterized as “first dismantling and then constructing,” referring to a process of first dispelling the prejudices and misunderstandings of the Chinese people towards Christianity and then expressing Christian thought by various means, an authorial strategy that he developed to both pursue literary excellence and satisfy the needs of missionizing. Guo Hong’s chapter presents a detailed analysis of the publication history and development of different editions of the Chinese Christian Three Character Classic《三字经》, confirming Walter Henry Medhurst’s status in the historical development of this text. At the same time, Guo discusses the evolution of the text’s function as reflected in its changing contents, pointing out that the missionaries at first drew upon the example the traditional Chinese Three Character Classic for the purpose of an enlightenment project that combined the dual aims of disseminating religion and educating children, while after the Opium Wars they gradually abandoned the goal of enlightening children and turned instead towards pros elytizing to the general population of society as their key aim. Guo believes that the Christian Three Character Classic had a deep influence on the popular

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missionary writings of the late Qing period. Zhang Ke’s chapter describes how the status of the historical Western figure of Martin Luther was transformed many times in the public discourse of the late Qing era, stressing the importance of studying late Qing reformers’ interpretations of Luther and of the meaning of religious reformation to understand this process. The similarity of Zhang’s standpoint with the preceding chapters on the images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary lies in the fact that both place emphasis on examining the side of the receiver of cultural images and impressions in their circulation. For Zhang, however, Martin Luther’s image requires study as an instance of “myth,” in which the importance doesn’t rest upon examining its correspondence to historical reality, but on the roles of the image’s fashioners and the specific historical currents to which they belonged. 2

The Diversity of Conflict

The arrival of Catholicism provoked multi-faceted conflicts in Chinese society. The field of new social history has provided a method for peering downwards to tell the story of the common people, offering an entryway for researching the community of Chinese Catholic virgins as a marginalized group in Chinese society. The Catholic virgins have been studied by Gary Tiedemann, Eugenio Menegon, and Robert Entenmann, but here Chinese scholars examine the problem more from the angle of the conflict between the Catholic virgins’ lifestyles with the model of female behavior stipulated by the traditional Chinese value system. Zhou Pingping’s chapter describes the causes and details of the gradual emergence and formation of the community of Catholic virgins in China during the late Ming and early Qing. She shows that the Catholic virgins’ practice of self-cultivation in the home and abstinence from marriage was in conflict with Chinese tradition and thus caused their condemnation, even to the disastrous point of facing imprisonment, despite which the virgins steadfastly persisted. During the more than a hundred years of Catholic prohibition in China, the Catholic virgins began to go out of their domiciles to undertake church work and eventually formed a unique Chinese Catholic phenomenon of virgins taking on an equivalent role to nuns in some regions. Kang Zhijie’s chapter examines two legal cases of reli gious incidents that involved Catholic virgins during the Qianlong reign period of the Qing dynasty, investigating how “chastity” and “sex” became injected and entangled in the various representations and impressions of the Catholic virgins that were “criminally implicated,” in the process revealing a unique side of the clash between Chinese and Western cultures during the period.

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Besides the religious incidents involving Catholic virgins, whom officialdom actively harassed and attacked, there was another case that also caused a great sensation in the late Qing era, involving a Catholic missionary who actively pressured and caused the suicide of a Chinese county magistrate. Yang Xiongwei’s chapter investigates how the 1906 Nanchang Religious Incident sparked an intensive “press war” between Chinese and Western news outlets in Shanghai at the time. Yang believes that the truth of the matter is that the Chinese county magistrate Jiang Zhaotang 江召棠 did not die under the knife of the French priest Jean-Marie Lacruche, but was rather forced to commit suicide. However, in the “press war” that ensued, both Chinese and foreign newspapers went to extremes in their reporting on the case, providing a basis for Yang to examine how national sentiment influenced public opinion on the incident. Elsewhere, Yang has proposed that a logic of “sentiment and reaction” presided over early modern Chinese history, which is a theoretical revision of the mainstream narrative of “humiliation and resistance” that has characterized previous historical scholarship on early modern China. The “press war” that took place after the Nanchang Religious Incident is a vivid example of a case that occurred under this type of historical logic. When we look at the history of Christianity through the model of the Sinicization of Christianity, how should we explain the legal cases of religious incident that arose because of Christianity? In reality, these religious incidents occurred under the failure of the late Qing state to manage Christianity, which forced the church and Chinese officials to adjust their relations through conflict. Nevertheless, the missionaries did on occasion attempt to solicit the Qing government in the Western manner to find a systemic means for preventing the further occurrence of religious incidents. Tao Feiya’s chapter examines the spate of violence against Christianity that erupted in the wake of the First Sino-Japanese War and how Protestant missionaries in China tried to collectively prevent further disaster by selecting Timothy Richard to serve as their representative, who was sent in hopes of gaining an audience with the emperor and to submit an official memorial petition asking the Qing court to censor passages slandering Christianity from such books as the Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms 《海国图案》 and the Second Imperial Treatise on Managing the Affairs of the World 《皇朝经世文续编》. While Richard was not granted an audience with the Guangxu 光绪 Emperor, only managing to meet Prince Gong 恭亲王, and although the petition was sidelined and given no heed, the missionaries did get an opportunity to make contact and establish friendships with high Qing officials. This chapter is perhaps the first discussion of a long-ignored topic, namely how the church was able to convince the Qing court to relinquish its ideologically driven, unfounded claims against

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Christianity in order to improve the problem of relations between officialdom and the missionaries. 3

Relations between Religions

Another question that could not be avoided by Catholics and Protestants in China was how they would handle their relations with the religions already flourishing there. Protestantism’s view and treatment of non-Christian religions was rather more flexible than that of Catholicism. However, setting aside one’s own stance and learning to appreciate other religions was not achieved all at once. Yang Xiongwei and Wu Wenhui’s co-authored chapter looks at a series of articles in the flagship print mouthpiece of Protestant missionaries in China, The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, to examine the mainstream church’s view and evaluation of Buddhism from the late Qing to the early Republican Era. They find gradual progress in missionaries’ views of Buddhism from animosity to friendship over the course of the period, in which antagonistic scrutiny was replaced by benevolent engagement. As the authors indicate, although this did reflect the collective improvement of missionaries’ and Westerners’ attitudes towards Chinese culture, it was also a result of the leadership and efforts of this journal itself, because historically this publication always played a leading role among the Protestant missionaries in China. Liu Qinhua’s chapter describes the fluctuating treatment of Muslims in the missionary writings of the late Qing and early Republican Era. Some missionaries had specifically produced evangelical texts in Chinese for Muslims in China, which, being based on the traditional Christian stance of heavy criticism towards other faiths, quickly aroused the resistance and condemnation of Chinese Islam and the Muslim intellectual community. After the English Quaker missionary Isaac Mason came to understand Islamic refutational literature, he proposed a “conciliatory” textual missionizing strategy, which he later further developed into the strategy of “making friends with Muslims,” thereby advancing peaceful dialogue and mutual influence between Protestant missionaries and Chinese Muslims. During the Republican period, indigenous Chinese churches had already sprung up one after another, which saw a charismatic movement, launched by missionaries who were rather ignorant of Biblical doctrine on the grace of the Holy Spirit, arise in Shandong and spread to influence many places. Curiously, the charismatic movement promoted by these missionaries met with criticism from the indigenous Chinese fundamentalist church. Zhang Yongguang’s chap ter looks at the Beijing Christian Tabernacle church, showing that its founder

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Wang Mingdao advocated a return to the early Christian church and how, based on his textual study of the Bible, he arrived at the idea that “charismatic experience cannot be pursued subjectively and is not something experienced often” to advance a critique of the charismatics’ misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the Bible. Notably, Wang blamed the deviation in the faith of the charismatic movement on the liberal tendency that was mainstream in the church at the time, finding that it was precisely the “impurity” of faith on the part of such churches and pastors that had given rise to such “deviations.” Wang Mingdao’s evaluation and criticism of the charismatic movement, as well as his reproach of the leaders of liberalism in the church, actually reflected the disagreements about faith existing in the Chinese Christianity of the Republican Era; this was perhaps the earliest signal that Wang would ultimately refuse to collaborate with the liberal churches. Historically, China was a country that was always targeted for salvation by Western missionaries. However, as one of the great nations of East Asia, China’s orientation and transformation also influenced the countries surrounding it. In the case of Christianity, things were no different, as Shu Jian’s chapter on China’s influence over the history of the dissemination of Christianity to the Korean peninsula shows. Shu reveals that from the first encounter with Catholicism in Korea, missionaries continuously entered the peninsula from China. Everything related to the spread of Christianity in Korea involved China, all the way up to the question of Protestant missionary strategy, showing the interconnectedness of the various examples of East Asian Christianity. 4

Beyond Religion

As Chen Xulu 陈旭麓 and Paul A. Cohen have both indicated, when Christian missionaries took part in activities related to the shift of Chinese society towards modernity and began to embody elements of modernity in the early modern era, they were turned into brokers who transmitted Western culture to China. Due to the wide scope of these activities, they can really only be accounted for by employing secular discourses beyond religion. Chen Zhe and Ding Yan’s chapter discusses the Chinese linguistics research of missionary Sinologists, bringing together the historical context of the development of early modern Western linguistics with an analysis of the contentious search for a methodology appropriate for the study of Chinese on the part of Sinologists, many of whom were missionaries. Chen and Ding reveal the intimate rela tionship between the historical development of Sinology in the West and the history of Western academic thought, in which the figures of John Chalmers

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and Joseph Edkins are the representative scholarly personalities of a certain group of missionary Sinologists. Zhang Yong’an’s chapter examines the active organizing, mobilization, and publicity of the International Reform Bureau as it took the problem of opium beyond the purview of missionaries in the early twentieth century. Zhang shows that the Bureau not only viewed the opium epidemic as a moral issue, but shifted the public perception of the matter to include commercial and economic concerns as well, while simultaneously utilizing the jockeying of the US, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia for position in China to push America and Britain towards adjusting their policies and taking part in the international prohibition of drugs. As these countries competed for status as “most welcome nation” in China, they ultimately realized a new order in East Asia and, especially for China, affected the benefit of a massive transformation in the status quo. Yang Weihua’s chapter utilizes the mainstream Protestant missionary publication The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal to examine the understanding and attitude of Protestant missionaries in China towards Communism. Yang shows that the missionaries’ attitudes were complex and varied and that their understanding of Communism was not just a simplified reflection of the truth, but was more so an imaginative reconstruction and purposeful re-writing of the subject for the purpose of helping Christianity reform itself by increasing its internal cohesion, improving the attitude of laxity inside the church, and formulating a more reasonable Christianity. 5

Implications

The individual studies described above cover many significant issues, out of which three main categories for future attention really stand out. 5.1 Introduction and Acceptance One of the most important avenues for studying the Sinicization of Christianity is looking at the introduction and acceptance of the religion in China from the evidence of textual documents. The texts presented by the authors of this collection of studies include those from the Tang, Ming, and Qing dynasties, with a temporal span of more than one years, and include examples produced by foreign missionaries and by members of the Chinese Confucian literati. Although the historical eras and national backgrounds of the authors of these texts are diverse, what is notable is that they all sought to use Chinese language and Chinese thinking to make Chinese people understand and believe in Christianity. There were both Western and Chinese agents acting within the

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process of the Sinicization of Christian scripture and thought and it should be noted that these two categories of agents were distinct.18 Westerners used the Chinese philosophical classics and Chinese thought to acculturate Christianity within the Chinese context, which from the theoretical perspective was definitely different from the Chinese people’s incorporation of Christianity under the context of the indigenous culture and language. Yet where exactly does the difference reside? The Westerners were worried about deviation from the correct understanding of Christian scripture, while the Chinese were dismayed by the Europeanization or incompleteness of the missionaries’ readings of the Chinese classics, but in both cases, the question of the proximity of the languages and background cultures was involved. This process began when Christianity was first disseminated in China and reached an apex during the late Qing dynasty and early Republican period. It is worth pointing out the possibility that scholars’ inattention to the further Sinicization of Christian scripture arose alongside the increasing English translation of the Chinese classics by missionaries. In the Chinese context, the English translation of Chinese texts was a key threshold of the missionaries’ deepening understanding of Chinese culture and only with the increase of mutual cultural understanding between Chinese and Western agents could there be a true Sinicization of Christian scripture, which also motivated the commencement of Chinese learning’s transmission to the West.19 At the same time, however, collaboration between the two groups of agents did not proceed smoothly all at once, but was rather full of twists and turns.20 Lastly, what deserves mention is that since 2014 the Chinese Christian Council and the National Three-Self Patriotic Movement 中 国基督教两会 have already published three volumes of Collected Essays from the Conference on the Sinicization of Christianity《基督教中国化研讨会文集》, which represents the ideas of direct agents of Christianity’s Sinicization or

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Sun Shangyang 孙尚扬, Ming mo Tianzhujiao yu ruxue de hudong: yi zhong sixiang shi de shijiao 明末天主教与儒学的互动：一种思想史的视角 [The Reciprocal Influence of Catholicism and Confucianism in the Late Ming: An View From Intellectual History] (Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 2013). Liu Yunhua 刘耘华, Quanshi de yuanhuan: Ming mo Qing chu chuanjiaoshi dui rujia jingdian de jieshi ji qi bentu fanying 诠释的圆环: 明末清初传教士对儒家经典的解释及 其本土反应 [The Circle of Interpretation: Missionary Explanations of the Confucian Classics and Native Responses in the Late Ming and Early Qing] (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2005). George Km Wah Mak, “Building a National Bible Society: The China Bible House and the Indigenization of Bible Work,” in The Church As Safe Haven: Christian Governance in China, eds., Lars Peter Laamann and Joseph Tse Lee (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 205–234.

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at least the views that they are willing to discuss.21 How to connect the origin of Sinicization with the views of the contemporary world of Chinese Christianity on the question of Sinicization is obviously very important. The conditions of resources for researching this aspect are currently greatly improved because one key program of the National Social Science Fund of China has already been launched to support an online “Chinese-Language Christian Documents Database Project”《汉语基督教文献书目数据库》. Some other new projects focused on organizing and studying Chinese Christian documents are also currently underway. The 2019 annual keystone project of the National Social Science Fund of China was launched under the theme of “Research on the Sinicization of Christian Scripture, Thought and Ritual,” a question that will receive many more scholars’ attention in the future and awaits new breakthroughs. 5.2 Rejection and Tolerance The study of the conflicts and consequences provoked by the Sinicization and dissemination of Christianity in China cannot be ignored. Leaving aside disputes over worldly interests, the arrival of Christianity in China aroused certain kinds of serious conflicts that frequently led to legal disputes, for instance those that the chapters in this volume touch upon involving the differences between gender roles in Christianity and the Chinese segregation of men and women. However, differences such as these went through a progression from rejection to tolerance, for example when the system of strict segregation of men and women during church worship that was enforced in the early period had ceased to exist by the Republican Era. Other kinds of conflicts were of a milder nature, in which Chinese people rejected Christianity on the basis of thought. This type of rejection was often based on misunderstandings, such as the idea that Christianity conflicted with having respect for one’s parents or for officials and superiors, views that were quickly abandoned. Rejection stemming from ideology was however relatively longer lasting.22 One example, as this introduction mentioned, was the attitude of the Qing government towards Christianity, which formed a tradition that was maintained from the beginning of the dynasty. By the Republican period, anti-Christian efforts were sustained by the Communist movement’s criticism and rejection of Western imperialism’s support for the religion. Yet when not exclusively considered 21 22

Jidujiao zhongguohua taolunhui wenji 基督教中国化讨论会论文集 [Collected Essays From the Conference on the Sinicization of Christianity]  3 vols. (Shanghai: Zhongguo jidujiao lianghui chuban, 2015–2018). Klaus Koscorke, Frieder Ludwig, and Mariano Delgado, eds., A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450–1990 (Grand Rapids, MI Wm B. Eerdmans P Co., 2007).

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according to the particular events of the period in question, then these cases too show a progression from rejecting Christianity to tolerating it. Conflict made both of the sides involved realize where the boundary between power and obligation existed. The legal cases of religious incidents during the late Qing dynasty were already subsiding and were no longer a serious problem by the Republican period. In fact, this progress gradually did lead to freedom of religion, as the state’s reliance upon the rule of law to regulate the growth of religion has increased in China, its foundation being established by Sun Yat-sen’s 孙中山 provisional proclamation protecting the people’s freedom of religious belief after the Chinese revolution of 1911. The ideas of the antiChristian movement also gradually evolved into a matter of state mandated religious policy and Christianity became a legal religion in China. Today’s research on the Sinicization of Christianity perhaps needs more emphasis on how the force of the fluctuations between action and reaction influenced the process, one in which consideration of the state’s governance and management must be included. 5.3 Accommodation The study of the Sinicization of Christianity also must take account of the accommodation of Christianity to the Chinese social environment. The goal of accommodation has been for Christianity to acclimatize to Chinese society, while also preserving the genuine substance of Christianity. The accommodation of Christianity initiated all kinds of modern undertakings that prompted Chinese society’s shift towards modernity, while still respecting mainstream Chinese culture, for instance Christianity’s accommodation to Chinese traditions of venerating ancestors for the purpose of building an appropriate social environment. There has already been a large amount of scholarship on such issues, so very few chapters in this study touch upon them. However, the question of how Christianity accommodated in its relations with other religions has not received enough attention in the past. The current tension in relations between the world’s religions today perhaps influences whether people look at the past, but how did Christianity historically manage or allow for relationships with other religions after it came to China? Nestorian Christianity’s arrival in China presents a comparatively low-profile case. When Catholicism arrived in China during the late Ming dynasty, it held Confucianism in esteem but deprecated Buddhism, however the result of vilifying the latter was that the Buddhists became a significant force in anti-Christian sentiment. The chapters in this col lection show that by the late Qing era, enlightened Protestant missionaries had already begun to shift towards learning to appreciate Buddhism and hoping for “unity” with Islam. Looking back at history from posterity, we can perhaps say

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that Christianity was quite successful at handling these relations. This issue actually still requires further analysis from the perspective of the theological ideas of both sides involved before it can be said whether this was more a case of theology’s search for similarity among difference or of realist machinations for power and benefit. Also worth further attention is the question of internal accommodation in the relations between various strands within Christianity. The sharp degree of disagreement that has existed internally in Protestantism leaves a strong impression. Especially after the beginning of the Republican Era, the indigenous churches all insisted upon some specific point or set of points in Christian theology to an extreme extent, often completely self-righteously. The criticism of the mainstream church on the parts of Wang Mingdao and Jing Dianying was of a similar nature. Why the leaders of these small religious communities had such attitudes is something worth studying more, to see if some new clues for understanding these types of disagreements internal to Protestantism can perhaps be discovered. The chapters in this book are all selected from essays that originally appeared in the Journal of the Study on Religion and History《宗教与历史》, which since 2013 has been published under the editorship of Shanghai University’s Center for the Study of Religion and Chinese Society, with over ten issues released to date. Chosen by the journal’s editor-in-chief, Professor Tao Feiya 陶飞亚, and the chief editor of the series, Professor Chuxiong George Wei 魏楚雄, the chapters in this book can be seen to a significant extent as representing an advance beyond the last century’s study of the indigenization of Christianity in China, even though obviously they do not, nor could they, cover the entire story of Christianity’s Sinification over its long history of many centuries.23 What this book hopes to do is explore, from the perspective of the Chinese people, together with other interested scholars, the enormous space for new research in this field through the interdisciplinary lens of history and religion. Christianity’s Sinicization proves that China has not been a country completely closed off to the world and that even something as new and distinct 23

Lin Zhiping 林治平, ed., Jidujiao zai Zhongguo bensehua: lunwen ji 基督教在中国本色 化: 论文集 [The Indigenization of Christianity in China: A Collection of Essays] (Beijing: Jinri Zhongguo chubanshe, 1998); Liu Jiafeng 刘家峰, ed., Liyi yu ronghui: Zhongguo Jidutu yu bense jiaohui de xingqi 离异与融会: 中国基督徒与本色教会的兴起 [Divergence and Convergence: Chinese Christians and the Rise of the Indigenous Church] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2005); Li Jinqiang 李金强, Tang Shaoyuan 汤绍元, and Liang Jialin 梁家麟, eds., Zhonghua bense: jindai Zhongguo jiaohui shilüe 中华本色 [China’s Indigenization: Essays on the History of Christianity in China] (Hong Kong: Jiandao shenxue yuan, 2007); Sumiko Yamamoto, History of Protestantism in China: The Indigenization of Christianity (Tokyo: Toho Gakkai, 2000).

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from the indigenous culture as Christianity could be taken in and developed into the Christianity of China, to become a part of Chinese history and culture. This study hopes to make some contribution to this goal. Bibliography Bays, Daniel H. A New History of Christianity in China. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2012. Bays, Daniel H., ed. Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Bays, Daniel H., and Grant Wacker, eds. The Foreign Missionary Enterprise at Home: Exploration in North American Cultural History. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2003. Bin Jing 宾静. “Yong Qian jinjiao shiqi de Tianzhujiao huaji shenfu 雍乾禁教时期的天 主教华籍神父 [Chinese Catholic Clergy during the Prohibition against the Catholicism in the Reigns of Yong Zheng and Qian Long].” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 世界宗教 研究 [Studies in World Religions] 2 (2007): 124–133, 158. Cai Jintu 蔡锦图. Shengjing zai Zhongguo 圣经在中国 [The Bible in China]. Taibei: Daofeng shushe, 2018. Duan Qi 段琦. Fenjin de licheng 奋进的历程 [A Process of Advancing Courageously]. Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2004. Dunch, Ryan. “Beyond Cultural Imperialism: Cultural Theory, Christian Missions, and Global Modernity.” History and Theory 39, no. 3 (2002): 301–325. Entenmann, Robert E. “The Lefebvre Incident of 1754: The Qing State, Chinese Catholics, and a European Missionary.” In A Voluntary Exile: Chinese Christianity and Cultural Confluence Since 1552, edited by Anthony E. Clark, 59–76. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2013. Jidujiao zhongguohua taolunhui wenji 基督教中国化讨论会论文集 [Collected Essays From the Conference on the Sinicization of Christianity]. 3 vols. Shanghai: Zhongguo Jidujiao lianghui chuban. Koscorke, Klaus, Frieder Ludwig, and Mariano Delgado, eds. A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450–1990. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007. Lai Delie 赖德烈 [Kenneth Scott Latourette]. Jidujiao zaihua chuanjiao shi 基督教 在华传教史 [A History of Christian Missions in China], translated by Lei Libo 雷立柏, Jing Ye 静也, Qu Xuntong 瞿旭同, and Cheng Jing 成静. Hong Kong: Daogeng shushe, 2009. Li Jinqiang 李金强, Tang Shaoyuan 汤绍元, and Liang Jialin 梁家麟, eds. Zhonghua bense: jindai Zhongguo jiaohui shilüe 中华本色 [China’s

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Indigenization: Essays on the History of Christianity in China]. Hong Kong: Jiandao shenxue yuan, 2007. Lin Jinshui 林金水 and Guo Ronggang 郭荣刚, eds. Jidujiao zhongguohua yanjiu chutan 基督教中国化研究初探 [Introduction to Research on the Sinicization of Christianity]. Taibei: Yilin shufang, 2014. Lin Ronghong 林荣洪 [Wing-hung Lam]. Zhonghua shenxue wushi nian 中华神学五 十年, 1900–1949 [Fifty Years of Chinese Theology, 1900–1949]. Hong Kong: Zhongguo shenxue yanjiuyuan, 1998. Lin Zhiping 林治平, ed. Jidujiao zai Zhongguo bense hua: lunwen ji 基督教在中国本色 化: 论文集 [The Indigenization of Christianity in China: A Collection of Essays]. Beijing: Jinri Zhongguo chubanshe, 1998. Liu Jiafeng 刘家峰, ed. Liyi yu ronghui: Zhongguo jidutu yu bense jiaohui de xingqi 离异与融会: 中国基督徒与本色教会的兴起 [Divergence and Convergence: Chinese Christians and the Rise of the Indigenous Church]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2005. Liu Yunhua 刘耘华. Quanshi de yuanhuan: Ming mo Qing chu chuanjiaoshi dui rujia jingdian de jieshi ji qi bentu fanying 诠释的圆环: 明末清初传教士对儒家经典的 解释及其本土反应 [The Circle of Interpretation: Missionary Explanations of the Confucian Classics and Native Responses in the Late Ming and Early Qing]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2005. Luo Rongqu 罗荣渠. “Xiandaihua lilun yu lishi yanjiu 现代化理论与历史研究 [Theories of Modernization and Historical Research].” Lishi yanjiu 历史研究 [Historical Research] 3 (1986): 19–32. Luo Weihong 罗伟虹, ed. Zhongguo Jidujiao (xinjiao) shi 中国基督教(新教)史 [The History of Chinese Christianity (Protestantism)]. Shanghai: Shanghai shiji chuban jituan, 2014. Luo Zuofeng 罗作风, ed. Zhongguo shehui zhuyi shiqi de zongjiao wenti 中国社会主义 时期的宗教问题 [The Question of Religion in China During the Socialist Period]. Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue chuaban she, 1987. Mak, George Km Wah. “Building a National Bible Society: The China Bible House and the Indigenization of Bible Work.” In The Church As Safe Haven: Christian Governance in China, edited by Lars Peter Laamann and Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, 205–234. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Standaert, Nicolas. Handbook of Christianity in China. Vol. 1, 635–1800. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Sun Shangyang 孙尚扬. Ming mo Tianzhujiao yu ruxue de hudong: yi zhong sixiang shi de shijiao 明末天主教与儒学的互动: 一种思想史的视角 [The Reciprocal Influence of Catholicism and Confucianism in the Late Ming: An View From Intellectual His tory]. Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 2013.

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Tao Feiya 陶飞亚 and Yang Weihua 杨卫华. Jidujiao yu Zhongguo shehui yanjiu rumen 基督教与中国社会研究入门 [Introduction to the Study of Christianity and Chinese Society]. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2009. Tiedemann, R. G., ed. Handbook of Christianity in China. Vol. 2, 1800–Present. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Wang Lixin 王立新. “‘Wenhua qinlüe’ yu ‘wenhua diguo zhuyi’: Meiguo chuanjiaoshi zaihua huodong liang zhong pingjia fanshi bianxi ‘文化侵略’与‘文化帝国主义’: 美 国传教士在华活动两种评价范式辨析 [‘Cultural Invasion’ and ‘Cultural Imperialism’: An Analysis of Two Modes of Evaluating American Missionary Activities in China].” Lishi yanjiu 3 (2002): 98–109. Xiao Qinghe 肖清和. “‘Dadao youlai tianxia gong’: Qing chu rujia Jidutu Li Zubai xinkao ‘大道由来天下公’ : 清初儒家基督徒李祖白新考 [‘The Great Dao is for the Universal World since the Original Time’: New Research on Confucian Christian Li Zubai in Early Qing].” Hanyu Jidujiao xueshu lunping 汉语基督教学术论评 [Scholarly Review of Chinese-Language Christianity] 23 (2017): 135–175. Yamamoto, Sumiko. History of Protestantism in China: the Indigenization of Christianity. Tokyo: Toho Gakkai, 2000. Zhang Zhigang 张志刚. “Zongjiao ‘zhongguohua’ yili chensi 宗教“中国化”义理沉思 [Thoughts on the Reasoning Behind the ‘Sinicization’ of Religion].” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 3 (2016): 2 Zhao Fusan . “Jiujing zenme yang renshi zongjiao de benzhi [How To Understand Precisely the Nature of Religion].” Zhongguo shehui kexue [Social Sciences in China] 3 (1986): 3–19. Zheng Yangwen, “Introduction – Christianity: Towards a Theory of Sinicization.” In Sinicizing Christianity, edited by Zheng Yangwen, 1–30. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Zhuo Xinping . “Jidujiao zhongguohua yu Zhonghua minzu mingyun gongtongti [The Sinicization of Christianity and the Construction of a Collective Destiny of the Chinese Nation].” Zhongguo zongjiao [China Religion] 1 (2017): 42–43.

Part 1 The Sinicization of Scripture and Thought

Chapter 1

The Chronology of the Tang Dynasty Jingjiao Nestorian Theologian Jingjing’s Writings and Translations in Relation to His Thought Zhu Donghua Abstract Jingjing was the most important theologian and translator of the Jingjiao religion (Chinese “Nestorianism”) in the Tang Dynasty, while the stele he composed as a comprehensive survey of the theology and history of the Jingjiao Church can be seen as a milestone of his authorial career. His co-translation of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra on the Six Pāramitās with the monk Prajñā Tripiṭaka can be taken as a watershed event separating the early and later stages of his thought, allowing it to be adduced that the theological formulations of the Sutra on the Origin of Origins and the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness show characteristics of the early stage of his thought, while those of The Book of Praise and the Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties possess features of his later stage.

Keywords Tang Dynasty Jingjiao – Nestorianism – Jingjing – Leading From Buddhism to Nestorianism – Nestorian Stele – Dunhuang Jingjiao Documents

Jingjing1 景净, whose Christian name was Adam, was an elder (Syriac: ‫ܩܫܝܫܐ‬ chorbishop ( ), and church father ( ) of the Jingjiao religion ( or Chinese “Nestorianism”) during the Tang Dynasty, as well as the most important theologian and translator of Tang Nestorianism, who authored and translated over 35 volumes of texts according to records in the published as Zhu Donghua , “Tang dai Jingjiao shenxue jia Jingjing zhuyi zuopin de chuangzuo shixu jiqi sixiang guanlian yanjiu ,” Zongjiao yu lishi [Journal of the Study of Religion and History] 6 (2016): 252–61.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004532120_003

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Dunhuang manuscript The Book of Praise《尊经》.2 Although the number of extant copies of the works that he authored and translated are limited to less than one-seventh of the total attested, they are indeed extremely valuable. Modern scholars have paid a high degree of attention to Jingjing and his writings, with much commentary and research dedicated to the subject. Reviewing the results of this research, we find the following two rather clear characteristics: First, the overwhelming majority of research findings contained in the concordances, commentaries, translations and researches on single or multiple texts of Jingjing produced by such scholars as Paul Pelliot, Henri Havret, James Legge, P. Y. Saeki 佐伯 好郎, Feng Chengjun 冯承钧, Zhu Qianzhi 朱谦之, Wu Qiyu 吴其昱, Weng Shaojun 翁绍军, Tang Li 唐莉, Wu Changxing 吴昶兴, and Zeng Yangqing 曾阳晴 are more or less based on the traditional perspective (namely, that Nestorianism was a heresy of early Christianity). As such, they do not seriously consider investigating Chinese-language Jingjiao doctrinal thought in terms of its origins in Eastern Syriac Christianity and therefore lack a wholistic examination of the chronology and thought of Jingjiao writings and translations on the basis of doctrine and theological rhetoric.3 Second, scholars have mostly emphasized the significance of the Nestorian Stele as a model for researching Jingjing’s religious thought, while neglecting to examine the deep influence of Jingjing’s unique experience participating in the translation of Buddhist scriptures upon his own project of “leading from Buddhism into Jingjiao” (援佛入景). For this reason, one of the important tasks still awaiting effort in the study of Jingjing is to bring the backgrounds of both the Syriac and Chinese languages together to reflect upon and enrich each other in the process of examining the development of terminology between Jingjing’s writings and translations (including his theological texts and his elegiac hymns) from the perspectives of doctrine and rhetoric. In recognition of the two points raised above, this chapter proposes to investigate the textual qualities, main contents, and compositional chronology of the Memorial Stele of the Propagation in China of the Nestorian Religion from Daqin 《大秦景教流行中国碑颂并序》, the Dunhuang documents Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties《三威蒙度赞》and the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness《志玄安乐经》, and the Dunhuang-Luoyang 2 Henri Havret, La stèle chrétienne de Si-ngan-fou (Shanghai: Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique, 1895), xv. 3 Due to limitations of space, the relevant documents cannot all be cited. Here the early study of Pelliot and the recent research of Tang Li may serve as examples: Paul Pelliot, L’inscription nestorienne de Si-NganFou (Kyoto: Scuola di studi sull’Asia Orientale,1996); Li Tang, A Study of the History of Nestorian Christianity in China and Its Literature in Chinese (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002).

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concordance of the Sutra on the Origins of Origins《宣元至本经》, as well as the respective implications of each of these texts for understanding Jingjing’s thought, in hopes of illuminating the full nature of his authorship and translation activities. 1

The Two Main Chronological Milestones of Jingjing’s Authorial and Translation Activities

The chronology of the theologian Jingjing’s authorial and translation career is characterized by two main milestones: First, his composition of the Memorial Stele of the Propagation in China of the Nestorian Religion from Daqin (“The Nestorian Stele”); and, second, his co-translation of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra on the Six Pāramitās《六波罗蜜经》with the Buddhist monk Prajñā Tripiṭaka (Boruo Sanzang 般若三藏) of the Kingdom of Kapisa (罽宾). Scholarly examination and discussion of the first event has been comparatively ample, but discussion of the second event has not been sufficiently deep or conclusive. In this study, the first milestone will be stressed, namely the unique terminological features of the Nestorian Stele’s composition. However, it is the special significance of the second milestone for researching the interrelations between the chronology of Jingjing’s works and the religious thought that will be more fully investigated in what follows. To begin with, the religious thought and rhetorical features of the Nestorian Stele will be discussed briefly. Although Jingjing came from a family of Persian extraction, it is possible that he was born and raised in Chinese territory, because besides having systematically studied the Old Syriac language and having been steeped in Nestorian doctrine from a young age, he also had read a significant number of canonical Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist texts. His Memorial Stele of the Propagation in China of the Nestorian Religion from Da Qin, written in the second year of Jianzhong during the reign of the Tang Emperor Dezong 德宗 (781 CE), is a typical four-and-six-character pianwen (骈文) parallel prose composition. It expounds the core doctrinal framework of the Christian trinity through a notion of the combined “miraculous body of the Trinity” (三一妙身), “the divided body of the Trinity” (三一分身), and “the holy wind of the Trinity” (三一净风), while expressing the basic “Logos Anthropos” concept of Christian doctrine via its description of how the Messiah “deprived of himself and concealed his true majesty, and came into the world as a man.” The intrinsic logic of this text’s soteriological thought is rendered as a passage from “a pure, undifferentiated original nature” to “Satan’s introduction of deception,” and then to “the initiation of life and

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destruction of death.” At the same time, the contents of the stele explain the fundamental features of Jingjiao ritual (“seven times a day they hold worship,” “once in seven days they sacrifice,” “they strike wood,” “they face the east in worship”), the origins of Jingjiao terminology, the number of Jingjiao scriptures (“twenty-seven sacred books”), and its basic notions of orthodox religious affairs. The second half of the text also recounts in detail the arrival and courteous reception of the Nestorian missionary Alopen 阿罗本 in China during the reign of the Emperor Taizong 太宗, the construction of the Da Qin Pagoda 大秦寺 at Yining District 义宁坊, the florescence of Jingjiao in the time of Emperor Gaozong 高宗, the attack and suppression of the faith during the Wuzhou period [during Empress Wu Zetian’s 武则天 reign], up to the height of the religion’s influence and splendor under the subsequent reigns of the emperors Suzong 肃宗, Daizong 代宗, and Dezong. The text contains particular praise for the capabilities and service of the ambassador Yazdbuzid 伊斯. The Nestorian Stele concludes with an ode, comprising a collection of four-syllable rhyming lines, the content of which is consistent with the rest of the text. The authenticity and intellectual value of the Memorial Stele is something about which scholarly opinion has already reached consensus, so the discussion needs no repeating here. The main thing to emphasize is simply that the stele that Jingjing composed as a comprehensive account of the theology and church history of Nestorianism can be considered the first significant milestone of his authorial career. By this time, Jingjing’s theological thought had already reached maturity and his theological narrative’s core teaching on the “creation and ordering of the World” and about the “trinity of the miraculous body, the divided body, and the holy wind,” had established a strong foundation for his later translations of theological texts and elegiac hymns. Of course, the mature, systematic theological framework of this text was not entirely unprecedented; regarding both aspects of terminology and concepts, the theological texts of his earlier period, Sutra on the Origins of Origins and Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness, had contributed strong, powerful support for the structural integrity of his theological system. After the Nestorian Stele, the second most important milestone in the authorial career of Jingjing was his translation of the seven juan 卷, or scrolls, of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra on the Six Pāramitās with Prajñā Tripiṭaka. According to records in the “Chapter on Prajñā Tripiṭaka”《般若三藏传》in the seventeenth juan of Yuan Zhao’s 圆照 Tang Dynasty Newly Authorized Record of Buddhist Titles of the Zhenyuan Era《贞元新定释教目录》, the Buddhist Dharma Master Prajñā Tripiṭaka of the Kingdom of Kapisa and the Persian monk of Da Qin, Jingjing, cotranslated the seven of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra on the Six Pāramitās in the second year of Emperor Dezong’s reign, or

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786 CE.4 The evaluations of this cooperative effort have been very divided in the perspectives of Buddhists and Christians. Yuan Zhao’s judgement of the translation possessed the typical view of the Buddhist translational establishment, while Christian scholars Arthur C. Moule and Havret adopted a sympathetic attitude towards Jingjing.5 The regrettable thing is that both sides of the discussion were overly preoccupied with certain problems that emerged from co-translation and neglected the positive outcomes brought about by the collaboration. As this author has pointed out elsewhere, the experience of translating Buddhist texts left an influence on Jingjing’s theological framework that is hard to miss and the translations and writings of his later period benefitted to a great degree from this attempt to “comprehend Jingjiao and Buddhism together” and “lead from Buddhism into Jingjiao.”6 In its closing section on application, the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra on the Six Pāramitās labels the text a most profound dharma gateway for the attainment of Mahayana practice and calls it “the eye of all sentient beings” and “the original mother of myriad buddhas.”7 In more recent times, the Great Master Taixu’s (太虚大师) sermons on the text, entitled the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra on the Six Pāramitās: Manifesting the Enlightenment-Mind《大乘理趣六波罗蜜多经·发菩提心品》, pointed out that the central thoughts of the sutra were to “provide universal deliverance with the aid of the six Mahayana perfections of miraculous dharma” and make the six perfections clear as the full practice and will for enlightenment.8 In light of this, on the basis of his experience translating the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra on the Six Pāramitās, Jingjing would have come to a much more profound understanding of the spirit of universal deliverance and the compassion for all beings to be found the Mahayana practice of

4 Yuan Zhao 圆照, Zhenyuan xinding shijiao mulu 贞元新定释教目录 [Zhenyuan Era Revised Catalog of Buddhist Titles], in Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō 大正新修大藏经 [Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka], eds. Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō kankōkai (Tokyo: Daizōkyō shuppan kabushikigaisha, 1988) 55, no. 2157, juan 17:891c–892a; see also Yuan Zhao, Da Tang zhenyuan xukai shijiao lu 大唐贞元续开释教录 [Continued Buddhist Catalog of the Great Tang Zhenyuan Era], in Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō 55, no. 2156, juan 1:756a. 5 See A. C. Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550 (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1930), 69. 6 Zhu Donghua, “Ying/應/Nirmana: A Case Study on the Translatability of Buddhism into Jingjiao,” in Winds of Jingjiao, eds. Li Tang and Dietmar Winkler (Zürich: LIT VERLAG GmbH & Co. KG Wien, 2016), 421. 7 Dasheng liqu liu boluomiduo jing 大乘理趣波罗蜜多经 [Mahayana Prajñāpāramitā sūtra on the Six Pāramitās], in Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō 8, no. 0261, juan 10:917b. 8 Taixu Fashi 太虚法师 [Dharma-Master Taixu], “Fazang-Dacheng tongxue (yi) di liushi yi 法藏·大乘通学 (一) 第61 [Dharma CanonMahayana , no. 61]” in Taixu dashi [Complete Works of Master Taixu] (Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua, 2004), 4:85.

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enlightenment, which would have ultimately resonated with the great communal spirit and universal compassion of Christianity. At the same time, Jingjing attained a systematic, thoroughgoing comprehension of Buddhist “metaphysics” and had a unique encounter with Mahayana concepts that were widely circulating in China during the transition between the Sui and Tang dynasties, such as the six perfections of enlightened practice (六度菩萨行; Sanskrit: ṣaḍ-pāramitā), the teaching of the three bodies of the Buddha (佛三身论; Sanskrit: trikaya), and the buddha-womb (如来藏; Sanskrit: tathāgatagarbha). These ideas were increasingly cited and pervasive in Jingjing’s own theological writings, as evident in the cases of his teaching on the three bodies of God and the notion of the original true nature of man in the Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties. Jingjing’s use of expressions taken from the concept of the true nature of the buddha-womb is quite thorough and bold in that text, making it hard to deny that the strengthening of these elements was a consequence of his having translated the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra on the Six Pāramitās. By comparison, Jingjing’s use of the Buddhist notion of the “responding person” (应身; Sanskrit: nirmana-kaya) in The Book of Praise’s dedication to the “three bodies in one” (‫ܬܠܝܬܝܘܬܐ‬/trinity) is obviously distinct from the term of “divided body” that he utilized in the Nestorian Stele. In reality, the “responding person” and the “divided body” are similar in that both refer to the second person of the trinity – “the Holy Son” (圣子) and “the Princely Messiah” (皇子弥施诃), or in the sacred terminology of the Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties, the “Brilliant Son” (明子) or “Great Holy Son of Universal Reverence” (普尊大 圣子). Nevertheless, the distinction between the emphasis on the substantial nature of the “divided body” and that of the notion of the “responding person” lies in the fact that the latter emphasizes the significance of this entity’s role in the divine economy. The substitution of the concept of the “responding person” for that of the “divided body” was thus a key transformation in the core terminology of Jingjing’s theology, separating his earlier and later periods of activity, to the extent that we can say that the translation of the year 786 CE is the representative event dividing the two stages in the development of

The Translations of Jingjing’s Early Period Memorial Stele of the Propagation in China of the Nestorian Religion from Da Qin represents the apex of the early stage of Jingjing’s thought, but other important pieces such as the Sutra on the Origin of Origins and the Sutra of

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Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness were also produced in this period. Since the translations of these two other texts formed a significant foundation for Jingjing’s authorship of the stele, they each deserve individual examination. 2.1 Sutra on the Origin of Origins The Sutra on the Origin of Origins and Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness are recorded in the catalogue of Jingjing’s translations included in The Book of Praise and are also some of the most valuable treasures of Nestorianism included among the documents discovered at Dunhuang. The Sutra on the Origin of Origins exists in two editions:9 1) One version called the Daqin Nestorian Sutra on the Origin of Origins《大秦景教宣元本经》, which can be called Origins Sutra A, was originally collected by the Tianjin-based archivist Li Shengduo 李盛铎 and later taken to Japan, ultimately published as a photographic facsimile of the original manuscript in the second volume of Japanese scholar Tōru Haneda’s 羽田 亨 1958 collection of historical studies.10 Since the calligraphic draftsmanship of this manuscript completely matches that of the manuscript copy of the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness, it can be asserted that these two manuscripts editions were produced by one and the same scribe. The manuscript (incomplete) contains 26 lines, a total of 465 characters, and most likely represents both genuine original textual sections of the sutra and later-added prefatory material. 2) Another version is the Luoyang 洛阳 stone pillar inscription of the Da Qin Nestorian Sutra on the Origin of Origins, called Origins Sutra a, which was excavated in 2006 and found carved onto the first to fourth faces of an octagonal stone pillar (the front or sun-light sides). However, because the pillar was damaged and only the top half was recovered, nearly every line of this version of the text is missing between 20 and 28 characters, to make the extant contents of this edition about 431 characters in total length.11 9

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Questions on the authenticity of the so-called Da Qin Jingjiao xuanyuan zhi ben jing can juan 《大秦景教宣元至本经》残卷 collected by Kojima Yasushi 小岛 靖 (Kojima Document B) is still debated, but since this study only addresses the problem of the text’s length, the issue does not warrant full discussion here. Lin Wushu 林悟殊, Tang dai Jingjiao zai yanjiu 唐代景教再研究 [Further Researches on Tang Dynasty Jingjiao] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 2003), 162; see also Toru Haneda 羽田 亨, Haneda Toru hakase shigaku ronbun shu 羽田博士史学论文集 [Collected Historical Studies of Dr. Haneda Toru] (Tokyo: Tōyō shi kenkyūkai, 1958), 2: Figure 7. Ge Chengyong 葛承雍, ed., Jingjiao yizhen: Luoyang xinchu Tang dai Jingjiao jingzhuang yanjiu 景教遗珍: 洛阳新出唐代景教经幢研究 [Artefacts of Jingjiao: Researches on Newly Unearthed Nestorian Jingjiao Stelae of the Tang Dynasty] (Beijing: Wenwu chu-

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Among the textual versions identified above, Origins Sutra A (Dunhuang edition) and Origins Sutra a (Luoyang edition) can be collated to augment and correct each other. The Dunhuang Origins Sutra A preserves the second to ninth lines missing from the Luoyang Origins Sutra a, while the Luoyang Origins Sutra a preserves about four-ninths of the missing second half of the Dunhuang Origins Sutra A text. The Dunhuang version has more erroneous and missing characters, while the Luoyang text has fewer of such errors (though two portions of this text also show significant numbers of missing characters). After comparing and collating these two texts, scholar Luo Zhao 罗炤 estimated that about seven-ninths of the content of the Sutra on the Origin of Origins is currently available, while the Luoyang edition supplies the later four-ninths of the text.12 On the whole, the central thought the Sutra on the Origin of Origins, as it can be discerned from the extant text, is concerned with disseminating the main points of Jingjiao belief – detailing how the Dharma-King Jingtong (景通法王, the Messiah or Christ) in the kingdom of Da Qin (the Roman Empire) and city of Nazareth, disseminated to his followers and the believers of other faiths the “true and eternal” teachings of the “August Creator of Profound Transformations” (玄化匠帝; Syriac: ‫)ܥܒܘܕܐ‬, referring to Alaha 阿罗诃, or the eternally existing principle of God, and describing the Messiah’s redemptive undertaking (“to instruct them with benevolence, to govern them with peace, to save them with mercy”). From the perspective of contents, the Sutra on the Origin of Origins and the Nestorian Stele share a high degree of similarity, which can be characterized in the following way: 1) The textual structure of the two pieces are similar, in that both first announce the beginningless, miraculous, true and solitary, eternal, vast and profound cosmic character of Alaha (God), then explain his achievement of creation out of nothingness and his creation of all things and mankind, finishing with a discussion of the evil fruits brought about by Satan’s introduction of deception and the beneficence of the Messiah’s offer of redemption. 2) The descriptions of the Messiah’s redemptive achievement in the two texts are similar – he “instituted the eight perfections in the moral sphere,” “opened the gateways to the three permanences,” smelted the dust to form the genuine, and initiated life and destroyed death. 3) Some special terminology used in both texts is the same, such as the name Alaha (God) and the Messiah (Christ), including the phrase “three-hundred and sixty-five different kinds” to express the idea of numerous and great differences in views. Naturally, by comparison with the Nestorian Stele, the Sutra on the Origin of Origins also has certain distinct features of its own: 1) It imitates the format of a Buddhist sutra, structuring the entire text according to a scenario in which 12

Ge, Jingjiao yizhen

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the Dharma-King Jingtong addresses an audience to transmit the religion and explain the dharma (with sections corresponding to the customary parts of a sutra, such as the introduction, main discourse, and application). 2) It doesn’t only describe Alaha as the “August Creator of Profound Transformations,” but also calls him the “Emperor of Imperceptible Emptiness” (无觉空皇), which makes it highly worth noting that the text uses a whole host of negative formulations to describe Alaha, such as, “without beginning or words,” “without nature or movement,” “without decrease or increase,” to the point that it might be said that the text has deeply absorbed the significance of a type of negative theology. 3) The Syriac language used in Nestorian church prayers referred to the “Thrice Holy” (Greek: Trisagion): ‫( ܩܘܕܫܐ ܐܠܗܐ‬Holy Alaha)、‫ܩܘܕܫܐ‬ ‫( ܚܝܠܬܢܐ‬Holy Mighty)、‫( ܩܘܕܫܐ ܡܝܘܬܐ ܠܐ‬Holy Immortal); yet while the text of the Sutra on the Origin of the Origins uses the transcriptions of Alaha (God), the mšiḥa (弥施诃, Messiah), and ruḥa (卢诃, wind) for these terms, it does not mention the concepts of “the miraculous person of the Trinity,” “the divided person of the Trinity,” and “the holy wind of the Trinity” used in the Memorial Stele, not to mention the language of “the miraculous person,” “the divided person,” and the “witnessing person” that was employed later for the trinity in The Book of Praise. Considering the similarities and differences enumerated above, this author is inclined to accept Professor Lin Wushu’s assessment that the Sutra on the Origin of Origins was translated before the Nestorian Stele was written (although the author’s reasons for accepting this differ from Professor Lin’s).13 Furthermore, the author feels that the Sutra on the Origin of Origins is a translation by Jingjing and not a product of his authorship. One of the main reasons for Lin’s decision that this text was authored by Jingjing was its similarity with Buddhist scripture, and indeed we cannot deny that the Sutra on the Origin of Origins does have the type of introductory, main discourse, and application structure commonly seen in Buddhist sutras.14 However, in the ancient world one often finds selected, mixed, and edited translations, not to mention evidence of translators freely adding to or subtracting from the texts they worked on (for example Xuanzang’s 玄奘 Discourse on the Perfection of Consciousness-Only《成唯识论》, the English King Alfred’s translation of Boethius’s classical Roman text of The Consolations of Philosophy,15 and even Jingjing’s translation of the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness contains

13 14 15

Lin, Tang dai Jingjiao zai yanjiu, 184–85. Ibid., 181. J. S. Cardale, King Alfred’s Anglo Saxon Version of Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae (London: William Pickering, 1829), 1–5.

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contents of his own addition.16 Therefore, the notion that Jingjing borrowed the format of a Buddhist sutra when he translated Sutra on the Origin of Origins is not impossible. On this point, the translation of the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness would appear to be the same, because although it utilizes the compositional form of a Buddhist sutra, this did not stop the compiler of The Book of Praise from categorizing it and the Sutra on the Origin of Origins under the heading of translations by Jingjing. Concerning the length of the text of the Sutra on the Origin of Origins, there are currently two main views: On the one hand, there are those who agree with Luo Zhao that the Luoyang version already had a final section on application, making it complete; On the other hand, Lin Wushu and others hold that the length of the Sutra on the Origin of Origins is an unsettled case and suggest that the stone pillar did not possess a complete inscription of the text.17 It should be said that, since the stone pillar inscription text includes sections covering the nature and accomplishments of Alaha, the redemptive achievement of the Messiah, and nature of the holy wind (ruha), by comparison with the canonical New Testament (as represented by the Nicene Creed), it should be considered basically complete, which is significant. However, compared to the gradually increasing richness of description about Alaha and the Messiah to be found in the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness, Discourse on the One God《一神论》, and the Sutra of Hearing the Messiah《序听迷诗所经》, the stone pillar inscription does not appear to have seen any elaboration in terms of doctrine. If there were a second part to the Sutra on the Origin of Origins, it undoubtedly would have dealt with the teachings on the Messiah’s redemptive measures, and so the existence of the Luoyang version of the Sutra on Origins cannot be taken as proof that the so-called Kojima B manuscript is a forgery, nor does it rule out the possibility that it is a part of the Sutra on the Origin of Origins. 2.2 Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness Another of Jingjing’s important translations is the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness. Like his other compositions and translations, the literary quality of the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness is quite exquisite, 16

17

Wu Qiyu 吴其昱, “Jingjiao Sanwei mengdu zan yanjiu 景教《三威蒙度赞》研究 [Research on the Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties of Jingjiao],” Zhongyang yan­ jiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiu suo jikan 中央研究院历史语言研究所集刊 [Academia Sinica Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology] 57, no. 3 (1986): 415–416. Jingjiao yizhen, 84.

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something that compelled Chen Yuan to declare this text and the calligraphy of the Sutra of Hearing the Messiah the “two pinnacles” of “Nestorianism” in China.18 There are two editions of the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness, one published in 1929 by Tōru Haneda in The Journal of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko and one published in 1934 by P. Y. Saeki in the English-language edition of the Fu Ren University Scholarly Journal. Based on his comparison of the two texts, Lin Wushu once cast doubt upon the authenticity of the one published by Saeki, stating that it showed “many sections of conjectural composition.” However, after a detailed examination of the two texts, Wu Changxing declared that “their contents are basically indistinguishable,” with only significant discrepancies found in lines at the beginnings of the text. In the appendix to his article “On the Paradisiacal World of the Nestorian Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness,” Wu Changxing re-published Haneda’s version of the text with punctuation, to aide in reading for research purposes.19 From the perspective of its contents, the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness is a classic philosophical dialogue like The Consolations of Philosophy (Boethius).20 Through a series of questions and answers between the mšiḥa (Messiah) and Cenwen sengga (岑稳僧伽, Simon Peter), it discusses the “Four Superior Dharmas” of non-desire, non-action, non-virtue and nondemonstration, and touches upon such topics as how to manage and control body and mind and how to dispel obsessions and delusions in order to gradually make progress in transcending to the “Ten Dharma Views” of the “Realm of Peaceful Happiness.” The concept of the void expressed in this text can be said to be essentially identical with that of the Sutra on the Origin of Origins, with such notions as “bringing nothingness together to make something” (‫ )ܡܢ ܠܐ ܡܕܡ ܒܪܐ‬and “destroying the existing to create nothing,” demonstrating the uniqueness of Jingjiao theology. The Book of Praise lists the Sutra on the Origin of Origins and The Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness as 18 19

20

Chen Yuan 陈垣, “Jidujiao ru hua shi 基督教入华史 [The History of Christianity’s Arrival to China],” in Chen Yuan xueshu lunwen ji 陈垣学术论文集 [Collected Scholarly Works of Chen Yuan] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), 1:95. Lin, Tang dai Jingjiao zai yanjiu, 152; Wu Changxing 吴昶兴, “Lun Jingjiao Zhixuan anle jing de anle shijie 论景教《志玄安乐经》的安乐世界 [On the Paradisiacal World of the Nestorian Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness],” Taiwan jinxin hui shenxue yuan xueshu niankan 台湾浸信会神学院学术年刊 [Taiwan Baptist Theological Seminary Annual Bulletin] (2007): 107. See Yangbulike 扬布里柯 [Iamblichus] and Boaixiu 波爱修 [Boethius], Zhexue guiquan lu / Zhexue de weijie 哲学规劝录 [The Exhortation to Philosophy and The Consolations of Philosophy] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 2008).

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close second and third most excellent translations produced by Jingjing and this is not without reason. The translated names of the Messiah are the same in the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness and The Book of Praise. However, while Simon’s name is glossed in Chinese as Cenwen sengga in the former, he is called Cenwen seng fawang (岑稳僧法王) in the latter. This transliteration of the name Simon, Cenwen, was based upon the sound of its Syriac pronunciation, “Shemeun,” which is today glossed in Chinese as Ximen 西门 or Ximan 西满. The title of “sangha-monk,” or sengga in Chinese, is based on the sound of the original Sanksrit term samgha, often abbreviated as seng (僧), meaning “association” or “assembly” [in the sense of the Buddhist religious community], but in China a single person could be called a seng to label them a Buddhist monk. P. Y. Saeki understood sengga here to be a direct reference, giving the meaning of “a monk.”21 Yet if one considers how the term seng is immediately coupled with fawang in Simon’s name as it is presented in The Book of Praise, giving the form “Simon seng Dharma-King” and listing the name as one among several dharma-kings, it becomes obvious that Saeki’s understanding is not appropriate. Tōru Haneda felt that sengga was in fact a transliteration of the word sang from the Sogdian language, meaning “rock,” Wu Qiyu opined that medieval Persian also used the word sang for rock, and in the Persian translation of the Bible the word sang was used to translate the Aramaic or Syriac word for monolith (‫)ܟܐܦܐ‬.22 The fact that they share translations for the names of the Messiah and Simon Peter demonstrates that the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness and the Book of Praise are very closely related, which is to say that The Book of Praise continues certain translated terms already developed in the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness. Nonetheless, the two texts’ shared negative theology and concept of the void generally shows that the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness and the Sutra on the Origin of Origins are translations produced by Jingjing at the same period of time (before he authored the Nestorian Stele).

21 22

Yoshiro Saeki, The Nestorian documents and Relics in China (Tokyo Institute, 1951), 306. Francis Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1992), 702; cf., Solomon Caesar Malan, The gospel according to S. John: translated from the eleven oldest versions except the Latin, and compared with the English Bible: with notes on every one of the alterations proposed by the five clergymen in their Revised Version of this Gospel (London: Joseph Masters, 1862), 17; See Wu Qiyu 吴其昱 “Tang dai Jingjiao zhi fawang he zunjing kao [Investigation on the Dharma King and Honorifics of Tang Dynasty Jingjiao],” Dunhuang Tulufan yanjiu [Journal of the Dunhuang and Turfan Studies] 5 (2001): 25–26.

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37

The Book of Praise and Jingjing’s Later Period Translation of the Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties

3.1 Jingjing’s Translations as Catalogued in The Book of Praise When Nestorianism entered China it was originally called the “Religious Teaching of the Persian Scriptures” (波斯经教) meaning that because its scriptures were its glory, its main forms of expression were found in venerating and translating them. The Book of Praise was discovered by Pelliot in 1908 and is currently held in Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale de France, comprising one part of a scroll among the Dunhuang manuscripts, identified as Pelliot Chinois Papers Number 3847 (P. 3847). Since the provenance of this scripture is clear, scholars collectively acknowledge it as a genuine artifact from Dunhuang. Its author could have been some Nestorian priest of the late Tang era (or even a Nestorian missionary). Its contents are divided into four sections, including the names of the “trinity,” the roster of dharma-kings’ names, a list of Jingjing’s translations (including thirty-five titles in total), and commentarial notes, which gives the text significant research value for understanding the translation activities of Jingjing. Moule, who set out from the point of view of the history of Christianity, considered this text second only to the Xi’an Nestorian Stele in importance and in some respects considered it to have even more significance.23 In his article “Study of Tang Dynasty Nestorian Dharma-Kings and The Book of Praise,” Wu Qiyu built upon the research of P. Y. Saeki and others to produce a detailed examination of the dharma-kings and scriptural titles mentioned in The Book of Praise. Besides confirming the transliterated names of such biblical figures as 瑜罕难 ywḥnn (John), 卢伽 lwq’ (Luke), 摩矩辞 mrqws (Mark), 明泰 mty (Matthew), 牟世 mwš’ (Moses), 多惠 dwyd (David), 宝路 pwlws (Paul), 珉艳 mrym (Mary), and 岑稳僧 šm‘wn sang (Simon Peter), and including some short appended individual studies, Wu’s article also contributed excellent interpretive examinations of the two nominal terms Jingtong 景通 and Yihe Jisi 宜和吉思 (Ngieγua). According to Wu’s research, the jing of Jingtong originally meant “brilliant” or “great;” while the syllable tong, meaning “to connect,” conveyed unity between Heaven and mankind, representing the communion of the divine and the human. The Dunhuang version of the Da Qin Sutra on the Origin of Origins has the phrase, “once, the Dharma-King Jingtong spoke 23

Moule referred to the combined edition of The Book of Praise and Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties; see Muer 穆尔 [A. C. M 1550 nian de Zhongguo Jidujiao shi , [Christians in China before the Year 1550], trans. Hao Zhenhua (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984), 59.

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in audience with the Precious Dharma of the Brilliant Palace, and when they beheld each other, they were confirmed in their completion of the true origin,” and elsewhere has the phrase, “Dharma-King Jingtong began to solemnly enter into contemplation, arose to behold the Emperor of the Void, and personally accepted the charge of his command.” Since the text does not mention any protagonist by the name of Jesus, it’s clear that this so-called “Dharma-King Jingtong” refers to Christ. Wu’s research also identifies the figure of Yihe Jisi as the early fourth century “martyr and sanctus” Saint George, as well as points out that the Syriac inscription at the Meridean Gate in the Imperial Palace in Beijing repeatedly mentions Yihe Jise (Saint George). In the section of The Book of Praise where it lists Jingjing’s thirty-five scriptural translations, almost one-half of the titles have no words based on phonetic transcription, which Wu interprets as an indication that these were new or revised translations. Among the texts listed, currently extant ones include the Sutra on the Origin of Origins (collation of the Dunhuang and Luoyang stone pillar editions), the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness, and the Hymn of the Three Majesties (Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties). Besides these texts, based on the list of scriptures in The Book of Praise it can be conjectured that Jingjing also translated parts of the Old Testament, under such titles as the Sutra of the Dharma-King Mushi《牟世法王经》(Five Books of Moses) and the Sutra of the Holy King Duohui《多惠圣王经》(Psalms), as well as most or all of the New Testament, under the headings of the Evangelion Sutras《阿恩瞿利容经》 (the Gospels) and the Sutra of Dharma-King Paul《宝路法王经》(Pauline Epistles). Something worth emphasizing is the fact that Jingjing’s translations also included texts unique to the tradition of the Jingjiao religion, such as the Ningyeting Sutra《宁耶颋经》, which according to Wu Qiyu is likely a translation of the second-century Syrian church father Tatian’s translation and compilation of the four gospels into Syriac, the Euangelion da-Meḥalleṭē (Greek: Diatessaron). Another work in this category would be the E’fulin Sutra 《遏拂林经》, which should be a translation of the verses and writings of the teacher Ephrem Syrus of the ancient catechetical school of Alexandria. From these examples, it can be seen that the scope of Jingjing’s Tang-era translations was considerable. Another thing they show, in Wu Qiyu’s opinion, is that the Book of Praise reveals the cultural background and system of Tang Jingjiao theo­logy, and, indirectly, how Christian culture influenced the Chinese cultural world, making the text no less significant than the Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties, the Nestorian Stele, and other artifacts and documents left behind on the journeys of the Silk Road.24 24

Wu, Tang dai Jingjiao zhi fawang he zunjing kao

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39

The theological expressions of The Book of Praise are indeed worth highlighting, as the discussion of the trinity in the text’s opening can be taken as representing the final teaching of Jingjing’s later years: “We reverently worship the mysterious person (‫ )ܦܪܨܘܦܐ‬the royal Father Alaha (‫)ܐܠܗܐ‬, the responding person the royal Son mšiḥa (‫)ܡܫܝܚܐ‬, the witnessing person rūḥā ḏ-quḏšā (‫)ܕܪܘܚܐ ܕܩܘܕܫܐ‬. The above three persons unite together in one itya (‫ܐܝܬܝܐ‬, being).”25 In fact, the concept of the “responding person” used in The Book of Praise’s opening salutation of the “three-bodies-in-one” is obviously distinct from the “divided body” utilized in the Nestorian Stele. The substitution of “responding person” for “divided body” demonstrates a change in the core theological terminology utilized by Jingjing, one that distinguishes the work of his earlier and later periods of translation, and it is highly likely that this change was related to his undertaking of the translation of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra on the Six Pāramitās with Prajñā Tripiṭaka in the second year of the zhenyuan reign period of Tang Emperor Dezong (786 CE).26 Further related to this, along with his use of the notion of the “responding person,” are his utilizations of such concepts as “true nature” (真性) and “substance (依止; Sanskirt: aśraya).”27 It is thus also possible to say that Jingjing’s translations in the year 786 represents a watershed event dividing his thought into earlier and later periods and that his use of such concepts as the “responding person” and the others are significant criteria for identifying his translation products as belonging to the later period. 3.2 Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties This scripture should correspond to the one listed among Jingjing’s translations in The Book of Praise under the title of Hymn of the Three Majesties《三威 赞经》. Under the title the Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties it was taken from Dunhuang by Pelliot in 1908 (currently housed at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris and catalogued as Pelliot Chinois Papers Number 3847). In 1910, Luo Zhenyu 罗振玉 introduced this text in the journal Guocui xuebao《国粹学报》(Journal of National Essence) and in 1934, within a little over twenty years, Liang Jifang 梁季芳 of Yenching University set it to the tune of an ancient historical melody, which is still sung today. According to Moule 25

26 27

Wu Changxing 吴昶兴, Daqin Jingjiao liuxing Zhongguo bei: Daqin Jingjiao wenxian shiyi 大秦景教流行中国碑 – 大秦景教文献释义 [The Memorial Stele of the Propagation in China of the Jing Religion from Da Qin: Exegesis of Nestorian Religious Texts from Da Qin] (Taibei: Ganlan chubanshe, 2015), 208. See Zhu, “Ying/應/Nirmana,” 419–433. See Weng Shaojun 翁绍军, Hanyu Jingjiao wendian quanshi 汉语景教文典诠释 [Exegesis of ChineseLanguage Jingjiao Scriptures] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1996), 199.

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and Alphonse Mingana’s opinions, the format of this hymn is the same as the version of Gloria in Excelsis Deo that was widely known in Eastern Syriac.28 Wu Qiyu then closely compared it to the Syriac Gloria in Excelsis Deo and confirmed its origins, declaring it one of the two jewels of Nestorian literature.29 However, while the title by which this piece was known outside of the Syriac Church is Gloria in Excelsis Deo, inside the Eastern Syriac Church the name for such songs customarily substituted the term “hymn” (‫ )ܬܫܒܘܚܬܐ‬for “gloria” (‫)ܕܘܟܣܐ‬, to give the title of Hymn to the Angels.30 For this reason, the present author feels that using the phrase “hymn” in the title of the Dunhuang text Hymn of the Perfections of the Three Majesties is entirely consist with the terminological traditions of the Eastern Syriac church. The Hymn to the Angels is the one of the oldest, most widely circulated hymns, with many different versions known before the present. Among those known from China, besides the Hymn of the Perfections of the Three Majesties, a Sogdian language version was also excavated at Turpan. Based on a synthesis of the relevant Western scholarship, Lin Lijuan examined Chinese, Syriac, Coptic and two different Greek versions of the Hymn to the Angels, finding that the Chinese Hymn of the Perfections of the Three Majesties and the Syriac Hymn to the Angels belonged to the tradition of the Nicene Creed and declaring that Jingjing’s translation had the following unique characteristics: 1) Jingjing added and removed content from the text and rearranged its sequence to create a format of four-line stanzas; 2) his translation of the text’s title and its ideas was done quite freely; and 3) Jingjing used many citations and terms from the religious traditions of Buddhism and Daoism, showing how well-versed in Chinese culture he was.31 In this author’s opinion, the phrases used for the trinity in the Hymn of the Perfections of the Three Majesties, “Merciful Father, Brilliant Son, and King of Pure Breath” (慈父明子净风王) and for the expression of Christological concepts (describing 28 29 30 31

Muer, 1550 nian de Zhongguo Jidujiao shi, 61. Wu, Jingjiao Sanwei mengdu zan yanjiu, 411–438; see also Wu, Tang dai Jingjiao zhi fawang he zunjing kao, 37. Paulus Bedjan, Breviarium iuxta ritum Syrorum Orientalium id east Chaldaeorum I–III (Leipzig, 1886–7), 37. Lin Lijuan 林丽娟, “Liuchuan zhong de Tianshi song: Jingjiao Sanwei mengdu zan zai kaocha 流传中的《天使颂》– 景教《三威蒙度赞》再考察 [Hymn of the Angels in Transmission: A Reexamination of the Jingjiao Hymn of the Perfection of Three Majesties]” in Jingjiao yanjiu guoji luntan ( Jingjiao tu zaihua shenghuo yu xinyang shixian) lunwen ji 景教研究国际论坛 [Collection of Studies from the International Conference of Research on Jingjiao: The Lives and Faith Practices of Nestorians in China] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue yuan jidujiao yanjiu zhongxin he Qinghua daxue zongjiao yu daode yanjiuyuan, 2017), 69–86.

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the Christ as the “mediator” between the One “in the highest” (ḇa-mraumē) and those “of the world” (d- ā͑ lmā), including the notion that the Holy Son sits at the right hand of the Father) entirely matches the positions of the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon.32 The “three sacred praises” (Greek: Trisagion) of the Hymn of the Perfections of the Three Majesties (that is, “He alone art Holy. He alone art Mighty. He alone art Immortal”) can be used to supplement the missing text from the Luoyang stone pillar version of the Sutra on the Origin of Origins. What’s more, its notion of the living God (allāhā ḥaiyā) can aide in the interpretation of the so-called “living savior of worldly veneration” mentioned in the Xiapu manuscript, while its language of the “river of fire” is similar to the description of the description of “‫( ”ܕܢܘܪܐ ܢܗܪܐ‬river of fire) in the Syriac-language version of the Life of Saint George, which also helps prove that the “Great River” gloss of the Kojima Document B is an error.33 Besides all of this, the fact that Jingjing used a great number of Buddhist expressions such as “true nature” (真性), “substance” (aśraya) (依止), “dharma-king” (法王), and “salvation and perfection” (Pāramitā) (救度) when he translated the Hymn of the Perfections of the Three Majesties show it to be something he produced after having translated the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra on the Six Pāramitās with Prajñā Tripiṭaka. Therefore, just like the “three persons in one being” of The Book of Praise, these features show that the Hymn of the Perfections of the Three Majesties should be categorized as belonging to the later part of his translation career. 4

Conclusion

Based on the foregoing analysis and research of Jingjing’s writings and translations of Nestorian scriptures, we have obtained a basic summary of the authorial and translation activities of Jingjing and provided a certain understanding of the character, main contents, and sequence of his writings and translations and their relation to his thought. The following table summarizes the preliminary conclusions of this study:

32

Zhu Donghua 朱东华, “Nixiya xinjing yu Jingjiao shenxue 尼西亚信经与景教神学 [The Nicene Crede and Jingjiao Theology],” Daofeng: Jidujiao wenhua pinglun 道风 [Logos and Pneuma: Chinese Journal of Theology] 47 (2017): 27–48. e Anton Kiraz, The Acts of Saint George and the Story of His Father (New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2006), 17.

42 Table 1.1

Zhu Summary of preliminary conclusions

Title

Authorship Time

Translated Sutra on the Origin of Origins by Jingjing [Sutra on Origins A (Dunhuang Text) and Sutra on Origins a (Luoyang Version)]

Character

Main contents

Textual relations

Jingjing’s Theological Basic Beliefs of Early Period Treatise Jingjiao Religion: (Before Jingtong 781 CE ) Dharma-King (the Messiah or Christ) of Nazareth in the Kingdom of Da Qin taught his followers the “eternal truth” of the “August Creator of Profound Transformations;” recounts the Messiah’s act of redemption.

Closely related to the Memorial of the Propagation in China of the Nestorian Religion from Da Qin and Hymn of the Perfections of the Three Majesties. Listed in The Book of Praise as Jingjing’s second translation.

Closely related to The Book of Praise. The perspective of the void in this text is from the same lineage as the Sutra on the Origin of Origins’ notion of “creating something out of nothing and destroying what exists to create nothingness,” showing Jingjing’s unique theology. Listed in the Book of Praise as Jingjing’s third translation.

Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness

Translated by Jingjing

Jingjing’s Theological Dialogue between Early Period Dialogue the Messiah and (Before Simon Peter, 781 CE ) expounds the “Four Triumphant Dharmas” of no desire, no action, no virtue, and no proof, and the “Ten Dharma Perspectives” of managing body and mind, dispelling obsessions and delusions, and progress in transcendence to the “Realm of Peaceful Happiness.”

Memorial of the Propagation in China of the Nestorian Religion from Da Qin

Written by Jingjing

Jianzhong year 2 of Tang Emperor Dezong’s Reign (781 CE )

Theological Treatise and Church History

Overview of the theology and history of the Nestorian Religion in China.

Identity and time of authorship text is the first major milestone in Jingjing’s career.

The Chronology of Jingjing ’ s Writings and Translations Table 1.1

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Summary of preliminary conclusions (cont.)

Title

Authorship Time

Prajñāpāramitā Translated sūtra on the Six by Jingjing Pāramitās (lost) and Prajñā Tripiṭaka

Zhenyuan Year 2 of Tang Emperor Dezong’s Reign (786 CE )

Character

Main contents

Textual relations

Buddhist Scripture on Flux, with Maitreyan Background

Scripture on Mahayana practice of most profound Dharma gateway, the “eyes of all sentient beings” and “the original mother of all Buddhas.” Its central thought is to, “provide universal deliverance with the aid of the six Mahayana perfections of the miraculous dharma,” and clarify them as the full practice and will for enlightenment.

Substitution of “responding person” for “divided body” reveals a key change in the theological terms dividing early and later periods of Jingjing’s activities. This translation of 786 CE symbolizes the division between Jingjing’s early and later thought.

Hymn to the “Three Majesties” (the Merciful Father, the Brilliant Son, and the Lord of Pure Breeze), especially to the “Messiah the Venerable Great Holy Son”

Authentic, reliable text covering core doctrine of Jingjiao religion; essential cross-reference for Jingjing’s other works and translations. The Book of Praise lists it as his twentyfifth scriptural translation.

Hymn to the Three Bodies in One, List of Dharma-Kings, Catalogue of Jingjing’s Writings and Translations

Demonstrates final teachings of Jingjing’s later

Hymn of the Perfections of the Three Majesties

Translated by Jingjing

Jingjing’s Elegaic Later Period Hymn (After 786 CE )

* Book of Praise

Written by a Nestorian Monk or Nestorian Missionary

After Jingjing’s Death, Specific Date Awaiting Study

Catalogue of DharmaKings and Scriptures

important value for translation efforts.

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Bibliography Bedjan, Paulus. Breviarium iuxta ritum Syrorum Orientalium id east Chaldaeorum I–III. Leipzig, 1886–7. Cardale, J. S. King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae. London: William Pickering, 1829. Chen Yuan 陈垣. Chen Yuan xueshu lunwen ji 陈垣学术论文集 [Collected Scholarly Works of Chen Yuan]. Vol. 1. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Ge Chengyong 葛承雍, ed., Jingjiao yizhen: Luoyang xinchu Tang dai Jingjiao jingzhuang yanjiu 景教遗珍: 洛阳新出唐代景教经幢研究 [Artefacts of Jingjiao: Researches on Newly Unearthed Nestorian Jingjiao Stelae of the Tang Dynasty]. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2009. Haneda Toru 羽田亨. Haneda Toru hakase shigaku ronbun shu 羽田博士史学论文集 [Collected Historical Studies of Dr. Haneda Toru]. Vol. 2. Tokyo: Tōyō shi kenkyūkai, 1958. Havret, Henri. La stèle chrétienne de Si-ngan-fou. Shanghai: Imprimerie de La Mission Catholique, 1895. Kiraz, George Anton. The Acts of Saint George and the Story of His Father. New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2006. Lin Lijuan 林丽娟. “Liuchuan zhong de Tianshi song: Jingjiao San wei mengdu zan zai kaocha 流传中的《天使颂》– 景教《三威蒙度赞》再考察 [Hymn of the Angels in Transmission: A Reexamination of the Jingjiao Nestorian Hymn of the Perfection of Three Majesties].” In Jingjiao yanjiu guoji luntan ( Jingjiao tu zaihua shenghuo yu xinyang shixian) lunwen ji 景教研究国际论坛: 景教徒在华生活与信仰实践论文集 [Collection of Studies from the International Conference of Research on Jingjiao Nestorianism: The Lives and Faith Practices of Nestorians in China], 69–86. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue yuan Jidujiao yanjiu zhongxin he Qinghua daxue zongjiao yu daode yanjiuyuan, 2017. Lin Wushu 林悟殊. Tang dai Jingjiao zai yanjiu 唐代景教再研究 [Further Researches on Tang Dynasty Jingjiao Nestorianism]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 2003. Malan, Solomon Caesar. The gospel according to S. John: translated from the eleven oldest versions except the Latin, and compared with the English Bible: with notes on every one of the alterations proposed by the five clergymen in their Revised Version of this Gospel. London: Joseph Masters, 1862. Moule, A. C. Christians in China before the Year 1550. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1930. Moule, A. C. [Muer 穆尔]. 1550 nian de Zhongguo Jidujiao shi 1550 年的中国基督 教史 [Christians in China before the Year 1550]. Translated by Hao Zhenhua 郝镇华. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984. Pelliot, Paul. L’inscription nestorienne de Si-NganFou . Kyoto: Scuola di studi sull’Asia Orientale, 1996.

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Saeki, Yoshiro. The Nestorian documents and relics in China. Tokyo Institute, 1951. Steingass, Francis. A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1992. Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō 大正新修大藏经 [Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka]. Edited by Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō kankōkai. 85 vols. Tokyo: Daizōkyō shuppan kabushikigaisha, 1988. Taixu Fashi 太虚法师 [Dharma-Master Taixu]. Taixu dashi quanshu 太虚大师全书 [Complete Works of Master Taixu]. Vol. 4. Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua, 2004. Tang, Li. A Study of the History of Nestorian Christianity in China and Its Literature in Chinese. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002. Weng Shaojun 翁绍军. Hanyu Jingjiao wendian quanshi 汉语景教文典诠释 [Exegesis of Chinese-Language Jingjiao Nestorian Scriptures]. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1996. Wu Changxing 吴昶兴. Da qin Jingjiao liuxing Zhongguo bei: Da qin Jingjiao wen­ xian shiyi 大秦景教流行中国碑 – 大秦景教文献释义 [The Memorial Stele of the Propagation in China of the Nestorian Religion from Daqin: Exegesis of Nestorian Religious Texts from Daqin]. Taibei: Ganlan chubanshe, 2015. Wu Changxing 吴昶兴. “Lun Jingjiao Zhixuan anle jing de anle shijie 论景教《志玄安 乐经》的安乐世界 [On the Paradisiacal World of the Nestorian Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness].” Taiwan jinxin hui shenxue yuan xueshu niankan 台湾 浸信会神学院学术年刊 [Taiwan Baptist Theological Seminary Annual Bulletin] (2007): 101–128. Wu Qiyu 吴其昱. “Jingjiao sanwei mengdu zan yanjiu 景教三威蒙度赞研究 [Research on the Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties of Jingjiao Nestorianism].” Zhongyang yanjiu yuan lishi yuyan yanjiu suo jikan 中央研究院历史语言研究所集刊 [Academia Sinica Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology] 57, no. 3 (1986): 411–438. Wu Qiyu 吴其昱. “Tang dai Jingjiao zhi fawang he zunjing kao 唐代景教之法王和尊 经考 [Investigation on the Dharma King and Honorifics of Tang Dynasty Jingjiao Nestorianism].” Dunhuang Tulufan yanjiu 敦煌吐鲁番研究 [Journal of the Dunhuang and Turfan Studies] 5 (2001): 13–58. Yangbulike 扬布里柯 [Iamblichus] and Boaixiu 波爱修 [Boethius]. Zhexue guiquan lu / Zhexue de weijie 哲学规劝录. 哲学的慰藉 [The Exhortation to Philosophy and The Consolations of Philosophy]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 2008. Zhu Donghua 朱东华. “Nixiya xinjing yu Jingjiao shenxue 尼西亚信经与景教神学 [The Nicene Creed and Jingjiao Theology].” Daofeng: Jidujiao wenhua pinglun 道风: 基督 教文化评论 [Logos & Pneuma: Chinese Journal of Theology], No. 47 (2017): 27–48. Zhu Donghua 朱东华. “Ying/應/Nirmana: A Case Study on the Translatability of Bud dhism into Jingjiao.” In Winds of Jingjiao, edited by Li Tang and Dietmar Winkler, 419–433. Zurich: VERLAG GmbH & Co. Wien, 2016.

Chapter 2

The Fountainhead of Chinese-Language Christian Theology: Matteo Ricci’s “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” and Proof for the Existence of God Ji Jianxun Abstract Concerning the “Debate on the Translation of Names,” previous scholarly attention has been focused mostly on differences between the stances of Matteo Ricci and Nicolò Longobardo’s “factions,” while more recent research has gradually begun to analyze the significance of Longobardo’s activities and writings. In keeping with the spate of new scholarly interpretations of this topic, the present study offers an examination of the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” from a new angle, in hopes of gaining new insights. It assumes that this doctrine was not just an innovation related to the strategies and challenges of theological localization, but rather represents a proof for the existence of God that is permeated by the two great explanatory traditions of Confucian classical learning and Christian theology. From Ricci’s perspective, the true recognition of God on the part of the ancient Chinese derived from “natural law,” a view whose fundamental character lie in its use of natural theology and historical framing to construct a theory of God for the late Ming dynasty. Only the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” could prove that the “Lord of Heaven” from the West and the “Sovereign-on-High” of the East were concepts “identical in essence yet different in form” at the root of all civilization. On both the psychological and social levels, this could allow Confucian Christians to carefully avoid a self-defeating “double-headed snake” type of conflict and contradiction, thus permitting the Chinese literati to come to Jesus through Confucianism and ultimately attain the ideal fusion of Confucianism and Christianity for the sake of integrating self and society. Seen from this perspective, the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” undoubtedly raises questions about verifying the existence of the supreme god of Catholicism, representing the very origin of Chinese language Christian theology and therefore should not be treated merely as a theoretical outcome of the debate about the translation of names.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004532120_004

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Keywords Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven – Matteo Ricci – proof of God’s existence – Chinese-language theology

In1 the thirteenth year of the Ming Wanli 万历 Emperor’s reign (1603 CE), Matteo Ricci published his book The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven《天 主实义》, in which he wrote: Our Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu 天主) is what the ancient texts called the Sovereign-on-High (Shangdi 上帝) … Should one go through all the ancient books, they will know that the Sovereign-on-High and the Lord of Heaven are different only in name.2 Here, Ricci clearly proposed that the supreme god of the Catholic religion was none other than the figure called the “Sovereign-on-High” in the ancient Chinese classics, which inaugurated his “theory of the equivalence of the Lord of Heaven and the Sovereign-on-High.” As soon as this pronouncement greeted the world it provoked a controversy that would never end. There was dispute among the Western Christian missionaries and debate among the Chinese literati, while Confucian Christian converts engaged in deliberate strategizing to produce an Investigation on the Sovereign of Heaven《帝天考》, in specific response to the suspicions of the opposing sides within the church towards the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” (帝天说). These debates over the name of the Christian deity have been referred to under such titles as the “Controversy on the Translation of Names” (译名之争), the “Discussion on the Sacred Appellation” (圣号论), and the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven,” yet the distinction between these three designations has never been entirely clear. Generally speaking, the “Controversy on the Translation of Names” covers the dispute within Catholicism that arose in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties over what Chinese name should be used for God, while the “Discussion on the Sacred Appellation” refers to the debates that arose 1 Originally published as Ji Jianxun 纪建勋, “Hanyu shenxue de lanshang: Li Madou ‘tiandi shuo’ yu shangdi cunzai de zhengming 汉语神学的滥觞 – 利玛窦‘天帝说’与上帝存在的 证明,” Zongjiao yu lishi 宗教与历史 8 (2018): 109–126. 2 Li Madou 利玛窦 [Matteo Ricci], Tianzhu shiyi 天主实义 [The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven], in Li Madou zhongwen zhuyi ji 利玛窦中文著译集 [Matteo Ricci Chinese Transla tion Collection], ed. Zhu Weizheng (Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2001), 21.

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within Protestant missionizing in China concerning the same issue; Matteo Ricci had uniformly explained that the concepts of “Heaven” (天) and the “Sovereign-on-High” from the Pre-Qin dynasty Chinese classics were equivalent to the “Lord of Heaven” (天主), in a plan to blend Catholicism with the Chinese cultural tradition, representing a strategy of proselytizing through the Confucianization of Catholicism that Huang Yinong designates as the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven.” English-language writings generally use the phrase “Term Question” or “Term Issue” to refer to the matter. Here, I will use Huang’s terminology, in order to emphasize the Jesuits’ efforts to blend Christianity and Confucianism.3 This study’s emphasis rests upon a renewed interpretation of the significance of the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” as found in Ricci’s The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, offering an analysis of the relationship between his explanations, his proof of God’s existence, and the origins of Chinese-language Christian theology. While Ricci’s “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” provoked all kinds of lively interaction and dialogue on various other questions of cosmology in the intellectual realm of the late Ming, they belong to the investigations of another study. Up to now, most scholarly research has categorized this topic under the study of translations of religious terminology or has placed it within the efforts of the Jesuits to accommodate Confucianism from the perspective of religious localization strategies. The first approach risks marginalizing the topic, while the second cannot avoid oversimplification. With more precise awareness, the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” can be seen as an effort on Ricci’s part to prove the existence of God and can thus be extricated from the original context of the “Debate on the Translation of Names,” in which it has been stuck as an unresolved “equivocal dispute,” to instead make progress towards some new meaning. This point possesses vitally important lessons for the contemporary development of Chinese-language Christian theology and can even be considered the very origin of Chinese-language theology. In keeping with the spate of new scholarly understandings of the controversy on the translation of names, this study offers an investigation of the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” from a new angle, in hope of gaining new insights. It assumes that this case is similar to the late Ming Catholic translation of Deus as “Great Father and Mother” (大父母), in that it was not merely 3 Huang Yinong 黄一农, Liang tou she: Ming mo Qing chu de di yi dai Tianzhujiao tu 两头蛇: 明末清初的第一代天主教徒 [The Two Headed Snake: The First Generation of Catholic Converts in the Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe,

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an innovative solution to a theological conundrum, but was rather a proof of the existence of God permeated by the two great explanatory traditions of Chinese classical learning and Christian theology, representing the origin of Chinese-language Christian theology, and thus should not be treated merely as a theoretical outcome of the debate about the translation of names.4 1

The Origins of Chinese Christian Theology: Translating Names or Proving God’s Existence?

The exposition of Ricci’s proof for the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” states: “Our Lord of Heaven is what the ancient texts called the ‘Sovereign-onHigh,’" thus employing the literati’s universally-held customs, psychology of reverence for the ancients, and faith in antiquity to appropriate the two great historical explanatory systems of Catholicism and Confucianism for the aim of interpreting the “Sovereign-on-High” of the ancient classics as the “Lord of Heaven.” Seeing as the Lord of Heaven of the West was the supreme god of the Catholic faith, whose existence was already proven through the argumentation of The Real Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, and the “Sovereign-on-High” of the East was within the purview of both Ricci’s missionaries and Confucian Christian converts, the two terms held an unquestionable potential for correspondence and mutual elucidation, suggesting that the “Sovereign-on-High” and the “Lord of Heaven” were “different only in name.” In this sense, the appearance of the “Sovereign-on-High” in the oldest classical texts of Confucianism were made into an intimation and verification of the existence of the highest deity of Catholicism. Important to note is the fact that both of the equally great explanatory systems of Christian theology and Confucianism played an important role in this process, guaranteeing that this proof was completed in the manner of “Natural Reason” (自然理性). No matter what the ancient Chinese set out to accomplish, they always followed the guidance of Reason to the utmost extent, because they held that Reason was granted by Heaven above. The Chinese have never once believed that the Sovereign-on-High or other spirits could be, as our 4 Sun Shangyang 孙尚扬, “Li Madou yu Hanyu shenxue 利玛窦与汉语神学 [Matteo Ricci and Chinese-Language Theology],” Zhongguo minzu bao 中国民族报 [China Ethnic News], May 11, 2010, 6; Zeng Qingbao 曾庆豹, “Ming mo Tianzhujiao de yiming zhi zheng yu zhengzhi shenxue 明末天主教的译名之争与政治神学 [The Controversy of the Translation of Names in Late Ming Catholicism and Political Theology],” Daofeng: Jidujiao wenhua pinglun 道风 [Logos and Pneuma: Chinese Journal of Theology] 38 (2013): 118.

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ancient Romans, Greeks and Egyptians believed, capable of any misdeeds. As a consequence, it can be hoped that the Sovereign-on-High of limitless mercy would allow the many ancient people who lived according to natural law to receive redemption; that those who had endeavored to the utmost in their actions would receive the special aid customarily bestowed by the Sovereign-on-High. From the example of the preceding four-thousand years of history, it can be seen that the aforementioned hope has a foundation …5 Here, Ricci indicated that since the ancient Chinese classics contained Reason as well as possessed a theory of divinity and because the ancients’ recognition of the Sovereign-on-High originated from “natural law,” which was to say that because people had been bestowed with Reason, they had achieved true recognition of God. Ricci further linked to Chinese history in order to explain the early Chinese peoples’ knowledge of God: Since they depended entirely upon Reason and did not possess any claims of supernatural revelation, their concept of divinity had developed on the level of natural theology, which explained how Reason could be preserved in China for such a long time. The key point was that because of geographical and historical reasons, China had received relatively little of the negative influence of superstition, something which had allowed the Chinese people to preserve pure Reason for ages. The successors to Ricci took even further steps to unite the history of the Chinese nation with the Bible by fully taking up the frame of history in this vein.6 However, since the people of ancient China had nothing in common with Judaism, unlike other nations, China was never able to receive the ultimate favor and revelation of God, which, alongside the gradual degeneration of humanity, resulted in the gradual loss of the original light of Reason among the Chinese as well. Ultimately, they went towards two extremes. On the one hand, some became mired in the worship of false idols (Buddhism) and, on the other hand, there were those that fell into atheism (Song Neo-Confucianism).7 It was on this level that Ricci raised his “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” 5 Li Madou, Li Madou Zhongguo chuanjiao shi 利玛窦中国传教史 [History of Matteo Ricci’s Mission to China], trans. Liu Junyu 刘俊余 and Wang Yuchuan 王玉川 (Taibei: Guangming Press and Furen University Co-Publication, 1986), 1:80. 6 Mei Qianli 梅谦立, “Zuichu xiwen fanyi de rujia jingdian 最初西文翻译的儒家经典 [The Earliest Western-Language Translations of the Confucian Classics],” Zhongshan daxue xuebao 中山大学学报 [Zhongshan University Scholarly Bulletin] 2 (2008): 131–142; Mei Qianli and Qi Feizhi 齐飞智, “Zhongguo zhexue jia Kongfuzi de shangdi lun 《中国哲学家孔夫 子》的上帝论 [The Theory of the Sovereign-on-High in China’s Philosopher Confucius],” Guoji hanxue 国际汉学 [International Sinology] 22 (2012): 25–29. 7 Li, Li Madou Zhongguo chuanjiao shi

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as a frame for the theory of God’s existence, provoking such intense debate about cosmology during the late Ming dynasty. Admittedly, from the beginning the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” was a question of translation. However, while it might have remained unresolved within the original ambit of the “Controversy on Translating Names,” both the general populace and educated authors alike have long since become accustomed to using the term “Sovereign-on-High” for God! To continue to debate the issue can only perpetuate obscurity and not allow any meaningful conclusion. If, on the contrary, one can consider how the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” brings the two civilizations of China and the West into communication and mutual contact on such a fundamental point as proving the existence of God, then it still holds much future promise. Chinese-language Christian theology should follow Matteo Ricci precisely.8 Here, the proof that the “Sovereign-on-High” and the “Lord of Heaven” are the same is not merely a notion borrowed by Ricci as a strategy for localization, but rather represents a true innovation for the solution of a theological dilemma; since it incorporates and links Christian theology to Chinese-language theology it truly possesses the significance of clarification. Naturally, whether the logical result of this proof is true or not is another matter entirely. In the history of theological developments there have been many instances of attempts to prove the existence of God which have aroused great debate and criticism, so the continual debate that was provoked by the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” should be understood as another case in point. In 1604 Ricci sent the following statement in a letter to the Superior General of the Jesuits: I believe that in this book (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), it is best not to attack the things that they say, but rather to make them accord completely with the idea of God, and in this way it would not be necessary to explain the creation in total accordance with the notions of the Chinese, but to make the creation accord with our ideas.9

8 Li Tiangang 李天纲, “Huidao jingdian, tiejin lishi: tantao Hanyu shenxue de xin jinlu ‘回到 经典, 贴近历史’: 探寻汉语神学的新进路 [‘Return to the Classics, Stay Close to History’: Searching for a New Pathway in Chinese-Language Theology],” Shenzhou jiaoliu 神州 交流 [Chinese Cross Currents] 6, no. 1 (2009): 111–130; Sun, “Li Madou yu Hanyu shenxue;” see Daofeng: jidujiao wenhua pinglun 33 (2010), a special issue on Sun Shangyang and Fan Fengjuan’s 潘凤娟 project of “Chinese-Language Theology: Continuing Ricci’s Teachings” (汉语神学：接着利玛窦讲). 9 Li Madou, Li Madou shuxin ji 利玛窦书信集 [Matteo Ricci’s Collected Writings and Letters Part )], trans. Luo Yu (Taibei: Guangqi chubanshe and Furen daxue, 1986), 1:17.

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Revealed beneath Ricci’s discourse was not only respect for Confucius and reverence for Confucianism, but also a great ambition to unite with and benefit Confucianism, as well as to supplement and surpass it, even to the point of providing an entirely new interpretation of the Confucian classics. This is precisely where the fundamental distinction between the two sides in the debate over the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” resided. The missionaries could feel the forceful contradiction between their theology and Confucianism, but Ricci continued to try to use the explanatory traditions of Chinese thought to reorganize and integrate Confucian learning and Christianity by showing that the “Sovereign-on-High” of the ancient classics was none other than the highest deity of Catholicism. This missionary line of reasoning for the purpose of proving the existence of God turned out to correspond well with the process of accepting the proof on the part of the literati. For instance, take what Feng Yingjing 冯应京, the author of one of the prefaces to Ricci’s book, wrote to explain “the true meaning of the Lord of Heaven,” when he stated: What does the “Lord of Heaven” refer to? The Sovereign-on-High. What is said is true and not vacuous. Our nation’s “Six Classics” and “Four Books,” all of the sages and worthies, speak of “revering the Sovereign-on-High,” “attending to the Sovereign-on-High,” “endeavoring for the Sovereign-onHigh,” and “patterning things according to the Sovereign-on-High,” so who will take this as vacuous?10 That Confucian converts to Christianity accepted this proof was due to the literati’s psychology, tradition of reverence for the ancients and trust in antiquity, and was furthermore related to the fact that the Confucian system itself possessed great explanatory capacity and flexibility. The “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” aroused various discussions on cosmological theories at the time, which were carried out under such labels as the “Confucian Study on Endeavoring for Heaven” (儒家事天之学), “Christian Cosmology (Theology)” (基督教的天学 [神学]), and the “Empirical Study of Astronomy and Calendrics” (天文历算之实学), ultimately providing the basis for the notion that, “to accord with Heaven is to accord with the Divine.” In this case, the term “Heaven” (天) referred to the “Supreme Sovereign” (帝), in the sense of worshiping “Heaven” and the related Confucian notions of endeavoring for Heaven (事天), venerating Heaven (敬天), and revering Heaven (畏天), while the term 10

Feng Yingjing 冯应京, “Tianzhu shiyi xu《天主实义》序 [Introduction to The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven],” in Li Madou, Li Madou zhongwen zhuyi ji

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“divine” (神) referred to the worship of the highest deity of Catholicism and the medieval Western church’s philosophy of scholasticism. From this day forth, all those who do not abide by Matteo Ricci’s orders, will hence not be allowed to stay in China, but must be expelled to return to their own place. In China, “Heaven” is the “Sovereign-on-High,” which all people great and common address by the same term, with no other manner of speaking. In the West, the “Lord of Heaven” is called “Deus,” which is from the language of the realm of Italy, while other realms have different sayings. In Western lands, the lord of heaven and earth and the myriad creatures has been addressed by the two characters for “Deus” (斗斯) for a very long time. From this day forth, it will not be allowed to use the character for “Heaven,” nor will it be allowed to use the word “Sovereign-on-High” for this, but shall only be called the lord of the heavens and earth and myriad creatures. Having read the edict (Clement XI’s Papal Bull condemning the Chinese rites), it only shows that the Westerners are petty people, how can they speak with the reason of China? As for Westerners, there is not one among them who has studied the Chinese writings in full. In their speaking and discussion, there is much that is laughable. From the edict that has come from the minister, their religion must be no different from that of a Buddhist monk or Daoist priest, or any other unorthodox trivial religion. No talk could be more preposterous than this. From now on, there will be no need for Westerners to practice their religion in China. It shall be prohibited, to avoid further trouble.11 The above passage represents the Kangxi 康熙 Emperor’s official imperial edict written in response to “Matteo Ricci’s Orders” and the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” around the time of the eruption of the Chinese Rites Controversy. It amply demonstrates that without the proof of the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” and without being allowed to use the terms “Heaven” and “Sovereignon-High,” Chinese Christianity would no longer be able to exist. The worship of the Sovereign of Heaven was originally the fundamental belief of early man in China, which had never ceased nor saw its influence diminished in the 11

Kangxi yu Luoma shijie guanxi shu 康熙与罗马使节关系文书 [Documents on Diplo matic Relations of Kangxi and Rome], in Jindai Zhongguo shiliao congkan xubian [Early Modern Chinese History Sources Second Collection], ed. Shen Yunlong (Taibei: Wenhai, 1974), 7:11, 70–71, 75, 89.

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subsequent thousands of years of Chinese civilization’s development. In reality, this was the most important point upon which the missionaries and the Confucian Christians both felt that Catholicism could enrich Confucianism. Precisely because the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” proved that the Lord of Heaven of the West and the Sovereign-on-High of the East was one and the same concept, it allowed the Confucian Christians to carefully avoid a selfdefeating “double-headed snake-type” conflict and contradiction through a process of psychological correlation, thus allowing the literati to come to Jesus through Confucianism and ultimately attain the ideal fusion of Confucianism and Christianity for the sake of integrating self and society.12 Ricci’s explanation for the use of such terms of reverence as “Heaven and Earth,” “Heaven,” “Great Father and Mother” and “Great Sovereign” made them out to be a type of substitution, a kind of grammatical borrowing, so that the invention and wide diffusion of the term “Great Father and Mother” could be thought of to a significant extent as a product of a strategy for localization. At the same time, since it internally concealed a cosmological argument for the existence of God, as a categorical proof it was also consistent with Thomas Aquinas’s five ways of proving God’s existence.13 However, the Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven cannot actually be called just a grammatical substitution or borrowing and is not just a proof aimed at localization, but rather as a type of categorical proof should be considered a “logical argument according to patristic reasoning” belonging to the explanatory system of Christianity. The most important evidence for this is the fact that “Supreme Reason” and the “Unmoved Mover” (Latin: primum movens), the Sovereign-on-High of the Book of Odes《诗经》and the Book of Documents《尚书》, and the supreme deity of the Catholic religion are not really just a single matter. Much as the contribution of the early Church Fathers of Christianity lie in their borrowing of ancient Greek philosophy and its logical reasoning to establish the explanatory tradition of Catholicism, thereby significantly advancing the development of theology, so too did Ricci’s method produce far reaching influence. The only difference is that Ricci was in China, so the explanatory tradition he chose as his object was naturally that of Confucianism. The history of thousands of years of Confucian exegesis of classical texts had produced a type of tension between the universal value of the classics 12

13

The internal torment of the first generation of Catholic converts struggling through the vortex of interpreting Confucianism and Christianity during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties is signified by Huang Yinong via the thought-provoking figure of the “doubleheaded snake;” see Huang, Liang tou she: Ming mo Qing chu de di yi dai Tianzhujiao tu. Ji Jianxun 纪建勋, “Ming mo Tianzhujiao DEUS zhi ‘dafumu’ shuofa kaoquan 明末天 主教DEUS之[大父母]说法考诠 [Da fu mu (the Parents): Another Name for God in China],” Daofeng: Jidujiao wenhua pinglun 017): 108–09.

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and the temporal and spatial specificity of the position of the exegete. This tension between “universality” and “particularity” was also expressed in the tension inherent in the encounter between the exegete and the classical text.14 Zhu Xi 朱熹 and Wang Yangming’s 王阳明 explications of the Mencius were each completely permeated by their own individual spirit and experience, and so each created new understandings.15 Look back at the discursive context of the Ming and Qing dynasties to reconsider Ricci’s method: The Chinese Scholar says: Mankind is fond of antiquity and should cherish ancient relics and ancient texts, so isn’t that why this gentleman holds to the ancient notion of Reason and teaches to lead men to return to the ancient way? And yet there are still some things which are not yet well known: the ancient texts all hold reverence for Heaven, which is why Zhu Xi explained the Divine Sovereign (帝) as Heaven, and explained Heaven as nothing other than the Principle of Reason (理); Cheng Yi 程颐 was even more precise, when he said that the forms of things are called Heaven, while the ultimate ruler is called the Divine Sovereign, and the disposition of things is called the male principle of the heavens (乾). That is why it is said that we attend to and revere Heaven and Earth. How could this not be acknowledged?16 Zhu Xi explained the Divine Sovereign as Heaven and interpreted Heaven as nothing less than the Principle of Reason; Cheng Yi held that the form of things are called Heaven and that the highest ruler is called the Supreme Sovereign; Ricci explained the Supreme Sovereign as the Lord of Heaven to promote his 14

15 16

Huang Junjie 黄俊杰, “Lun dongya rujia jingdian quanshi chuantong zhong de liang zhong zhangli 论东亚儒家经典诠释传统中的两种张力 [On Two Forces in the Tradition of East Asian Confucian Interpretation],” Taida lishi xuebao 台大历史学报 [National Taiwan University History Scholarly Bulletin] 28 (2001): 2–4; for more detailed discussion, see Huang Junjie, Zhongguo jingdian quanshi chuantong (yi): tonglun pian 中国经典诠释传统(一)：通论篇 [The Tradition of Interpreting the Chinese Classics (One): Overarching Theories] (Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue, 2008); Li Minghui, 李明辉 and Huang Junjie 黄俊杰, eds., Rujia jingdian quanshi fangfa 儒家经典诠释 方法 [The Method of Interpreting the Confucian Classics] (Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue, 2008); Tang Yijie 汤一介, Fanben kaixin: Tang Yijie zixuan ji 返本开新 – 汤一 介自选集 [Returning to Roots and Beginning Anew: Tang Yijie’s Selection of Essays] (Beijing: Shoudu shifan daxue, 2008); Liu Yunhua 刘耘华, Quanshi xue yu xianqin rujia zhi yiyi shengcheng: Lunyu, Mengzi, Xunzi dui gudai chuantong de jieshi 诠释学与先秦 儒家之意义生成 – 、、对古代传统的解释 [Exegesis and the Development of Meaning in Pre-Qin Confucianism: The Interpretation of Ancient Tradition in the Analects, the Mencius and the Xunzi] (Shanghai: Shanghai yiwen, 2002). Huang, “Lun dongya rujia jingdian quanshi,” 4–5. Tianzhu shiyi, 21–22.

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“equivalence of the Lord of Heaven and the Sovereign-on-High,” and so in this passage he has the Chinese Scholar cleverly indicate that Ricci’s proof for the existence of God is equivalent to the Confucian explanatory standpoint! Ricci’s selectively critical attitude towards the late-imperial, Song and Ming Neo-Confucian “Study of the Principle of Reason” (理学) and its interpretation of the classics was clearly more of a case of “making the classics into a commentary on my view” rather than one of “offering my view as a commentary on the classics.” Yet is not the fundamental character of Ricci’s point precisely the same as that utilized by the Neo-Confucian scholars in their classical commentaries to invent their own new explanatory approach, that is, of reinterpreting such notions as the “Principle of Reason, the Ultimate Polarity (太极), the Sovereign-on-High, and Heaven’s Mandate (天命)” as the underlying causes of all forms? The only main point of distinction is that Ricci additionally translated “Supreme Sovereign” and “Heaven” as the highest deity of Catholicism, making the two explanations into one with a single gesture. The philosophers of Neo-Confucianism employed their interpretation of the classics to envision the “Sovereign-on-High” as a formless force under such labels as the Way of Heaven, the Mandate of Heaven, and the Great Principle of Reason, which was not necessarily the real meaning of the original concept; in the same vein, the real main concern of the missionaries was to reshape the “Sovereign-on-High” of the Chinese classical texts into a single great personalized and authoritative creator of all things between Heaven and Earth, the omnipresent deity, which was also obviously not the original meaning contained in the classics. Ricci’s overweening ambition towards the Neo-Confucian “Principle of Reason” could never have been completely satisfied by merely refuting it. The real aim of Ricci, who gave himself the Chinese courtesy name of “Western Eminence” (西泰) and was called, in the style of ancient Chinese philosophers, “Master Li” (利子) at the time, was to entirely reinterpret the Confucian classics in order to unite Confucianism and Christian theology in the role of the “Great Western Confucian.” His ambition was to “bring the unfinished learning of the ages to completion for the sake of past sages” and to “find God in China for Catholicism!” 2

A Patristic Theologian: Is Heaven the Creator of Life or the Transformer of Life?

Just as it’s best to understand Ricci’s “Doctrine of Heaven” as a proof for the existence of God offered within the explanatory contexts of Christian theol ogy and Confucian classical learning, so too does Nicolas Standaert go so far

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as to place the writings of Confucian Christian converts who created novel explanations out of a combination of Chinese classical learning and Christian theology, such as Yan Mo’s 严谟 Investigations into the Concepts of the Lord and Heaven《天地考》, into the category of patristics, even labelling that author a patristic theologian or at least a student of theology.17 In light of the foregoing analysis, however, would not Ricci himself be qualified for consideration as the first “patristic theologian” of the late Ming? Since the basis of Greek logical philosophy and the Jewish concept of God are not fundamentally related, the merger of those two traditions of thought in the formation of the new view of God during the European Middle Ages could not dispense with the definitive explanations of the early Church Fathers; so too are the Catholic Lord of Heaven and the Sovereign-on-High of the Book of Odes and the Book of Documents not fundamentally related. Even now, at the mention of the phrase Sovereign-on-High in Chinese, one is not easily reminded of the figure from the pre-Qin dynasty classical texts, but rather of the Christian God. This is also a consequence of Ricci’s stance of “theological-classical” interpretation, so to consider him a patristic theologian would not be excessive. As for Ricci “holding to the ancient notion of reason” and “teaching to lead men to return to the ancient way,” he clearly and consciously recognized that, from the time of the Shang and Zhou dynasties on, the worship of the Sovereign of Heaven implied a notion of a highest divine supreme ruler, and therefore he developed the “theory of the equivalence of the Lord of Heaven and the Sovereign-on-High” under a strict distinction between early and later Confucianism and between the classical texts themselves and their commentaries. The missionaries and literati that accepted the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” also mostly took the Book of Odes and the Book of Documents as their authority, besides discussing other classics of the Confucian canon. With such notions as “revering the Sovereign-on-High,” “attending to the Sovereignon-High,” “endeavoring for the Sovereign-on-High,” and “patterning things according to the Sovereign-on-High,” the ancient classics contained all the implications that the “Divine Sovereign” referred to the highest deity, and were therefore considered the most significant evidence for the “theory of the equivalence of the Lord of Heaven and the Sovereign-on-High.”18 For investigating the ancient concepts of “Divine Sovereign” and “Heaven,” besides the search for evidence from antiquity, without a doubt the Book of Odes and Book of Documents were the most important sources. Therefore, the proposals of 17

Zhong Mingdan 钟鸣旦 [Nicolas Standaert], Keqin de tianzhu 可亲的天主 [The Fasci nating God], trans. He Lixia (Taibei: Guangqi, 1998). eng, “Tianzhu shiyi xu,” 97.

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Ricci and the Confucian Christian converts satisfied considerations of scholarly significance and really cannot be discussed with reference to the later “indexical school” or the excessive interpretations criticized by Fray Antonio a Santa Maria Caballero and others.19 In Ricci’s explanation, “the transformer of life and all things in Heaven and Earth, was the Great Lord, the Father, who in time was also master of providing sustenance, and the highest king of all.”20 It is worth noting that in addition to employing the phrase “transformation of life” (化生) and not “creation of life” (造生) to describe the origin of all things in heaven and earth, one can also sense that Ricci’s explanation implicitly suggested the progress of Reason. However, if this Reason was meant to fit under the theory of equivalence between the Sovereign-on-High and the Lord of Heaven, then, under the meaning of the language used, the Divine Sovereign and Heaven are obviously not the same thing! Furthermore, from the perspective of the late Ming church, this use of the substance of Heaven became a type of metaphor and substitute for the highest deity of Catholicism, so that the Supreme Sovereign becomes the God of Catholicism. For the ancients and especially for the Song dynasty Neo-Confucians, all things in Heaven and Earth were considered nothing but “vaporous matter” (气), which the yang (阳) force clarified into Heaven and the yin (阴) force coagulated into Earth, while humanity was a distillation of qi. After great transformations and circulations, Heaven, Earth and humanity permeated each other, resonated with and transformed each other, to form the world of Heaven and Earth. However, Catholicism holds that humanity and the world are the creation of the Lord of Heaven, and therefore actuality denies the Chinese view of the growth and development of the universe as based on a “transformation of life.” Ricci therefore contradicted the Neo-Confucian theory of Reason that was current at his time, appealing instead to an earlier mode of Confucian thought and to the ancient classics, in order to propose his “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” as proof for the existence of the highest deity of Catholicism. What Ricci proposed was the “equivalence of the Lord of Heaven and the Sovereign-on-High,” not the “equivalence of the Lord of Heaven and Heaven.” 19

20

Zeng Qingbao, “Ming mo tianzhujiao de yiming,” 124; Zeng thinks that it is wrong to take Longobardo’s understanding of Chinese religion as a refutation of Ricci. While “Opposing Longobardo” became the mainstream view of this debate on the translation of God’s name, scholarship should dispose with Leibniz’s erroneous influence and once again study Longobardo’s Traité sur quelques points de la religiondes Chinois to distinguish Longobardo’s position and viewpoint from that of Fray Antonio Caballero de Santa Maria. Li, Tianzhu shiyi,

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On this point, Ricci and his successors, such as Diego de Pantoja, had already clearly determined that to treat Heaven or Heaven and Earth as the Creator would largely represent a type of “metaphor” or a “substitution” for evidentiary purposes.21 Yet just as in the case of translating the term Deus as “Great Father and Mother,” though emphasizing the Confucian notion of how all things came from birth and transformation, an important distinction still rested in the background assumption that Catholicism’s Lord of Heaven had created all things from nothingness, posing a great dissimilarity between the Confucian and Christian notions of the “Great Father and Mother.” According to the research of Fu Peirong, one of the preconditions for clarifying the religious conception that existed prior to the Zhou dynasty is to determine the actual origins and development of the two notions of “Heaven” and the “Supreme Sovereign.” Concerning the different explanations that have been offered for the conceptual basis of these notions during the “transition from the Shang to Zhou dynasties,” Fu points out that none of the various theories on the relationship of the Supreme Sovereign and Heaven have ever gone beyond guesswork nor reached the level of actual sustainable proof, stating that, “no matter how plausible these conjectures may be, they would never be sustainable beyond the proof provided by an oracle bone excavated from the ground.”22 The fact that Ricci’s various explanations of the two concepts of the “Supreme Sovereign” and “Heaven” imply some progress on the issue is obviously just the claim of one school of thought. However, from another angle, Ricci’s interpretive stance also begs attention to a certain problem: the ancients believed in a high deity that possessed a human personality and intentionality, and its name was the Supreme Sovereign or Sovereign-on-High. While the “Supreme Sovereign” and “Heaven” were not equivalent in the period before the Zhou dynasty, from the period of the Zhou’s ascendance to its decline, Heaven gradually supplanted the Supreme Sovereign and the concept of Heaven subsequently went through all kinds of transformations over the long passage of time. Yet no matter how much the personalization or rationalization of the concept of Heaven implies that it developed through time, the idea of “Heaven’s transformation of life” was something that was always maintained through each development. Conversely, even if the origins of the concepts of the Supreme Sovereign and Heaven await further verification based on “some oracle bone excavated from the ground,” there will always be doubt about the 21 22

Ji, “Ming mo Tianzhujiao DEUS zhi ‘Dafumu’ shuofa kaoquan,” 124. Fu Peirong 傅佩荣 Rudao tianlun fawei [The Profound Emergence of the Confucian Theory of Heaven] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010), 1.

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claim of “Heaven as creator of life.” Considering things from this angle, it is very significant to consider the fact that Ricci ultimately grasped onto the Supreme Sovereign’s characteristic of being the highest deity to propose his “theory of the equivalence of the Lord of Heaven and the Sovereign-on-High,” and raise the notion that the Sovereign-on-High was both the creator of Heaven and Earth and the transformer of life and all things. The problem of “transformation” or “creation,” of the “Heaven that transforms life” versus the “Heaven that creates life” versus the “Divine Sovereign that creates life,” is precisely the issue which connects Ricci’s “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” and the continuing dispute between Fu Peirong and Xiang Tuijie and makes them comparable and worthy of deep consideration, though they may appear unrelated on the surface.23 “Performing the rites and sacrifices at the communal altar, in order to endeavor for Heaven,” indeed meant that to worship Heaven was to venerate the “Sovereign-on-High.” However, no matter what, the notion of Heaven as creator could never be considered the mainstream of the traditional Chinese cosmology. Beginning with the Zhou dynasty’s assignment of virtue to Heaven, Confucius and Mencius represented a further step towards attributing the basis of ethical moral reason to Heaven. While ritual activities 23

Regarding ancient references to a supreme transcendent realm via the representative concept of “Heaven,” Fu Peirong thinks that the understandings of most commentators have been categorizable according to five main meanings: that of Heaven as nature, as supreme ruler, as fate, as matter, and as the Principle of Reason. Yet he also points out that these approaches have not really taken the origin and development of the concept of “Heaven” into account and that they neglect the relationship between the concept’s development and the influence of the various philosophical theories of the time. In Rudao tianlun fawei, Fu seeks a different approach and organizes the pre-Qin concept of “Heaven” via its development through five dispositions, from Heaven as supreme ruler to creator of life, conveyor of all movement, instructor, and judge. Yet as Xiang Tuijie sharply points out, “at least a portion of these terms come from Western philosophy” and “their meanings come from Christianity.” The notion of Heaven as “the creator of life” stands out in particular, because the ancient texts only use the phrase “birth” and so to add a sense of “creating” easily gives rise to misunderstanding, though a different approximation with some persuasive force could be “that which gives birth.” Xiang’s comments provoked a lengthy written response on Fu’s part, especially addressing the concept of “the creator of life;” see Xiang Tuijie 项退结, “Rudao tianlun fawei shu ping《儒道天论发微》书评 [Book Review of The Profound Emergence of the Confucian Theory of Heaven],” Zhexue yu wenhua 哲学与文化 (Philosophy and Culture) 14, no. 2 (1987): 143–144; and Fu Peirong, “Fulu yi: Wei Rudao tianlun fawei chengqing jidian yiyi 附录一: 为《儒道天论发微》 澄清几点疑义 Appendix 1: Clarifying Several Doubts About The Profound Emergence of the Confucian Theory of Heaven],” Rujia zhexue fulu yi [New Theory of Confucian Philosophy] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010), 212–225.

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were continuously sustained throughout later history, it must be said that there were great changes in the meaning of the concept of “Heaven.” From the philosophy of Wang Chong 王充 of the Eastern Han dynasty, through the Confucian “Teaching of Names” (名教) and the double-layered purification of the concept of Nature (自然) during the Wei and Jin dynasties, to the rise of the “Study of the Principle of Reason” (理学) in the Song dynasty, the personification and assignment of intention to “Heaven” had already become very diluted and weakened. Ricci’s “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” proposed “Heaven as transformer of life” and not “Heaven as creator of life,” perhaps ultimately because the latter clearly expressed the meaning of creation ex nihilo, a point to which the Chinese sages did not add significance or, at best, accepted but did not comment upon; rather, even more importantly Ricci also proposed that “God bestowed birth on all entities, both things and laws, all things without peer, all laws without emptiness” and that “in the beginning, the Lord of Heaven created heaven and earth, transforming life to give birth to humans and all things.”24 Here, he employed the term “to create” for the production of Heaven and Earth, but utilized the phrase “to transform life” for the production of humankind and other things. Again, considering the theory of equivalence between the Sovereign-on-High and the Lord of Heaven, this seems to imply that after God created Heaven and Earth, thereby gaining eternal repose after a single great effort, the remaining work was carried out through Heaven and Earth’s transformation of life to give rise to humanity and other things, thus letting the “Heaven of Nature” and the “Heaven of the Principle of Reason” take over. The notion that God could create Heaven and Earth and that Heaven and Earth could then transform life to give birth to humanity and all things is a line of thinking that can very handily avoid the contradictions between the ancient Chinese notions of the Supreme Sovereign, Heaven, and the characteristics of the Christian God, being already very close to the viewpoint of natural theology. The literatus Wang Ruchun 汪汝淳 also said: “Mister Ricci is sympathetic to us, hence he wrote The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven. Because the Sovereign-on-High bestowed his beneficence and engendered eternity, so that with the movement of time all things were born, there was nothing that was not instructed by the way of Heaven, thus besides bestowing the ethical social bonds and laws of things, how else could there be any embellishment? This is

24

Li, Tianzhu shiyi

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what we Confucians hold as the most central and proper principle of reason, with which we will accord, even in the absence of any guarantee.”25 Where else can the source of such clear waters be found, but in a wellspring? The “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” involves ruminating on the question of whether the fundamental concepts of the two civilizations of China and the West are branches of the same substance or distinct forms of the same essence. For the establishment of a true “Three Self Church” (三自教会) one should never take leave of the mutual contact of Christian theology and Confucian classical learning and never neglect the development of Chinese-language Christian theology. 3

Conclusion

Does the “Sovereign-on-High” really possess all the attributes of the Lord of Heaven?26 Of course, this would not be possible. The proofs that Ricci offered for the existence of the Lord of Heaven made on the basis of his claims for the “Great Father and Mother” and the “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” are two typical examples. The notion of the “Great Father and Mother” was an argument for the existence of a supreme deity, yet while it contained a proof based on cosmological theory, the term “birth” expressed the relationship between parents and offspring; similarly, his “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” proposed that God created Heaven and Earth and transformed life to give birth to humankind and all creatures, yet within this parameter the Supreme Sovereign and Heaven were fundamentally different, for Heaven is still that which transforms life, while the Divine Sovereign has been interpreted as the creator from Catholicism. Its fundamental character was to sustain the explanatory 25 26

Wang Ruchun 汪汝淳, “Chongke Tianzhu shiyi ba 重刻《天主实义》跋 [Post-Script to a Reprint of The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven],” in Li Madou, Li Madou zhongwen zhuyi ji, 101. Shen Dingping 沈定平, Ming Qing zhi ji Zhong xi wenhua jiaoliu shi – Ming Ji: Qutong yu bianyi 明清之际中西文化交流史 – 明季：趋同与辨异 [History of Chinese and Western Cultural Interaction During the Ming-Qing Transition – Ming Ji: Convergence and Divergence] (Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2012), 73–102; Liu Yunhua, “Li Andang Tian ru yin dui sishu de suoyin shi lijie 利安当《天儒印》对《四书》的索隐式 理解 [The Figurative Comprehension of Confucian Classics by Caballero’s Correspondence between Catholicism and Confucianism],” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 世界宗教研究 [Studies in World Religions] 1 (March 2006): 85–89; “Zhongguo wenhua yujing zhong de ‘tian,’ ‘shangdi’ yu ‘tianzhu’ 中国文化语境中的‘天,’ ‘上帝’与‘天主’ [Tian, Shangdi and Tianzhu in Chinese Cultural Context],” Dongfang congcan 东方丛刊 [A Multidimen sional Study of Orientalism] 4 (1995): 97–103.

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tradition from ancient philosophy that was inaugurated by Augustine and Aquinas and to employ natural theology within an historical framework to construct a theory of God for the late Ming. Matteo Ricci’s efforts inspired a fashion for the veneration of Heaven in the late Ming era. From the late Ming on, the meaning of “Heaven” again began to tend towards personification and an assumption of intentionality. By the commencement of the Qing dynasty, this tendency had proliferated and spread, so that the approaches to the “Veneration of Heaven” in China had become quite distinct from that of carried out under the Song and Ming Neo-Confucian “Study of the Principle of Reason.” Moreover, scholarly research on these currents has not been given enough attention. Although various examples each had their own distinct manifestation, in actual substance they implicitly possessed a point of agreement: they all consciously reinterpreted the “Heaven” of the pre-Qin classics as possessing personality and intention, which represented a development of faith based on the idea that Heaven’s capacity to rule was a product of its intention; the performers of the “Rites for Venerating Heaven,” however, were no longer just the dynastic emperor, but were instead the literati and gentry of many different backgrounds. In every place that it spread and become popular, this belief was quickly practiced concretely via every imaginable “heteronymous” moral coloring to which it could correspond.27 The question of autonomy and heteronomy in the moral realization of Confucianism, the questions of awe and adoration in the ancient worship of the Divine Sovereign and Heaven, and the many problems provoked by the “Controversy of the Rites” all directly point to this implication, which is precisely that Chinese-language Christian theology should embrace Ricci’s 27

See the high quality studies by Liu Yunhua, “Qing chu Ningbo wenren de xixue guan: yi Huang Zongxi wei zhongxin lai kaocha 清初宁波文人的西学观: 以黄宗羲为中心来 考察 [Ningbo Literati Views of Western Learning in the Early Qing: An Investigation Based on Huang Zongxi],” Shilin 史林 [Historical Review] 3 (2009): 54–61; “Yi “tian” li yi: Xu Sanli de jingtian sixiang zai tan” 依“天”立义: 许三礼的敬天思想再探 [Relying on “Heaven” to Establish Righteousness: A Re-Investigation of Xu Sanli’s Philosophy of Revering Heaven],” Hanyu Jidujiao xueshu lunping 汉语基督教学术论评 [Chinese-Language Christian Studies Review]  8 (2009): 113–145; “Qing chu “Cheng shan zhi xue” yu xixue: yi Xie Wenjian wei zhongxin” 清初“程山之学”与西学: 以谢文洊为中心 [“Mt. Cheng Studies” and Western Learning in the Early Qing: Focus on Xie Wenjian],” Shi lin 1 (2011): 74–85; “Qing dai qianzhong qi dongwu wenren yu xixue (shang) 清代前中期东吴文人 与西学 [Literati of the Eastern Wu Region and Western Learning in the Early–Middle Qing Dynasty (Part One)],” Jidujiao wenhua xuekan 基督教文化学刊 [Journal for the Study of Christian Culture] 29 (2013): 127–159; and “Qing dai qianzhong qi dongwu wenren yu xixue (xia) 清代前中期东吴文人与西学 (下) [Literati of the Eastern Wu Region and Western Learning in the Early Qing Dynasty (Part Two)],” Jidujiao wenhua xuekan 30 (2013): 94–115.

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claims. Ricci’s method can still benefit the “search for similarity in difference” and the “search for difference in similarity” of the two foundational concepts of the Sovereign-on-High of China and the Lord of Heaven of the West, these two fundamental concepts whose mutual contact reveal the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western culture, behind which is the great question of the development of a structure of faith within the modernization of China. The “Doctrine of the Sovereign of Heaven” that Ricci offered as proof for the existence of the Lord of Heaven was dependent upon the two great explanatory traditions of Western theology and the Chinese study of the classics and its argument could not avoid taking approaches of both explanation and appropriation towards Confucianism. Ricci’s proof took Aquinas’s natural theology as its framework, as well as the logic and ontological proof generally acknowledged by Augustine, in order to undertake a reciprocal interpretation of Mencius’s notion of the innate goodness of human knowledge and ability. This also brought about certain problems of its own. Take for instance, the following: Our ancients were Confucians, so they judiciously discerned that the fundamental character of Heaven and Earth and the myriad things is good, that they all possess the great principle of reason, and cannot be altered, that although things can be divided into large and small, they are all one entity in essence, thus they said that the Lord of Heaven was the Sovereign-on-High, who was both immanent in each thing, and formed a unity with all things. Therefore we urge people not to let evil mar their own original goodness; not to go against righteousness and violate their own original principle of reason; not to harm the myriad things and thereby disgrace God inside of their heart.28 The “theory of the equivalence of the Lord of Heaven and the Sovereign-onHigh” that the literati accepted, which was “the Reason of Heaven” or “the God internal to the heart,” was in reality Mencius’s concept of the innate goodness of human knowledge and capacity, and this connected to the first proof for the existence of the Lord of Heaven that Ricci proposed on the basis of “the theory of the capacity for goodness.” This proof was also heavily colored by the thought of Augustine, but quite inconsistent of the views of most commentators who have held that Ricci’s proof for the existence of God was based on the theological views of Aquinas. In the tradition of Christianity from Augustine on, many 28

Li, Tianzhu shiyi

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theologians forcefully proved the existence of God through the goodness of the human heart. There have also been commentators who point out that the innate goodness of humanity’s knowledge and capacity is the shared starting point of both Christian and Confucian thought, that it is the innate goodness of humanity’s knowledge and ability that should be explored in order to open a new realm of deeper dialogue between Christianity and Confucianism.29 Due to the limitations of space, however, the further investigation of such a weighty topic as the progress and significance of Ricci’s proof for the existence of God based on the “theory on innate capacity” will have to be left to another study. Bibliography Fu Peirong 傅佩荣. Rudao tianlun fawei 儒道天论发微 [The Emergence of the Confucian Theory of Heaven]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010. Fu Peirong 傅佩荣. Rujia zhexue fulu yi 儒家哲学新论 [New Theory of Confucian Philosophy]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010. Huang Junjie 黄俊杰. “Lun dongya rujia jingdian quanshi chuantong zhong de liang zhong zhangli 论东亚儒家经典诠释传统中的两种张力 [On Two Forces in the Tradition of East Asian Confucian Interpretation].” Taida lishi xuebao 台大历史学报 [National Taiwan University History Scholarly Bulletin] 28 (2001): 1–22. Huang Junjie 黄俊杰. Zhongguo jingdian quanshi chuantong (yi): tonglun pian 中国经 典诠释传统(一): 通论篇 [The Tradition of Interpreting the Chinese Classics (One): Overarching Theories]. Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue, 2008. Huang Yinong 黄一农. Liang tou she: Ming mo Qing chu de di yi dai Tianzhujiao tu 两头 蛇: 明末清初的第一代天主教徒 [The Two Headed Snake: The First Generation of Catholic Converts in the Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2006. Ji Jianxun 纪建勋. “Ming mo Tianzhujiao Deus zhi ‘Dafumu’ shuofa kaoquan 明末天 主教DEUS 之[大父母]说法考诠 [Da fu mu (The Parents): Another Name for God in China].” Daofeng: Jidujiao wenhua pinglun 道风: 基督教文化评论 [Logos and Pneuma: Chinese Journal of Theology] 37 (July 2017): 103–140. Kangxi yu Luoma shijie guanxi shu 康熙与罗马使节关系文书 [Documents on Diplomatic Relations of Kangxi and Rome]. Vol. 69/70 of Part 7 of Jindai Zhongguo shiliao

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Song Yŏngpae 宋荣培, “Li Madou de Tianzhu shiyi yu ruxue de rongge he kunjing 利玛窦的《天主实义》与儒学的融合和困境 [The Fusion of Matteo Ricci’s The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven with Confucianism and its Dilemmas],” Shijie zongjiao yan 1 (1999): 55.

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congkan xubian 近代中国史料丛刊续编 [Early Modern Chinese History Sources Supplementary Collection], edited by Shen Yunlong 沈云龙. Taibei: Wenhai, 1974. Li Madou 利玛窦 [Matteo Ricci]. Li Madou shuxin ji 利玛窦书信集 [Collected Letters of Matteo Ricci]. Translated by Luo Yu 罗渔. Vol. 1. Taibei: Guangqi chubanshe and Fudan daxue, 1986. Li Madou 利玛窦. Li Madou Zhongguo chuanjiao shi 利玛窦中国传教史 [History of Matteo Ricci’s Mission to China]. Translated by Liu Junyu 刘俊余 and Wang Yuchuan 王玉川. Vol. 1. Taibei: Guangming Press and Furen University Co-Publication, 1986. Li Madou 利玛窦. Li Madou zhongwen zhuyi ji 利玛窦中文著译集 [Collected Works of Matteo Ricci in Chinese Translation]. Edited by Zhu Weizheng 朱维铮. Shanghai: Fudan daxue, 2001. Li Minghui, 李明辉 and Huang Junjie 黄俊杰, eds. Rujia jingdian quanshi fangfa 儒家 经典诠释方法 [The Method of Interpreting the Confucian Classics]. Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue, 2008. Li Tiangang 李天纲. “‘Huidao jingdian, tiejin lishi’: tantao Hanyu shenxue de xin jinlu ‘回到经典，贴近历史’: 探寻汉语神学的新进路 [‘Return to the Classics, Stay Close to History’: Searching for a New Pathway in Chinese-Language Theology].” Shenzhou jiaoliu 神州交流 [Chinese Cross Currents] 6, no. 1 (2009): 111–130. Liu Yunhua 刘耘华. “Li Andang Tian ru yin dui sishu de suoyin shi lijie 利安当《天 儒印》对《四书》的索隐式理解 [The Figurative Comprehension of Confucian Classics by Caballero’s Correspondence between Catholicism and Confucianism].” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 世界宗教研究 [Studies in World Religions] 1 (March 2006): 83–92. Liu Yunhua 刘耘华. “Qing dai qianzhong qi dongwu wenren yu xixue (shang) 清代前 中期东吴文人与西学 (上) [Literati of the Eastern Wu Region and Western Learning in the Early–Middle Qing Dynasty (Part One)].” Jidujiao wenhua xuekan 基督教文化 学刊 [Journal for the Study of Christian Culture] 29 (2013): 127–159. Liu Yunhua 刘耘华. “Qing dai qianzhong qi dongwu wenren yu xixue (xia) 清代前中 期东吴文人与西学 (下) [Literati of the Eastern Wu Region and Western Learning in the Early–Middle Qing Dynasty (Part Two)].” Jidujiao wenhua xuekan 30, (2013): 94–115. Liu Yunhua 刘耘华. “Qing chu “cheng shan zhi xue” yu xixue: yi Xie Wenjian wei zhongxin” 清初“程山之学”与西学: 以谢文洊为中心 [“Mt. Cheng Studies” and Western Learning in the Early Qing: Focus on Xie Wenjian].” Shi lin 史林 [Historical Review] 1 (2011): 74–85. Liu Yunhua 刘耘华. “Qing chu Ningbo wenren de xixue guan: yi Huang Zongxi wei zhongxin lai kaocha 清初宁波文人的西学观: 以黄宗羲为中心来考察 [Ningbo Literati Views of Western Learning in the Early Qing: An Investigation Based on Huang Zongxi].” Shilin 3

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Liu Yunhua 刘耘华. Quanshi xue yu xianqin rujia zhi yiyi shengcheng: Lunyu, Mengzi, Xunzi dui gudai chuantong de jieshi 诠释学与先秦儒家之意义生成 –《论语》、 《孟子》、 《荀子》对古代传统的解释 [Exegesis and the Development of Meaning in Pre-Qin Confucianism: The Interpretation of Ancient Tradition in the Analects, the Mencius and the Xunzi]. Shanghai: Shanghai yiwen, 2002. Liu Yunhua 刘耘华. “Zhongguo wenhua yujing zhong de ‘tian,’ ‘shangdi’ yu ‘tianzhu’ 中 国文化语境中的‘天,’‘上帝’与‘天主’ [Tian, Shangdi and Tianzhu in Chinese Cultural Context].” Dongfang congcan 东方丛刊 [A Multidimensional Study of Orientalism] 14, no. 4 (1995): 97–112. Liu Yunhua 刘耘华. “Yi ‘tian’ li yi: Xu Sanli de jingtian sixiang zai tan” 依‘天’立义: 许 三礼的敬天思想再探 [Relying on ‘Heaven’ to Establish Righteousness: A ReInvestigation of Xu Sanli’s Philosophy of Revering Heaven]. Hanyu Jidujiao xueshu lunping 汉语基督教学术论评 [Chinese-Language Christian Studies Review]  8 (2009): 113–145. Mei Qianli 梅谦立. “Zuichu xiwen fanyi de rujia jingdian 最初西文翻译的儒家经典 [The Earliest Western-Language Translations of the Confucian Classics].” Zhongshan daxue xuebao 中山大学学报 [Zhongshan University Scholarly Bulletin]  2 (2008): 131–142. Mei Qianli and Qi Feizhi 齐飞智. “Zhongguo zhexue jia Kongfuzi de shangdi lun《中国 哲学家孔夫子》的上帝论 [The Theory of the Sovereign-on-High in China’s Philosopher Confucius].” Guoji hanxue 国际汉学 [International Sinology] 22 (2012): 25–29. Shen Dingping 沈定平. Ming Qing zhi ji Zhong xi wenhua jiaoliu shi: Ming Ji: Qutong yu bianyi 明清之际中西文化交流史 – 明季: 趋同与辨异 [History of Chinese and Western Cultural Interaction During the Ming-Qing Transition – Ming Ji: Convergence and Divergence]. Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2012. Song Rongpei 宋荣培 [Song Yŏngpae]. “Li Madou de Tianzhu shiyi yu ruxue de rongge he kunjing 利玛窦的《天主实义》与儒学的融合和困境 [The Fusion of Matteo Ricci’s The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven with Confucianism and its Dilemmas].” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 1 (1999): 50–59. Sun Shangyang 孙尚扬. “Li Madou yu Hanyu shenxue 利玛窦与汉语神学 [Matteo Ricci and Chinese-Language Theology].” Zhongguo minzu bao 中国民族报 [China Ethnic News], May 11, 2010. Sun Shanyang and Fan Fengjuan 潘凤娟, eds. “Hanyu shenxue: jiezhe Li Maodou jiang 汉语神学: 接着利玛窦讲 [Special Issue on ‘Sino-Christian Theology after Matteo Ricci].’” Daofeng: Jidujiao wenhua pinglun 道风: 基督教文化评论 [Logos and Pneuma: Chinese Journal of Theology] 33 (2010). Tang Yijie 汤一介. Fanben kaixin: Tang Yijie zixuan ji 返本开新 – 汤一介自选集 [Returning to Roots and Beginning Anew: Tang Yijie’s Selection of Essays]. Beijing: Shoudu shifan daxue, 2

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Xiang Tuijie 项退结. “Rudao tianlun fawei shu ping《儒道天论发微》书评 [Book Review of The Profound Emergence of the Confucian Theory of Heaven].” Zhexue yu wenhua 哲学与文化 (Philosophy and Culture) 14, no. 2 (1987): 143–144. Zeng Qingbao 曾庆豹. “Ming mo Tianzhujiao de yiming zhi zheng yu zhengzhi shenxue 明末天主教的译名之争与政治神学 [The Controversy of the Translation of Names in Late Ming Catholicism and Political Theology].” Daofeng: Jidujiao wenhua pinglun 38 (2013): 111–134. Zhong Mingdan 钟鸣旦 [Nicolas Standaert]. Keqin de tianzhu 可亲的天主 [The Fasci nating God]. Translated by He Lixia . Taibei: Guangqi, 1998.

Chapter 3

Interpretation of the Chinese Classics in a Cross-Cultural Linguistic Context: a Case Study of Antonio Caballero’s How Catholicism Was Sealed in Ancient Confucianism Wu Liwei Abstract During the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the Confucian “Four Books” were a required course of study for Jesuit missionaries, which they interpreted with the aim of showing that ancient Chinese theological and ethical traditions were consistent with the doctrines of Catholicism. As a result, the Jesuits and their Chinese converts produced many missionary texts in Chinese arguing that such native terms as “Heaven” and “Supreme Emperor” were equivalent to the Christian “Lord of Heaven,” or “God.” Yet since these forms of expression were rather vague, such writings merely tended to demonstrate that the Chinese texts contained some notion of a creator. Considered against this background, the Tian ru yin, or How Catholicism was Sealed in Ancient Confucianism, published in 1664 by the Franciscan Friar Antonio Caballero, stands out as a unique attempt to surpass previous efforts by fully demonstrating a total re-interpretation of Neo-Confucian thought through Christianity’s concept of the creator and system of ethics. Applying the insights of such thinkers as Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer, this chapter explores how Caballero constructed the Tian ru yin by carefully selecting certain sections from the “Four Books” and interpreting their descriptions of moral cultivation to accord with his Christian hermeneutics. Caballero’s Tian ru yin completely overturned the Confucian system of meaning but from a hermeneutic perspective on cross-cultural communication. His creative interpretation of the “Four Books” offers an entirely new dimension for understanding the ancient Chinese sources.

Keywords late Ming and early Qing dynasties – Confucian “Four Books” – Jesuit missionaries Franciscan Friar Antonio Caballero

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004532120_005

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The1 “Four Books” (四书) of the Confucian classics always served as a required course of study for the Jesuits in China, the foundation for one Western translation after another, of which Philippe Couplet’s Latin translation Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, published in 1687, stands out as the most famous. With their Western translations, the Jesuits undeniably accomplished a Christian interpretation of Confucian concepts and truly broke through the limitations of what Matteo Ricci had promoted as Confucian learning and lixue (理学), the Neo-Confucian “Study of the Principle of Reason.” They not only chose the “Four Books” as edited by Zhu Xi 朱熹 and relied upon the commentaries of Zhang Juzheng 张居正, but also employed certain unorthodox interpretations of lixue to make these texts appear to accord with the theory that “Confucius was a believer in God.” Take, for example, the interpretation of the notion of “ultimate good” (至善) mentioned in the first of the “Four Books,” The Great Learning《大学》.2 Zhu Xi’s commentary explained the ultimate good as achievable through the two methods of “illuminating luminous virtue” (明明德) and “renovating the people” (新民), in which “good” (善) was defined as the attainment of the utmost state of something’s inherent nature.3 The Jesuits in turn supplemented this with the idea that more diligence was required after illuminating luminous virtue and renovating the people to reach the eternal “supreme good” (至高之善), a translation of “ultimate good” now flavored by the mystical and theological notion of the summum bonum (from Western classical thought).4 With this proposal, the Jesuits were continuing techniques of religious propagation that were established by Ricci, namely to make the Europeans believe that there was good reason to missionize China by relatively tolerant and moderate means, by promoting a systematic demonstration that the ancient traditions transmitted by Confucius were no different from the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. A remarkable aspect of this method was that, at least in the case of the Christian interpretation of the Confucian classics contained in Western translations of the “Four Books,” its target audience was none other than the Europeans themselves and the 1 Originally published as Wu Liwei 吴莉苇, “Kuawenhua yujing xia de Zhongguo jingdian quanshi jiqi yiyi: yi Antonio Caballero Tian ru yin wei li 跨文化语境下的中国经典诠释及 其意义 – 以 Antonio Caballero《天儒印》为例,” Zongjiao yu lishi 宗教与历史 5 (2016): 108–131. 2 Citations of The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, and Zhu Xi’s commentaries on them refer to Zhu Xi 朱熹, Sishu zhangju jizhu 四书章句集注今译 [Collected Textual Commentaries on the Four Books with Modern Translation], trans. Li Shen 李申 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2020). 3 Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu or a detailed analysis on the level of interpretive categories and explanations in this Latin text, see Thierry Meynard, Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687): The First Translation of the (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2011), 3–75.

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anticipated outcome of interpretation was to make Europeans believe that the reason of Christianity had once shone upon China. Another feature of this method, for which Matteo Ricci’s The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven《天主实意》is the representative example, was that the Jesuits and their Chinese Catholic converts also handed down many proselytizing works in Chinese arguing that the terms “Heaven” (天) and “Supreme Emperor” (帝) were equivalent to the Lord of Heaven (天主), or “God.” Since these writings commonly adhered to the method that Ricci initiated, however, their main proof was to elucidate those phrases and passages from such pre-Qin dynasty texts as the Book of Documents《尚书》and the Book of Odes《诗经》that clearly showed the Chinese characters for the terms in question or that described the actions of the Supreme Emperor. This method of proof mostly invited attention to the directly observable similarities of the texts, constructing a resemblance on the basis of a few main characteristics of the “Lord of Heaven” – giving life, nourishing and ruling over everything, being omniscient and omnipotent, rewarding good and punishing evil – which already entered the level of theological explanation. Since these forms of expression were relatively vague, the main tendency was to try to erect upon the traditional Chinese narrative a demonstration that intimated some notion of a creator. While this intended to make it easier for the Chinese to accept such claims, after seeing works like The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, the Chinese literati’s impression was that the “Heaven” of China could also be of some use in the West. Evidently, the Jesuit mainstream understood that their methods should be distinct when communicating with Europeans and the Chinese literati, but their fundamental aim was to allow the peoples of these two different lands to accept their arguments, under the condition that they did not contravene basic religious expectations. Considered against this background, the Chinese text Tian ru yin《天儒印》, or How Catholicism was Sealed in Ancient Confucianism, published in 1664 by the Franciscan Friar Antonio a Santa Maria Caballero with the help of the literati Catholic convert Shang Huqing 尚祜卿, stands out as a very unique and bold effort to fully demonstrate for Chinese readers a total re-interpretation of Neo-Confucian classical lixue through Christianity’s concept of the creator and system of ethics. 1

Overview of Explanations of Chapters and Sentences of the “Four Books” in the Tian ru yin

In his Collected Textual Commentaries on the Great Learning《大学章句集注》, Zhu Xi emphasized such central teachings as self cultivation, ordering the family, governing the state, pacifying all under heaven, how to be a good ruler

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and government minister for the people, and how to be a Confucian “gentleman” (君子). However, Antonio Caballero had no interest in such things and only selected four passages from Zhu’s Collected Commentaries for elucidation. The first three passages were the opening sentences of The Great Learning 《大学》, the first of which reads, “(the way of great learning resides) in illuminating luminous virtue, in renovating the people and comes to a stop with the achievement of the ultimate good.”5 Zhu Xi saw this as a guiding program for the great learning and the great person, something necessary to pursue in order to adhere to the Principle of Heaven and be successfully adaptable in all affairs, to not let the spiritual luminosity and fundamental norms of Heaven be obstructed by the selfish deceptions of human desire. To deeply consider Zhu Xi’s exegesis of this passage, it is necessary to ask exactly what he had in mind for the concepts of “Heaven” and the “Principle of Heaven.” According to the general understanding of Ming dynasty scholar-officials, in Zhu Xi’s view Heaven and the Principle of Heaven referred to natural laws. The second sentence of The Great Learning, stating, “after knowing how to come to a stop there can be fixity, after fixity there can be tranquility, after tranquility there is security, after security there can be consideration, and after consideration there can be acquisition,” was largely explained by Zhu via exegesis of the meaning of the individual written characters elucidating what states of quality and ability one would manifest if they could come to a stop at the utmost good.6 The third line, stating, “all things have their roots and branches, all affairs have a beginning and an end, to know what is first and last, is to get close to the Way,” was treated by Zhu Xi as a concluding summary of the first two sentences, so he did not offer further explanation.7 For Caballero, it seems that these three sentences inspired endless spiritual sentiment. Like the Jesuits, he was blind to Zhu Xi’s atheistic exegesis of this passage, so although he forged the first sentence into a key for explaining the “Four Books,” he judged this key and Zhu’s program to be as distinct from each other as night and day. Caballero attributed the virtue of “luminous virtue” and the capacity for “illuminating” it to the Lord of Heaven, explained “renovating the people” as Christianity’s teaching to love one’s neighbor as oneself, and interpreted the “utmost good” as returning to reliance upon the Lord of

5 Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 1:8. 6 Ibid., 1:9. 7

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Heaven, which resulted in God alone being declarable as the supreme good.8 The meaning of the second sentence was related to acknowledging the Lord of Heaven and following his further explanations, because to acknowledge God would result in comprehending the correct attitude towards mundane affairs and to seeking the realm of the eternal.9 The sentence “all things have their roots and branches, all affairs have a beginning and an end” was heavily elaborated by Caballero. He first compared this instance of “root” (本) with the appearance of the same term in The Doctrine of the Mean《中庸》, then explained it as the root of the Lord of Heaven and of Heaven and Earth and the ruler of everything.10 Just as the Lord of Heaven’s creation of everything was a beginning, so too would the world have its conclusion and final judgement day. Caballero also stressed that people can know the true lord and possess true knowledge. In addition, he interpreted two phrases from The Doctrine of the Mean that state, “the sincere completes itself and the Way goes on its own way” and “the sincere is the end-all and be-all of everything,” by explaining that “sincerity” (诚) expresses the unique characteristic of the Lord of Heaven, and that for this reason only the Lord of Heaven is able to complete himself; therefore, since the Lord of Heaven created the world, he can also bring about its ending.11 The fourth sentence in Caballero’s exposition stated, “the Basin Inscription of King Tang reads: since each day begins anew, then every day can be a renewal, and again the day can be renewed.”12 Zhu Xi had explained this as a process of purification and transformative cleansing of the heart and mind.13 Caballero’s explanation also focused on the significance of moral self-cultivation, but a difference resided in his fusion of moral cultivation with the rituals and sacraments of Christianity. In Caballero’s interpretation, the “basin” of the Shang dynasty King Tang was like a vessel for carrying baptismal holy water and the continual renewal of the days corresponded to ritual repentance. For this reason, he claimed it was evident that in the time of the King Tang there was

8

9 10 11 12 13

Li Andang 利安当 [Antonio a Santa Maria Caballero], Tian ru yin 天儒印 [How Catholicism was Sealed in the Ancient Confucianism], in Tianzhujiao dong chuan wenxian xubian 天主教东传文献续编 [The Second Series of Collections of Chinese Catholic Literature], ed. Wu Xiangxiang 吴相湘 (Taipei: Student Book Co., Ltd., 2000), 2:993–1042. Ibid., 2:994. Ibid., 2:995–996. Ibid. Li, Tian ru yin, 2:996–997. Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 1:13–14.

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already something like baptism and the ceremonial practice of confession being practiced.14 The majority of the contents of The Doctrine of the Mean are similar to those of The Great Learning in that they discuss the ethics of everyday social relations and political morality, but the former text describes more about Heaven, the Way (道), and the inherent nature of things (性) than the latter. Consequently, Caballero was even more interested in The Doctrine of the Mean and selected fourteen of its sentences for his purposes. Caballero choose the first sentence of the text, which reads, “the command of Heaven is called inherent nature, ordering the inherent nature is called the Way, cultivating the Way is called teaching,” however he omitted the content concerning individual cultivation that followed this opening.15 Clearly, he could explain this sentence as outlining the fundamental teaching of Catholicism: that Heaven refers to the Lord of Heaven and is not just the material cosmos; inherent nature is that which is bestowed by the Lord of Heaven, while people, animals and plants each have their own distinct inherent nature; the unique soul possessed by humans and their reception of the Ten Commandments corresponds to the idea of ordering one’s inherent nature; while “teaching” here was understood to refer to what the Jesuits often discussed as the inherent teaching (Adamic Period), the scriptural teaching (Mosaic Period), and the corporeal teaching (Christ’s incarnation), whereas the later inherently implied the doctrine of the Lord of Heaven’s universal salvation by way of the incarnation.16 Chapter twelve makes up a unit with chapters thirteen through sixteen, which Zhu Xi emphasized was a declaration on the way of the gentleman mentioned in the opening chapter. Caballero selected the passage that reads, “of its utmost, there are things which even the sages do not know,” and the concluding sentence stating, “the way of the gentleman, begins with common men and women …,” however he omitted the phrases and sentences from the first passage that had to do with “the way of the gentleman” and how common people can also observe and know it.17 Therefore, in accordance with the first sentence he selected, Caballero transformed all of the descriptions of the features of the way of the gentleman into features of the way of the Lord of Heaven, dispensed with the meaning of “the Way” from the original text as being that which is inexhaustible in its efficacy, to interpret this instead as praise for the omniscience and omnipotence the Lord of Heaven and his 14 15 16 17

Li, Tian ru yin, 2:996–998. Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 2:929–931; Li, Tian ru yin, 2:999–1000. Li, Tian ru yin, 2:999–1000.

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creation of all things.18 From the second sentence, he only used the few words “begins with common men and women” first to denote the origin of humanity and then to represent the return of humanity to its ultimate abode, in essence meaning the Lord of Heaven’s act of creation. From the passage reading, “the potency of the spirits and gods, is great indeed! When looked for they cannot be seen, when listened for they cannot be heard, but when encountered they cannot be lost,” the phrase “spirits and gods” (鬼神) stands out for notice.19 Caballero claimed that it referred to heavenly spirits (angels) and demons and that while heavenly spirits can be revered, potent demons also exist, so the two should not be confused.20 The idea they can be looked for but not seen, listened for but not heard, and encountered but not lost was understood precisely as referring to the fact that the Lord of Heaven had established a protector angel for each person and that in the very end all must always return to the root, meaning that when “the Lord of Heaven” is “encountered it will not be lost.”21 The sentences containing the Chinese characters for the words “Heaven,” “the Way,” and “the sincere” are mostly grouped in chapters twenty-two to thirtythree of The Doctrine of the Mean. Zhu Xi held that these chapters represented a contemplation and repeated clarification of the meaning of the Way of Heaven (天道) and the Way of Humanity (人道) as expressed in chapter twenty-one, while the heart of the discussion of chapters twenty and twenty-one centered on how to treat people in government and regards the correct Way of Humanity as corresponding to the Way of Heaven.22 However, in Caballero’s view they had a completely different significance. “Only he who can achieve the utmost sincerity of all under Heaven, can fully realize his inherent nature,” described for Caballero that although humanity can have some revelation of what is concealed and seek knowledge of a part of the plan of the Lord of Heaven, the utmost sincerity is a perfection only he possesses and that while his creation of the world had its own purpose, each condition was linked to the other.23 “The way of utmost sincerity, can be known before,” explained that humanity’s knowledge and the capacity for presentiment all came from the Lord of Heaven.24 For the passage that reads, “the sincere completes itself and the Way goes on its own path; the sincere is the start and finish of all things, without sincerity there is nothing; this is 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Ibid. Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 2:950. Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1002–1003. Ibid., 2:998–1004. Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 2:958–970. Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 2:970; Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1004–1010. Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 2:972; Li, ibid.

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why the sincerity of the gentleman is of the most value …,” Caballero omitted the key phrase “the gentleman,” making what was a discussion about the gentleman’s necessary characteristic of sincerity into a discussion of the Lord of Heaven’s characteristics.25 “The sincere is the start and finish of all things” then became an explanation of a quality only possessed by the Lord of Heaven, while the remaining statements expressed his creation and nourishment of all things and how he had precisely arranged the utility and status of all things.26 Caballero understood the phrase, “the way of Heaven and Earth can be summed up in one statement: it does not make anything into two, its giving birth to things is unfathomable,” as a clear reference to the Lord of Heaven.27 “It does not make anything into two,” meant that, as a nominal phrase, “Heaven and Earth” cannot be divided into two things and refers in actuality to the Lord of Heaven. At the same time, the subject of the phrase “its giving birth to things is unfathomable” was also taken as a reference to “the Lord of Heaven,” in that, because his total plan cannot be determined, the birth of things is therefore incomprehensible.28 In the passage, “only the commandment of Heaven is majestic and unchanging! This is why it is said that Heaven is Heaven,” Heaven is that which can command humanity, a capability obviously not possessed by the material cosmos, therefore proving that the material cosmos and the Lord of Heaven are not one and the same.29 In the case of the sentence stating, “great is the way of the sage, it overflows like great waves, nourishes the myriad things, and raises them up to the heights of Heaven,” Caballero deleted the latter part of the passage explaining that “the way of the sage” in reality corresponds to respect for virtue, inquiry into the way, and abiding by ritual ceremony.30 Instead, he only relied on the first half of the passage to point out that the way of the sage is to adhere to the will of the Lord of Heaven and that because there is nothing unknown to the Lord of Heaven there is no greater wisdom than listening to and following him.31 With the passage that states, “the myriad things are nourished without harming each other, the Way proceeds without contradiction; the small potencies flow like rivers, the large potencies transform profoundly; this is why Heaven and Earth are great,” Caballero explains that it is the Lord of Heaven that

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 2:973; Li, ibid. Li, ibid. Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 2:974; Li, ibid. Li, ibid. Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 2:974; Li, ibid. Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, ibid; Li, ibid.

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sustains order among the myriad things.32 Therefore, while the great potency is the Lord of Heaven, the small potencies are the self-orientation of each of the myriad things, which the Lord of Heaven rules and governs to make them proceed with order.33 Of the passage stating, “since only the utmost sincere under Heaven can be able to arrange the affairs of all under Heaven into the great proper arrangement, establish the great foundation for all under Heaven, and know the transformations and nourishment of Heaven and Earth; could there be anything else that this is dependent upon?,” Caballero explained that the “great proper arrangement” (大经) referred to the order of Heaven and Earth, spirits, people and the myriad things.34 Therefore, the only one capable of arranging their affairs is the Lord of Heaven (the utmost sincere), this arranging being precisely what makes each thing adhere to its inherent nature and realize its completion of itself. Furthermore, the Lord of Heaven’s nurturing and ruling over the myriad things, natural with knowledge of Heaven and Earth’s transformations and nourishment, exists only by being established by the Lord of Heaven. Thus, the question, “could there be anything else that this is dependent upon,” is speaking of the Lord of Heaven, and not referring to any common person, since undoubtedly they must be dependent upon the Lord of Heaven. After the phrase, “how genuine is its benevolence, how profound is its profundity, how vast is its Heaven,” the original text follows with a sentence reading, “without intelligence, wisdom nor attainment of the virtue of Heaven, who could know of it,” to emphasize the sage’s ability to commune with Heaven and Earth and arrange the affairs of all under Heaven.35 However, Caballero abandoned this concluding sentence concerning the qualities of the sage, so that, “how genuine is its benevolence, how profound is its profundity, how vast is its Heaven,” became a declaration in praise of the innumerable perfect qualities of the Lord of Heaven.36 Chapter thirty-three was seen by Zhu Xi as a comment summing up the learning of the Confucian gentleman and the Way of the sage, but Caballero ignored all of the maxims and admonishments about human affairs it contained, only selecting the last sentence that states, “the affairs of the heavens above, they are without sound or smell; they are the utmost indeed!”37 In this case, he interpreted “the heavens above” (上天) as Heaven-on-High and its “affairs” as referring to the many realms below Heaven, in which there are meant to be several levels of celestial material formations 32 33 34 35 36 37

Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 2:983; Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1010–1015. Li, ibid. Zhu, Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 2:985; Li, ibid. Zhu, ibid. Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1010–1015. Sishu zhangju jizhu jinyi, 2:987.

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below the nine main heavenly realms, yet following close to the notion that the serene heaven of Heaven-on-High was already uniquely formless, immaterial and unable to be traced, it was therefore described as without sound or smell.38 What was called “the utmost” here is nothing other than the arrival of the spirit (soul) in Heaven, its return to its original abode, thereby also indicating that the human world is nothing more than one stop on the peregrinations of the soul. As for The Analects《论语》and the Mencius《孟子》, two texts of much greater length than The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean, they mostly discussed the cultivation of human life, the way of the gentleman and the way of government, yet Caballero tried to extract the essentials from The Analects by selecting thirteen of its sentences and picked four worthy sayings from The Mencius. The first category of selections from The Analects were sentences touching upon Heaven and the Way: “If a man may hear of the Way in the morning, in the evening he can die without regret;”39 “He who offends Heaven has none to whom he can pray;”40 “With sincere faith, he loves learning, and holding to death, he benefits the Way;”41 “He has been endowed by Heaven to be made a Sage;”42 “I do not complain of Heaven, I do not worry about people, I study what is below and reach the heights, that which knows me, is Heaven.”43 “Heaven,” as always, was explained by Caballero to mean the Lord of Heaven, and not “the form of Heaven,” nor Zhu Xi’s “Principle of Reason.”44 “The Way” was the Lord of Heaven’s instructions on how to traverse the correct path in life and death in order to ascend to Heaven (Paradise).45 While “sincere faith” itself was a type of attitude, the object and significance of belief can always be distinct, so for Caballero it meant the belief in “faith, hope and love,” and indicated that to make the Lord of Heaven the head of these three virtues was to believe in him and his teachings.46 The second category were sentences concerning the cultivation of ethical virtue, on which the original text of The Analects has much for perusal. However, only five passages from the text resonated with Caballero: “Carefully 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1010–1015. Lunyu 论语 [The Analects], 4.8. Ibid., 3.13. Ibid., 8.13. Ibid., 9.6. Ibid., 14.35. Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1018–1023, 1031–1032. Ibid.

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attend to the death of elders and seek to remember them for a long time, then the virtue of the people will return to its fulsomeness;”47 “When internal examination reveals no malady, what is there to worry about or fear;”48 “If a person does not give consideration to what is distant, there will be cause for worry close at hand.”49 These three sentences made Caballero think of the Christian concern about life and death, the deceptions of the devil that impact the mundane world, and the worries that lead people far astray of the correct path, so that internal examination corresponded to an awareness of the self that is aimed at these external risks.50 The sentence stating, “what one does not desire themselves, they should not do to another,”51 was compared by Caballero to the commandment to love others as oneself. Taken a step further, he took the term “loyal” from the phrase of the Li Ren (里仁) chapter of The Analects stating, “be loyal and considerate and that is enough,”52 to refer to being loyal to the Lord of Heaven, for the reason that “loyalty” expresses the official minister’s love for the ruler and, since the Lord of Heaven is the great ruler of Heaven and Earth, without loving the Lord of Heaven one could not be called loyal.53 Interpreting the passage of the Analects that states, “benevolence for the people, is greater than water or fire. I have seen people die from treading on fire and water, but have never seen anyone die from treading on the path of benevolence,”54 Caballero attached a clear definition to the term “benevolence” (仁) – to love the Lord of Heaven and love others as oneself – and taught that calamity would arise from the misuse of water and fire, and status, reputation, wealth (by analogy with water and fire), for malevolent purpose.55 The third category of passages from The Analects were those chosen by Caballero because of their similarity to certain doctrines that he wished to elaborate: “to study strange teachings, is indeed harmful;”56 “if one has not been capable of serving people, how would they be capable of serving spirits … if one does not know life, how could they know death;”57 “with teaching there are no distinctions between people.”58 In Caballero’s explanation 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Lunyu, 1.9. Ibid., 12.4. Ibid., 15.12. Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1016–1017, 1025–1030, 1033. Lunyu, 12.2. Ibid., 4.15. Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1016–1017, 1025–1030, 1033. Lunyu, 15.35. Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1016–1017, 1025–1030, 1033. Lunyu, 2.16. Ibid., 11:12.

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these were divided as addressing three different issues: the repudiation of heresy, the distancing of oneself from devils and spirits, and the recognition of Catholicism as the universal true religion.59 Of these, his exegesis of “with teaching there are no distinctions between people” (有教无类) stands out for its originality. On the surface, the meaning of the phrase “with teaching” (有 教) is “when there is teaching of them” (有则教之), yet Caballero took it as a noun and stated that only the teaching of the Lord of Heaven qualifies as “with teaching,” thus it meant “the actually existing teaching,” and “the teaching that begins with no beginning,” and since all of humanity was nourished by the Lord of Heaven, under his commandments, they are naturally not divided into different groups.60 Consequently, all other teachings were merely made by people and incapable of providing instruction on the true universal reason. All of the sentences chosen for commentary by Caballero from the Mencius also had to be those that indicated the “Sovereign-on-High” and “Heaven.” The passage declaring, “if the head covering of Lady Xi was filthy, then people would all cover their noses as they passed her by. Though a person may be wicked, if they fast and cleanse themselves, then they can serve the Sovereign-on-High,”61 was used by Caballero to demonstrate the view of sin in Catholicism;62 he also borrowed the passage stating, “Heaven’s plan for giving birth to humankind was to have those who know first make those who come later aware of knowing and to have those who perceive first make those who come later aware of perceiving …,”63 to exclaim that Catholic believers must have those who know and perceive first witness to those people who are ignorant and deluded;64 from the passage stating, “when Heaven prepares to confer a great obligation upon a person …,”65 he saw the solemn obligation of ascending to Heaven and the many aspects of cultivation it required of the willpower, of the body, and of comportment;66 “one who has exhausted his heart, will know their inherent nature, and knowing their inherent nature, will thus know Heaven”67 was naturally connected by Caballero to the Way of the Lord of Heaven, yet the passage’s language more accurately emphasized cultivation.68 As can be seen, 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1017–1018, 1024–1025, 1034. Li, ibid. Mengzi 孟子 [Mencius], 4b.53. Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1035–1041. Mengzi, 5a.7. Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1035–1041. Mengzi, 6b.35. Li, Tian ru yin, 2:1035–1041. Mengzi, 7a.1. , 2:1035–1041.

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the stress of Caballero’s explanations of the Mencius did not mainly rest on his ability to borrow the text’s language to argue for the Lord of Heaven, but rather upon turning the meaning related to moral cultivation and improvement found in a small number of sentences into Catholicism’s requirements for cultivation. He seems to have seen the Mencius as a model for adherence to the Way of Heaven (including its Lord) and for its powerful embodiment, and so if there was any allowance for the fact that the Mencius lacked sufficient discussion of the Way of Heaven, then the value of the text’s sayings could be found in their demonstration of the correct orientation for moral consciousness. In actuality, as Caballero’s explanations of the sentences of The Analects show, Confucius was the only one that he saw as comprehending the logic of the way of the Lord of Heaven and providing a model for embodying it powerfully. 2

Application of Theological Hermeneutics

From the perspective of the traditional Confucian exegesis of the “Four Books,” Caballero’s method could not appear as anything but ridiculous. He broke paragraphs up to hand-pick meanings, sundered the texts apart, and fragmented the classics, while entirely ignoring the authoritative explanation of the “Four Books” that was produced by the Chinese themselves. What if, however, we look at Caballero’s method from outside of the traditional Confucian explanation? There will never be direct evidence to explain why Caballero selected these works, but from the texts themselves it can be seen why they were a natural choice from the point of view of Christianity’s claim to be a universal faith. Jacques Gernet, for instance, only mentioned the Tian ru yin once, but in his view it was clear that Caballero’s large selection of chapters and sentences from the “Four Books” accorded with the meaning of Christianity, demonstrating the general emphasis of the missionaries’ methodology of explaining the classics.69 Nevertheless, from the time of his very arrival in China, Caballero opposed Matteo Ricci’s approach of compromise, which had included acceptance of the Chinese sacrificial rites. He therefore obviously did not approve of the compromising style of interpreting the ancient Chinese classical texts that was adopted by the Jesuits, so in his explanations of the texts, the subjective consciousness of a Christian believer was more conspicuous.

69

Xie Henai 谢和耐 [Jacques Gernet], Zhongguo yu Jidujiao 中国与基督教 [Chine et Christianismetrans. Geng Sheng (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji, 2003), 14.

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In his treatment of the texts The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean, Caballero omitted all of the items that quoted other classics and only selected passages and phrases that expressed discrete principles. Since language that expresses principles is terse and abstract, its meaning is mostly established upon specific contexts and hermeneutics. The various works included among the “Four Books” are not continuous, coherent texts, but are compilations of discourses from different origins and different time periods. The compilers undoubtedly established a specific context for each text to construct the framework of traditional Chinese exegesis, yet for this reason the construction of each context was an addendum after the fact. To perform exegesis like this while adhering to a context other than that of the original authors gives reason to doubt that the exegesis is truly based on an understanding of the real context of the text’s production. As a result, in traditional exegesis of the “Four Books,” the room for “interpretation” was very large. Accordingly, for a subject from outside of the culture to want a completely new re-interpretation of the “Four Books” was not entirely without reason. When Hans-Georg Gadamer discussed the meaning of hermeneutics and it became an established method, two levels of significance were indicated: in people’s understanding there always exists some subjective content; those trained in hermeneutics will discover these types of pre-existing understandings and subject them to considerations of the whole and then demonstrate the historical actuality inherent in understanding. “Understanding” is therefore not merely a step towards discovering some specific fixed meaning, but must undergo comprehension and interpretation before something can become a fact and before some understanding can be expressed, constantly cycling through a process going from the person’s attempt to understand something to the material space of everything they already understand. A text and each of its interpretations are so intimately linked that even an interpretation founded on the text’s tradition is not always dependable, but rather represents a case in which each interpretation often gives rise to a new criticism of the text.70 This means that it is not necessarily most valuable for a person to adopt a preexisting understanding in their pursuit of meaning, while also indicating that no modern reader can diminish or ignore the fact that some meanings will not be consistent with traditional interpretations. We are accustomed to relying upon a standard of discernment construed according to our own cultural 70

Hansi Jiadamoer 汉斯·伽达默尔 [Hans-Georg Gadamer], “Lun lijie de xunhuan” 论理解 的循环 [Vom Zirkel des Verstehens], trans. Deng Anqing 邓安庆, in Gadamo’er ji 伽达 默尔集 [Collected Writings of Gadamer], ed. Yan Ping 严平 (Shanghai: Shanghai yuan dong, 2002), 40–48.

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customs and traditions to understand something, yet when understanding is enlarged beyond one cultural realm, a reader will naturally encounter standards for determination that come out of entirely different traditions, making the production of new meanings unavoidable. Paul Ricoeur asserted even more directly that meaning is generated by hermeneutics, providing a very inspiring insight for the evaluation of crosscultural hermeneutics. According to Ricoeur, the word “hermeneutic” means a connection between interpretation and comprehension, the former taken in the sense of textual exegesis and the latter in the broad sense of the clear understanding of signs. Hermeneutics is a meaningful discourse, because a discursive statement is a grasping of the real by meaningful expressions, not a selection of so-called impressions coming from the things themselves. Textual exegesis is regarded as a specialized technique, it implies an entire theory of signs and significations. However, hermeneutics is also a problem of comprehension. Though the text has its own semiological dimensions and reading relates to the world of the text, it no longer coincides with what the author meant, because every reading of a text always takes place within a community, a tradition, or a living current of thought, all of which display presuppositions and exigencies. The very work of interpretation reveals a profound intention, that of overcoming distance and cultural difference, and of matching the reader to a text which has become foreign, thereby incorporating its meaning into the present comprehension that a person is able to have of himself. In this regard, every hermeneutics is a self-expression of the reader by reading and understanding others.71 The texts of The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean contain innumerable discourses and examples of earlier sages that were treated as essential and natural components by the Confucian exegetic tradition, on the basis of which Confucianism formed its own “school of exegesis,” requiring that the interpretation of these principles only be carried out against the backdrop of this school of exegesis. Consequently, in the Confucian view, any explanation of an existing text or historically authoritative commentary that inclines away from the traditional understanding of the classics can be seen as nonsense. Obviously, to accept this type of critical logic as a condition is to accept the Confucian system of interpretation. However, Christianity also has its own interpretive aims. As Ricoeur put it, the task of Christian hermeneutics, “is to broaden the comprehension of the text on the side of doctrine, of practice, of meditation on the 71

Paul Ricoeur, “Existence and Hermeneutics,” The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in HermeneuticsDon Ihde (London: Continuum, 2004) 3–5.

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mysteries. And consequently it is to equate the understanding of meaning with a total interpretation of existence and of reality in the system of Christianity.”72 For this task, scripture is an inexhaustible treasure which stimulates thought about everything, which conceals a total interpretation of the world. In this way the understanding of Scripture enrolls all the instruments of culture  – literary and rhetorical, philosophical and mystical. To interpret scripture is at the same time to amplify its meaning as sacred meaning and to incorporate the remains of secular culture in this understanding.73 Consequently, biblical hermeneutics includes hermeneutics on the text of Bible, as well as the transformation of other texts into instances for illuminating the meaning of Bible. Christian hermeneutics contains the interpretation of other texts through the Christian viewpoint. Caballero was precisely executing Christian hermeneutics on what was in his eyes an “other culture.” He bore a system of meaning that was entirely distinct from that of Confucianism and he held complete faith in the universality of this system. From his perspective, there was not only plenty of reason to reject the exegesis and interpretive system of Confucianism, but there was also sufficient reason to disconnect the passages of The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean that expressed meaningful principles from the evidentiary content of this other system, just as there was reason to think that this evidence did not correspond to the correct exegesis for the texts’ expression of principles concerning Heaven and the Way. In this line of thinking, the most important sayings of Confucius and Mencius from the perspective of the Confucians did not express meaningful principles in Caballero’s view, but only possessed evidentiary value. Therefore, it was necessary to carefully select the sections of Confucius and Mencius that did recognize Heaven and the Way and the parts of their practice of moral cultivation that accorded with his Christian hermeneutics and make these into proof that the great thinkers of ancient China had once understood true reason. In fact, Caballero’s understanding of the “Four Books” also received the approval of the Jesuits in the late 17th century, although they never made this public knowledge within the Chinese language world.74 Caballero’s new interpretation of the Confucian classics completely overturned the Confucian system of meaning, revealing an entirely different system instead, but what impact this did have in his own time? The history of the 72 73

Paul Ricoeur, “Preface to Bultmann,” The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 380. 80–81. or this point, I owe gratitude to Professor Nicolas Standaert.

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transmission of the Tian ru yin is not entirely clear, but in the year that he produced the book, Caballero, along with the other missionaries, was arrested as a result of the upheaval of Yang Guangxian’s 楊光先 “Case Against the Western Calendar” (历狱). As a result, the impact of Caballero’s work at the time can really only be guessed on the basis of two prefaces written for the book. The author of one of the prefaces was Shang Huqing, a Catholic convert and former Confucian official, who was Caballero’s assistant during the period he was active in Jinan 济南. The first half of Shang’s preface clearly emphasizes that the Lord of Heaven is the source of the Confucian principle of the Way and the human conscience, emphasizing that this source is not the immaterial, formless notion of Heaven.75 Shang was bold enough to say that, even more than taking Confucius as a model, it was important to understand that the virtue of Confucius was bestowed by the Lord of Heaven, since he is the only foundation. The second half of Shang’s preface traces how after he had studied Catholicism, he realized that he had come to understand the teachings of the Lord of Heaven and the meaning of the Four Books from the perspective of the school of the study of Heaven, as well as indicates that the Tian ru yin indeed was Caballero’s own work.76 The most interesting thing is Shang’s expression of deep sentiment: “If one was submerged in the chapters and sentences but did not deeply investigate their indications, mistaking south for north, what a person is this! From today on, the books of the four masters must be identified as a seal-mark of the original seal.”77 This passage linked to Shang Huqing’s discussion of the meaning of the titular term “seal” (印 yin) in the opening of his preface – that it is not what one would call a “mark of authenticity,” but is rather like an imprint left by a seal stone. This shows precisely that Shang was not in the least interested in looking at the matter on the level of “similarities and differences between Christianity and Confucianism,” but was rather invested in the questions of whether or not and how the seal of the Lord of Heaven had left its mark on ancient China. He could understand that Caballero applied a method of Christian theological hermeneutics to the Chinese classics, having accepted Christian doctrine himself as the philosophical principle for interpretation. Consequently, Shang had come to the same realization as Caballero in this process, a realization that belonged to a Christian believer – that the phrases and sentences excerpted by Caballero truly were the traces left in ancient China by commandment of the Lord of Heaven. 75 76 77

Shang Huqing 尚祜卿, “Tian ru yin shuo 天儒印说 [Introduction to How Catholicism was Sealed in the Ancient Confucianism],” Tianzhujiao dong chuan wenxian xubian, 2:989–92. Ibid.

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It can be confirmed that the author of the other preface of the Tian ru yin, Wei Xuequ 魏学渠, was someone interested in Western learning and friendly with the missionaries, but there is no evidence that he was a convert to Catholicism. The language praising the Tian ru yin used in the preface that Wei authored in 1664 reiterated intellectual opinions that were well-worn in the late Ming dynasty, declaring it a concordance of the study of Heaven and the learning of Confucius and Mencius, touching both inner and outer aspects, that it showed how in all four corners of the world there was accord in mind, in reason, and in teachings, and explaining that Caballero was able to elaborate the Way of Confucius and Mencius just as well as the Neo-Confucian promoters of lixue.78 However, since we know the Tian ru yin does not really consider Zhu Xi’s interpretations, but rather expounds the fundamental doctrines of Catholicism, one may ask if Wei’s approval of Caballero was simply a matter of his miscomprehension of the text, if it just represented the formulaic use of cliched phrasing to help a friend avoid censure, or if it was because he had already accepted the Catholic reasoning. In a time period when Zhu Xi’s Collected Commentaries on the Four Books《四书集注》was required material for the studies and examinations of the literati, a Confucian official would not have been capable of misunderstanding nor accepting the ridiculous interpretations of the Chinese classics of a foreigner. On this account, one can really only believe that Wei Xuequ was a literatus who was very friendly towards Catholicism (even to the extent that he had already accepted it entirely). There is one other detail that commands particular notice. In the published imprint of the Tian ru yin, Wei Xuequ’s preface comes first, while Shang Huqing’s is second. However, in a version of the text contained in the handcopied manuscript of the Collected Explanations on the Study of Heaven《天学 集解》by Liu Ning 刘凝, Shang Huqing’s preface comes first and Wei Xuequ’s comes second. This could perhaps indicate that for the published version of the Tian ru yin, Wei Xuequ was chosen to act as a gate-keeper because he was a well-known figure, while Shang Huqing’s preface was the more important one in the judgement of a Catholic convert like Liu Ning. If correct, this may circumstantially prove that Wei’s preface did not possess full-fledged merit on meaningful questions in the view of a true Catholic believer, but that its value was more ornamental. At the time that Wei Xuequ wrote his preface, his feelings were most probably very complex, so the response that Caballero’s theological hermeneutics provoked among the literati outside of the church could be an explanation for this conjecture. As for why Caballero and Shang 78

Wei Xuequ 魏学渠, “Tian ru yin xu” 天儒印序 [Preface to How Catholicism was sealed in the Ancient ConfucianismTianzhujiao dong chuan wenxian xubian, 2:983–987.

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Huqing could publish a proselytizing text that was very reserved and veiled in form, yet obviously very extreme in content, this can only be judged within the whole situation of the development of Catholicism at the time, which in the case of the community of Chinese Catholics clearly showed an optimistic tendency, having passed through the reign of the Shunzhi 顺治 Emperor.79 3

Value of Cross-Cultural Hermeneutics

Is it meaningful to use one intellectual tradition to interpret the classic texts of another culture, as Caballero did? Biblical hermeneutics is exclusive and it is fundamental for theological hermeneutics to interpret the Bible within an established tradition, so as to avoid distortion of doctrine. The critical principle of philosophical hermeneutics and the Christ event of the Christian tradition are equal criteria for an adequate understanding of a biblical text. As Ricoeur said, biblical hermeneutics is both a particular and a unique case, so as one text among others, the Bible speaks things in the words of its own text; whereas as a unique case, it indicates that all the partial discourse refers to a singular name, “God.”80 For this reason, the Christian can adopt theological hermeneutics to interpret other texts for the purpose of increasing the force of the Bible, but at the same time deny the application of another category of interpretation to the Bible. Caballero’s Christian hermeneutics is a type of reading of the “Four Books” according to Christian ideas, so naturally it derives meaning from the standpoint of Christianity. What about from the standpoint of Chinese culture? In China, the Five Classics and Four Books have had an explanatory tradition as exclusionary as that of the Bible in the West and Caballero broke precisely this taboo. Yet if this method was repudiated by traditional Chinese exegesis and its interpretive tradition, that is not to say that the influence of this work in the society of the time was completely insignificant or unheard of. At the same time, it must be noted 79

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For more discussion on this development, see Wu Liwei 吴莉苇, “‘Zhongguo ren qiyuan’ shuo zai Ming Qing Tianzhujiao zhongwen wenxian zhong de xushi zhuanbian ‘中国 人起源’ 说在明清天主教中文文献中的叙事转变 – 审视天主教在华发展态势的 一个新路径 [Shifting Narratives on the Topic of ‘The Origin of the Chinese’ in the Chinese Catholic Literature between the Late Ming and Early Qing: A New Perspective for Examining the Development of Catholicism in China],” in Chuanjiaoshi bixia de dalu yu Taiwan 传教士笔下的大陆与台湾 [Mainland China and Taiwan in the Writings of Missionaries], ed. Wang Chengmian 王成勉 (Zhongli: Zhongyang daxue, 2014), 47–82. Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 46; as cited in Ji Jingyi, Encounters Between Chinese Culture and Christianity: A Hermeneutical Perspective Verlag, 2007), 19–21.

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that the interpretive tradition of the Five Classics and Four Books did not possess any theological legacy equivalent to the exegesis of the Bible. Whatever divine and sagely status the texts accrued over time came from their association with political events, while speaking strictly of the texts themselves, the interpretive tradition was secular and historical. For this reason, whether trying to understand Chinese culture within a cross-cultural linguistic context or within the linguistic context of Chinese culture’s modern development, there is no absolute reason for texts like the Five Classics and Four Books to not be subject to new interpretations. With regard to grasping the meaning of a text, hermeneutics is found wherever there first is misinterpretation. However, the justification of hermeneutics can be radical only if one seeks it within a logical principle of double meaning, which is normal for reflective thinking. “This logic is then no longer a formal logic but a transcendental logic. It is established at the level of conditions of possibility: not the conditions of the objectivity of a nature, but the condition of the appropriation of our desire to be. It is in this sense that the logic of the double meaning proper to hermeneutics can be called transcendental.”81 For this reason, the value of undertaking interpretation to attain meaning lies in the fact that it affords the possibility and room for new developments in thought under the existing conditions of the interpreter’s own established thinking. Interpretation is the reader’s intellectual creation of a text in the absence of its author, a process in which the reader’s understanding and reproduction of the text undoubtedly has much intellectual value. Its value also lies in the fact that, through the critical consciousness of the interpreter, it further advances a guarantee of meaning. While the interpreter takes their own thinking as a condition of understanding, they generally don’t recklessly pursue an erroneous understanding on purpose. Ricoeur discussed two simultaneous processes in reading. First, to explain is to bring out the internal relations and the structure of the text; then, to interpret is to follow the path of thought opened by the text, to place oneself en route toward the orientation of the text. We are invited by this remark to correct our initial concept of interpretation and to search for interpretation beyond a subjective process.82 That is why the knowledge attained this way should not be kept under the system of traditional exegesis, 81 82

Paul Ricoeur, “Existence and Hermeneutics,” The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, 18. Paul Ricoeur, “Explanation and Understanding,” From Text to Action. Vol 2, Essays in Hermeneutics (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 121–122. Ricoeur distinguishes reading and dialogue, in that he defines dialogue as the reciprocal engagement of inquiry and response, so accordingly both parties must be present. In reading, how ever, the author is absent. Nevertheless, as Ricoeur’s description of the interpretation and

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only to be flatly denied, but should rather be considered from the perspective of whether or not it offers some new insight for people. Besides, for exegesis we have to use thought as an instrument or we can barely understand events. As Ricoeur put it, exegesis must have a “bearer of meaning.” Without a conception that meaning is a product of both objectivity and ideality, no textual criticism is possible. A hermeneutics must be concerned with both the objective meaning and the historicity of personal decision, and the semantic moment, the moment of objective meaning, must precede the existential moment, the moment of personal decision.83 The traditional understanding of the “Four Books” is a combination of exegesis and interpretation, so that while some individual’s explanation can be designated an “exegesis,” there is no way to dispel what exists in it as intellectual elucidation. At the same time, the intellectual apparatus of different commentators are obviously not completely the same, evident for instance in the distinctions between the examples of Han dynasty Confucianism and Song dynasty Neo-Confucianism. Since this is the case, an interpretation of the “Four Books” utilizing a different type of intellectual apparatus such as Caballero’s actually offers an entirely new cross-cultural dimension of understanding for ancient Chinese sources. Can Caballero’s method be suspected of overinterpretation or not? I believe that answering this question depends upon the observer’s intellectual standpoint. Furthermore, what may be called overinterpretation from the standpoint of one person can always bring another person intellectual enlightenment. As Jonathan Culler says, the most that a tepid, dispassionate interpretation can express is a type of consensus, yet overinterpretation often has more value for the development of human knowledge. Admittedly, he is only speaking about the discipline of literary study, but the real character of overinterpretation lies precisely in offering a means of discovering the mechanism of a text, its signs and the actual operation of those signs, and a method that can make someone contemplate the operational mechanism of such factors is more capable of producing new insights.84 Nevertheless, the value of overinterpretation for gaining new insight that Culler reveals also has consequences for

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exegesis that occurs in the process of reading shows, his definition of reading actually possesses a similar process as Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogue. Ricoeur, “Preface to Bultmann,” 392. Ka Le 卡勒 [Jonathan Culler], “Wei ‘guodu quanshi’ yi bian 为‘过度诠释’ – 辩 [In Defense of Overinterpretation],” in Anbeituo Aike deng 安贝托·艾柯等 [Umberto Eco, et al.], Quanshi yu guodu quanshi 诠释与过度诠释 [Interpretation and Overinterpretation ed. Stefan Colliniess , trans. Wang Yugen (Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing House, 2005), 118–132.

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cross-cultural understanding. As he points out, the operational mechanism of a sign is complex and we have no way of confirming beforehand what its limitations will be. Especially in the case of a cross-cultural understanding of a text whose contents are not systematic and whose temporal provenance is not homogenous, when the empirical author of the text is absent, the “model author” and the “model reader” can represent a type of specially designated cultural tradition (even to the extent that it is only within one time period), while the “empirical reader” can be the bearer of an entirely different cultural tradition.85 The fact that this type of empirical reader will introduce a new linguistic context and invent new meanings within a text needs not be seen as something preposterous, but rather actually corresponds to what Gadamer spoke of as “effect-history” (die Wirkrungsgeschichte), in the sense that understanding happens in the process of a history of effects. For this reason, judging from a perspective of cultural creativity based in cultural communication, Caballero’s style of interpretation perhaps points towards a new space, so that its true meaning still awaits revelation or further development within the realization of human thought. Bibliography Anbeituo Aike 安贝托·艾柯 [Umberto Eco], et al. Quanshi yu guodu quanshi 诠释与过 度诠释 [Interpretation and Overinterpretation], Edited by Ke Lini 柯里尼 [Stefan Colliniess]. Translated by Wang Yugen 王宇根. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing House, 2005. Hansi Jiadamoer 汉斯·伽达默尔 [Hans-Georg Gadamer]. Jiadamoer ji 伽达默尔集 [Collected Writings of Gadamer]. Translated by Deng Anqing 邓安庆. Edited by Yan Ping 严平. Shanghai: Shanghai yuandong, 2002. Ji, Jingyi. Encounters Between Chinese Culture and Christianity: A Hermeneutical Perspective. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2007. Meynard, Thierry. Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687): The First Translation of the Confucian Classics. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2011. Ricoeur, Paul. “Existence and Hermeneutics,” translated by Kathleen McLaughlin. In The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, edited by Don Ihde, 3–24. London: Continuum, 2004. 85

The terms the “empirical author,” the “model author,” the “model reader,” and the “empirical reader” are borrowed from Umberto Eco; see Anbeituo Aike, “Guodu quanshi benwen 过度诠释本文 [Overinterpreting Texts],” Quanshi yu guodu quanshi

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Ricoeur, Paul. Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination. Edited by Mark I. Wallace. Translated by David Pellauer. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. Ricoeur, Paul. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1991. Ricoeur, Paul. “Preface to Bultmann,” translated by Peter McCormick. In The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, edited by Don Ihde, 381–401. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1974. Wu Liwei 吴莉苇. “‘Zhongguo ren qiyuan’ shuo zai Ming Qing Tianzhujiao zhongwen wenxian zhong de xushi zhuanbian ‘中国人起源’ 说在明清天主教中文文献中的叙 事转变 – 审视天主教在华发展态势的一个新路径 [The Shifting Narratives on the Topic of ‘The Origin of the Chinese’ in the Chinese Catholic Literature between the Late Ming and Early Qing: A New Perspective for Examining the Development of Catholicism in China].” In Chuanjiaoshi bixia de dalu yu Taiwan 传教士笔下的大 陆与台湾 [Mainland China and Taiwan in the Writings of Missionaries], edited by Wang Chengmian 王成勉, 47–82. Zhongli: Zhongyang daxue, 2014. Wu Xiangxiang 吴相湘, ed. Tianzhujiao dong chuan wenxian xupian 天主教东传文献 续编 [Supplementary Editions of Writings on the Eastern Propagation of Catholicism]. 3 volumes. Taibei: Xuesheng shuju, 2000. Xie Henai 谢和耐 [Jacques Gernet]. Zhongguo yu Jidujiao 中国与基督教 [Chine et Christianisme], translated by Geng Sheng 耿昇. Shanghai: Shanghai Guji, 2003. Zhu Xi 朱熹 Sishu zhangju jizhu [Collected Textual Commentaries on the Four Books with Modern Translation]. Translated by Li Shen . 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2020.

Chapter 4

The Transmission of Catholicism to the East and the Restructuring of Early Qing Literati Thought: a Study on the Intellectual Tide of “Venerating Heaven” Liu Yunhua Abstract This chapter takes the intellectual tide of “Venerating Heaven” as its focus, offering a deep analysis and summary of the relationship between the restructuring of early Qing dynasty literati thought and the transmission of Catholicism to the East. When Catholicism came to China in the late Ming dynasty, it attracted some literati to an effort to “study how to serve the Lord of Heaven,” a development which set Confucianism on a path towards “religionization” under the banner of “Venerating Heaven.” By the early Qing dynasty, “Venerating Heaven” had become the mainstream of the “religionization of Confucianism.” However, a host of Confucian literati that had not converted to Catholicism, including such figures as Xu Sanli, Xie Wenjian, Lu Shiyi, and Chen Hu, also attempted to restructure their intellectual systems by taking “Venerating Heaven” as an axial principle, imparting a new dimension to such leading methods of contemplative self-cultivation as silent meditation, introspection, and self-restraint, in which “Heaven” participated as a supervisory “transcendental other.” Through a process of ritualization, “Venerating Heaven” was externalized and made practical, which to a certain degree resulted in imparting certain heteronomous characteristics to the concept. Finally, this chapter also takes the example of the views of significant Confucian proponents of the study of the principle of reason, such as Huang Zongxi and Sun Qifeng on the concept of the “Sovereign-on-High” to supplement the discussion of distinctions between China and the West in the foregoing argument.

Keywords early Qing dynasty – Chinese literati – the tide of “Venerating Heaven” – intellectual restructuring

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004532120_006

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The1 period during the Ming and Qing dynasties in which missionaries served as the main intermediaries for contact between China and the rest of the world lasted for approximately two-hundred and fifty years. To judge from today’s perspective, the importance of this period of history resides in the fact that it broadened the vistas of both Chinese and Western cultures and opened thought and knowledge up to restructuring on many different levels, to the benefit of later generations and with deep reverberations. Up to now, scholarly circles have already generated deep discussions on these matters, with the investigations of Virgile Pinot, Jacques Gernet, Paul A. Rule, D. E. Mungello, Nicolas Standaert, Chen Weiping, Zhang Xiping, Xu Sumin, Li Tiangang, and Wang Fansen especially standing out for their excellence, among others.2 Nevertheless, there continue to be significant topics that have not received enough attention on the part of established scholars in the forum of discussion, with one obvious example being the intellectual tide of “Venerating 1 Originally published as Liu Yunhua 刘耘华, “Tianzhujiao dong chuan yu Qing chu wenren de sixiang chonggou: yi ‘jingtian’ sichao wei zhongxin 天主教东传与清初文人的思想 重构 – 以‘敬天’思潮为中心,” Zongjiao yu lishi 宗教与历史 5 (2016):68–78. 2 Weiji’er Binuo 维吉尔·毕诺 [Virgile Pinot], Zhongguo dui Faguo sixiang xingcheng de yingxiang 中国对法国哲学思想形成的影响 [La Chine et la formation de l’esprit philosophique en France, 1640–1740], trans. Geng Sheng 耿昇 (Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2000); Xie Henai 谢和耐 [Jacques Gernet], Zhongguo yu Jidujiao: Zhong xi wenhua de shouci zhuangji 中国与基督教 – 中西文化的首次撞击 [China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures], trans. Geng Sheng 耿昇 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2003); Paul A. Rule, K’ung-tzu or Confucius? The Jesuit Interpretation of Confucianism (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986); D. E. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800 (London: Rowman ＆Little Field Publishers, Inc., 1999); N. Standaert, “Jesuit Corporate Culture as Shaped by the Chinese,” in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773, eds. John W. O’Mally, G. A. Barley, S. J. Harris, & T. F. Kennedy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 352–363; Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, Vol. 1, 635–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Chen Weiping 陈卫平 Di yi ye yu peitai: Ming Qing zhi ji de Zhong xi wenhua bijiao 第一页与胚胎 – 明清之际的中西文化比较 [The First Page and the Embryo: Chinese and Western Cultural Comparison During the Ming-Qing Transition] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin, 1992); Zhang Xiping 张西平, Zhongguo yu Ouzhou zaoqi zongjiao he zhexue jiaoliu shi 中国与欧洲早期宗教和哲学交流史 [A History of Early Religious and Philosophical Communications Between China and Europe] (Beijing: Dongfang, 2001); Xu Sumin 许苏民, “Ming Qing zhi ji de ru ye duihua yu Zhongguo zhexue chuangxin 明清之际的儒耶对话与 中国哲学创新 [The Dialogue Between Confucianism and Christianity and the Renewal of Chinese Philosophy During the Ming-Qing Transition],” Zhongguo shehui kexue 中国社会 科学 [Chinese Social Science] 6 (2011): 26–40; Li Tiangang 李天纲, Kua wenhua de quanshi: jingxue yu shenxue de xiang’ou 跨文化的诠释: 经学与神学的相遇 [Cross-Cultural Interpretation: The Encounter of the Study of the Classics with Theology] (Beijing: Xinxing, 2007); Wang Fansen 王汎森 Wan Ming sixiang shi lun [Ten Theses on Late Ming Thought] (Shanghai: Fudan University, 2004).

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Heaven” (敬天) and its significance for a series of issues linking Catholicism and Chinese culture. This chapter takes this tide as its focus, examining the relevant cases to investigate how Catholicism’s transmission to the East was a fortuitous event that inspired a group of early Qing dynasty literati who were not converts to Christianity to restructure their thought, but who also became dependent on both the external surface layers and the inner veins of the logic of this operation, through that restructuring. 1

“Venerating Heaven”: the Transmission of Catholicism to the East and the “Religionization” of Confucianism in the Late Ming and Early Qing

The arrival of Catholic missionaries to China in the late Ming dynasty led some among the Chinese literati to convert to the faith of the “Lord of Heaven,” including such figures as Xu Guangqi 徐光启, Li Zhizao 李之藻, and Yang Tingyun 杨廷筠; however, some others who could not receive baptism because of their involvement in concubinage or other reasons also made efforts to “serve the Lord of Heaven,” such as Feng Qi 冯琦 (1558–1604), Han Kuang 韩爌 (1564–1644), Ye Xianggao 叶向高 (1559–1627), Liu Yuliang 刘宇亮 (?–1642), Guo Zizhang 郭子章 (1543–1618), and Xiong Mingyu 熊明遇 (1580–1650). These figures were all important ministers in the late Ming court, yet were inclined to accept Matteo Ricci’s explanation that Catholicism was equivalent to ancient Confucianism, feeling that a renaissance of “ancient Confucianism” would help restore the dissipating energy of the Ming dynasty and reintegrate a human conscience that was rapidly disintegrating along a course of mundanity. Consequently, they either invited the missionaries to their hometowns to teach the religion or they changed their offspring’s lineage founder to the Lord of Heaven. According to the Lord Mayor Wang Yinglin 王应麟 at the time, not long after the Minister of the Department of Rites, Feng Qi, became acquainted with Ricci, he, “renounced all he had learned before and took up the study of serving the Lord of Heaven, personally witnessing to me that this would help mend our inherent nature (性), on the account that it was truly righteous in meaning; for this reason, he had reckoned with many various teachings, denounced the circulation of empty fantasies, and wanted to make clear this new teaching;”3 besides this, Wang also mentioned the examples of Li Zhizao, 3 Wang Yinglin 王应麟, “Qinchi da xiyang guoshi zangdi jushe beiwen 钦敕大西洋国士 葬地居舍碑文 [Memorial Stele for the Domicile and Tomb of the Honorable Imperially Appointed National Minister from the West],” Juejiao tongwen ji [Record of

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Cao Yubian 曹于忭, and Xu Guangqi, among sixteen capital officials who were amiable and positive towards the missionaries and who, “by most of their writings and visible by their ranking,” could be identified as sympathetic elites. There was also a small number that, despite opposing Catholicism, also had their own plans for reviving such notions as the personification and imparting of intentionality to “Heaven,” who went even further by “divinizing” Confucius in hopes of establishing a new Confucian religion. These Chinese elites, regardless of their attitude towards Catholicism, actually all had one point in common: they believed that “Heaven” was a supreme ruler who possessed the qualities of intention and personality. Under these conditions, Confucianism was easily “religionized” and began to tend further towards becoming a school of “Venerating Heaven.” One of the first scholars to become aware of the question of the “religionization” of Confucianism during the late Ming was Yu Yingshi 余英时. Yu felt that this transformation had begun with Wang Yangming 王阳明 (1472–1579). Wang’s ideas about the “extension of innate goodness” and claims that “everyone in the streets is a sage” had led Confucianism from a “political orientation” towards a “social orientation,” while his disciple Wang Gen 王艮 (1483–1541) even more emphatically stressed that the aim of learning and discussing the Way should be “the quotidian benefit of the common people,” taking a further step towards establishing a new pathway into common society, with the result that it was among the peasants and merchants that many of his most talented and influential followers emerged; by the later period of the Taizhou school (泰州学派), Yan Jun 颜钧 (1504–1596), He Xinyin 何心隐 (1517–1579) and others saw themselves as “Masters of the Confucian Sect,” disseminating the means for “saving the world” as religious personas with the attitude of a spiritual teacher. All at once, they had transformed a moral practice into a type of religious experience, causing Confucian learning to begin to shift so rapidly and significantly from a focus on “society” to “religion” that it astounded figures like Wang Shizhen 王世贞 and Huang Zongxi 黄宗羲 and forfeited the possibility of a legitimate status for Wang Yangming’s teachings within official Confucianism.4 The Taiwan-based scholar Wang Fansen goes further by the Complete Collection of Translated Writings], Yang Tingyun 杨廷筠, ed., in Faguo guojia tushuguan Ming Qing Tianzhujiao wenxian 法国国家图书馆明清天主教文献 [Ming-Qing Catholic Documents from the French National Library], ed., Zhong Mingdan 钟鸣旦 [Nicolas Standaert], Du Dingke 杜鼎克 [Ad Dudink], and Meng Xi 蒙曦 [Nathalie Monnet] (Taibei: Lishi xueshe, 2009), 6:335. 4 Yu Yingshi 余英时, “Shi shang hudong yu ruxue zhuanxiang: Ming Qing shehui shi yu sixiang shi zhi yi mianxiang 士商互动与儒学转向 [Literati and Merchant Interactions and the Change in Direction for Confucianism: The Face of

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pointing out that during the transition from the late Ming to the early Qing, “the religionization of Confucianism was a phenomenon,” one accompanied by the “movement of keeping ledgers of merits and demerits among the schools of Confucianism.”5 Besides these “ledgers of merit and demerit” (功过格), this trend was also manifest in such forms of ceremony as using “records of demerits” (记过格) (Liu Zongzhou 刘宗周), “wall writing” (书壁) and “daily registers” (日谱) (Yan Yuan 颜元 and Li Gong 李塨), “daily records” (日记) (Chen Hu 陈瑚 and Lu Shiyi 陆世仪), and “elbow plackards” (肘后牌) (Li Yong 李颙).6 Wang notes that in these ledgers and daily registers the phrase “beseeching Heaven” (告天) appeared continuously, always showing up when there was finally some need to make entreaty to an objective, omniscient, and omnipotent judge and supervisor; usually, after beseeching Heaven, these registers, ledgers, and the like still had to be burned in order to effect a sense of “closing the case.” Nevertheless, all of these external ceremonies lacked one key arrangement. Since there was no specific commonly-shared ritual method established for permanently cleansing practitioners and expiating their sins and transgressions, the ultimate rationale of these ceremonies really only rested in their status as a supplement and extension of the internal personal self-cultivation of the individual. With their fundamental character always subsumed under the moral self-regulation of the individual, such practices could not easily be extended into a common way of life for the literati class as a whole and naturally even less so could they become a template for the lifestyle of the common populace.7 The present author feels that the practices of “beseeching Heaven” described above, either directly or indirectly, were on the whole very much influenced and colored by Catholicism.8 As it can be seen, the “religionization of Confucianism” during the late Ming and early Qing was actually comprised by two distinct paths of development: the Taizhou school was an extension of Wang Yangming’s teachings, while the teachings of “beseeching Heaven” possibly showed the influence of Catholicism, or at least were colored by contact with it. Very early on there were already scholars who had noted the latter phenomenon and linked it to Catholicism, such as the Chinese Jesuit Ma Xiangbo 马相伯 (1840–1939). After

5 6 7 8

Ming-Qing Social and Intellectual History],” Shi yu Zhongguo wenhua 士与中国文化 [The Literati and Chinese Culture] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin, 2003), 556–564. Wang, Wan Ming sixiang shi lun, 52–88. Ibid. Ibid., 118–85. See Liu Yunhua 刘耘华, Qing qian zhong qi jiannan wenren yingdui tianzhujiao wenhua zhi yanjiu 清前中期江南文人应对天主教文化之研究 [Researches on the Accommodation of Southern Literati to Catholicism in the Early and Middle Qing Dynasty] (Shanghai:

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reading the Record of an Appeal to Heaven《吁天录》by Li Yong (styled Erqu 二曲, 1627–1705), Ma conjectured, “I suspect that the gentleman-knight Li Erqu, while he was certainly deeply involved in the study of the Way, had also encountered our Heavenly teachings, but where had he heard of them? If not, why do his sayings resemble our Heavenly teachings so much?”9 There was also the Theory of Confucianism Erected Three Hundred Years Ago《三百年前 的建立孔教论》, written by Chen Shouyi 陈受颐 (1899–1978), which used the example of the Qing Bureau Discussions of the Classics《清暑经谈》by Wang Qiyuan 王启元 (born ca. 1559), a scholar from Liuzhou 柳州 in Guangxi 广 西 province who earned the jinshi (进士) degree in 1622 and served in official capacity as an inspector at the Hanlin Academy 翰林院 during the reign of the Ming Tianqi 天启 Emperor, to ask if Wang was inspired by Catholicism to establish a spiritual Confucian religion.10 In the present author’s view, by the time of the early Qing dynasty the mainstream of the “religionization of Confucianism” was represented by a tide of “Venerating Heaven.” On the one hand, this differed from the Taizhou school’s attempt at “religionization” (which was merely an extension of Confucian learning itself), yet, on the other hand it, since it was very widespread and most of its promoters were serious and accomplished members of the literati, it does not seem excessive to call it an intellectual “tide.” Many figures of extraordinary reputation were involved, with Sun Qifeng 孙奇逢 (1584–1675) representing the north-central part of the country, Li Yong (1627–1705) representing the northwest, and Lu Shiyi and Chen Hu representing the south; besides them, famous Neo-Confucian officials such as Wei Yijie 魏裔介 (1616–1686), Wei Xiangshu 魏象枢 (1617–1687), Tang Bin 汤斌 (1627–1687), Li Guangdi 李光地 (1642–1718), Xu Sanli 许三礼 (1625–1691), and well-known scholars like Huang Zongxi (1610–1695), Li Gong (1659–1733), and Xie Wenjian 谢文洊 (1616–1682) all held the idea or consciousness of “Venerating Heaven,” either explicitly or implicitly. These figures could be called the greatest, most renowned names of the early Qing intellectual world, thus we can assume that during the reigns of the Qing Shunzhi 顺治 and Kangxi 康熙 emperors, the tide of “Venerating Heaven” at times even held the status of a “legitimate school of thought” 9 10

Ma Liang 马良, “Mo jing ji xu” 墨井集序 [Preface to The Well of Ink], in Ma Xiangbo ji 马相伯集 [Collected Writings of Ma Xiangbo], eds. Zhu Weizheng 朱维铮 and Li Tiangang 李天纲 (Shanghai: Fudan daxue, 1996), 99. Originally published in Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan 中央研究院历 史语言研究所集刊 [Central Research Institute History and Language Research Section Publications]  6, no. 2 (1936); later included in Chen Shouyi 陈受颐 Zhong xi wenhua jiaoliushi shi luncong [Collected Papers on the History and Affairs of Cultural Communication Between China and the West] (Taibei: Shangwu yin­ shuguan, 1970), 57–94.

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(显学). Surveying these figures’ writings as a whole, one finds that their thought had the following shared features: first, they believed that “Heaven” and the “Sovereign-on-High” (上帝) possessed the qualities of intention, feeling, and supreme authority; second, they believed that gods and spirits existed; third, they revered Wang Yangming’s teachings but did not repudiate the Cheng-Zhu school (程朱学派) (although a small number did not fit this criteria, for instance Li Guangdi, who revered the Cheng-Zhu school, but disparaged that of LuWang (陆王学派); also, Lu Shiyi and Chen Hu revered Cheng-Zhu, but partially repudiated Lu-Wang); fourth, within the tradition of Confucian learning they especially commended the thought of such figures as Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒, Wang Tong 王通, and Shao Yong 邵雍 (who emphasized the significance of “Heaven’s” intentionality, supreme authority, and feeling); five, all of them maintained some contact with each other and even encouraged and tempered each other’s efforts (note: again, with the exception of Li Guangdi); sixth, most of them had intimate encounters with Westerners and Western learning, which is why the tide for “Venerating Heaven” had a relatively explicit Catholic background. As we know, in the “Study of the Principle of Reason” (理学) teachings of mainstream Song and Ming Neo-Confucianism, the meaning of “Venerating Heaven” had already been arranged according to a naturalistic understanding, while the ancient texts’ concept of “Heaven” as possessing intention and feeling had accordingly been greatly diminished. With this in mind, the tide of “Venerating Heaven” that appeared in the late Ming and early Qing clearly possessed the character of a restructuring of thought. 2

“Venerating Heaven” and the Restructuring of Early Qing Literati Thought: a Case Study of Xu Sanli and Others

Here, the cases of Xu Sanli, Xie Wenjian, Lu Shiyi, and Chen Hu will be taken up to interpret their notions of “Venerating Heaven” and the currents internally relevant to each of their systems’ reconstructions of literati thought, since these figures have so far received relatively little attention from scholars, even though “Heaven” inhabits a pivotal, key position in each of their intellectual systems. In addition, there are several literati figures, such as Huang Zongxi, Sun Qifeng, and others, who, although serious and influential in the early Qing, did not make “Venerating Heaven” the central axis of their thought, therefore discussion on them will be included in a later section of this chapter on other theories. Individual analyses of the circumstances surrounding the construc tion of the thought of Xu and each of the others will be undertaken in the following manner:

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1) By carefully sorting through each of these figures’ writings, it can be asserted that each of them assigned an intentional, feeling, and supremely authoritative “Heaven” to a pivotal key position in their systems of thought, therefore the constituent factors distinguishing the thought of each are organized accordingly. In the case of Xu Sanli, the core of his thought resided in utilizing a rite of “beseeching Heaven” to re-organize the relations between Heaven and mankind, therefore his teachings can be called the “Study of Beseeching Heaven” (告天之学), for which the main axis was “Heaven,” appearing as a god with intention and supreme authority, or what he sometimes called the “Sovereign-on-High” (上帝) and the “Divine Emperor” (帝). On the one hand, Xu offered a new reassessment of the entire system of Confucian orthodoxy according to his notions, while on the other hand, he utilized this line of thinking to form a completely interconnected and well-ordered system of thought, which had the following specific qualities: i. In Xu’s system, the “Principle of Reason” (理) of the Cheng-Zhu school of Neo-Confucianism and the “heart/mind” (心) of the Lu-Wang school were transformed into sequential first order concepts. Accordingly, the “supreme ultimate” (太极) and “inherent nature” (性) or “innate knowledge of good” (良知) and “mind-self” (心体), which had the status of being primary entities in the systems of the Cheng-Zhu and Lu-Wang schools were now given a secondary place, all becoming defined as, “that which Heaven has bestowed upon me,” with their original source now located in “Heaven.” ii. On this basis, Xu reinterpreted certain important concepts and propositions. For instance, in his perspective, proof for the notion of the goodness of inherent nature should not be deduced from the experiential world of humanity itself (as in the theoretical argument offered by Mencius), but as something descending directly from a transcendental “Heaven,” formed as flowing from this source. This was because: first, “Heaven” is entirely “good” and, unlike humanity, lacks the dualistic capacity to be either good or evil (in other words, because of humanity’s “evil,” it cannot be assumed that humans possess “innate goodness”); second, since Heaven and humanity are comprised of the same matter and same body, just like parents and offspring, then although they are distinct from each other according to their sequence of primary origin and second ary emission, their basic character is still the same. Obviously, since the

u Sanli , “Beishan wenda [Inquiries of the Northern Mountain],” Tianzhong Xuzi zhengxue heyi ji [Combined Collection of the

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two propositions contained here that “Heaven and humanity are comprised of one matter and one body” and that “Heaven” is entirely good are beyond experience, therefore to take them as preconditions was based on faith and not on reason. By commencing this way, Xu Sanli undeniably transformed the Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucian system’s ontologically concrete concept of “(fundamental) inherent nature” ((本) 性) into a concept without ontological concreteness. iii. Since “Heaven” has intention and awareness, therefore what the combination of the terms “Heaven” and “Heavenly Mind” (天心) implied was that humans had to “situate themselves according to Heaven” (以天 自处), so that one could experience and recognize “Heaven’s Principle of Reason” (天理) in every situation and achieve the “Heavenly virtue” (天德) of harmonizing the human with Heaven. Xu’s theory based on “Venerating Heaven” also produced a new explanation of the Confucian “teaching of being vigilant when alone” (慎独说). This notion originally meant that one should maintain particular prudence and caution when alone, very much displaying the self-regulative character of ancient Chinese moral practice. Yet, placed in a state of sightless and soundless seclusion, confinement, or solitude, how could one really endure total darkness without moral deviation? Xu felt there was no better way to guarantee this than truly acknowledging “Heaven’s mandate” and constantly contemplating the Sovereign-on-High in one’s heart and mind. Since “the Sovereign-on-High is watching you,” always inspecting you, what is described as “sightless and soundless” is actually “with sight and sound,” for among all of the myriad things between Heaven and Earth, there is nothing outside of the view of the Sovereign-on-High. This is why Xu suspected that the techniques that were specifically promoted from the time of Song Neo-Confucianism on, no matter whether they were “thoughts of circumspection and caution,” “concentrating on the one without deviation,” or “maintaining constant thoughts with clarity,” were all tantamount to relying solely on one’s own strength and were not reliable for reaching the realm of Heavenly virtue, of “sitting to the point of harmonizing with Heaven and Earth.”12

12

Politics and Learning of Master Xu of Tianzhong] (Facsimile of Kangxi woodblock edition), in Si ku quanshu cunmu congshu 四库全书存目丛书 [Series of Collected Extant Titles of the Complete Library of Four Treasuries], Zi bu 子部 [Masters Section] (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1996), 165:505.

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iv.

While humanity’s undertaking of Heaven’s mandate was equivalent to the Confucian gentleman’s (君子) self-aware acceptance of being conscious of the Heavenly Heart/Mind’s calling, its inner meaning included such human moral activities as cultivating and maintaining self-examination and self-criticism, as well as expanding benevolence. At the same time, it was also manifest on the level of social considerations in the assumption of affairs and completion of duties, and in the meritorious establishment of a career, which on the whole all amounted to “humanity’s harmonizing with Heaven.” Nevertheless, since people all reach different levels, the realms to which they can ascend also all have their distinctions. A sage is undoubtedly the “most extreme model of humanity’s harmony with Heaven,” one of those who have achieved a realm of freedom represented by “situating themselves according to Heaven,” those who “experience and know the Heavenly Principle of Reason in every situation.”13 By comparison, Xie Wenjian, the early Qing founder of the “Mount Cheng School” (程山学派) in south-central China, declared himself in “awe of the Mandate of Heaven” (畏天命) and took this as the main precept of his teachings, as the key to the restructuring of Confucian thought in his intellectual edifice, of which the following can be said: i. The “Mandate of Heaven” included the “innate knowledge of good,” “Heavenly Reason,” and “fundamental inherent nature,” these being the “mandates” that had issued from a “Heaven” possessing feeling, intention, and supreme authority, which was the cause of all things and represented the unity of all things in one entity. However, differently than Xu Sanli, for Xie Wenjian “Heaven” was “Heavenly Reason,” “innate knowledge of good,” and “fundamental inherent nature” combined, with neither of these ranked higher than any other. It was therefore the original source of the “great collective” (大公), that which existed because of things and that which was immanently present within the encounter with affairs and duties. It could be said that since all people and all things had only one “Sovereign-on,” therefore the “inherent nature” of both people and things was in perfect, complete abundance. As for Heaven being the “supreme authority,” since Xie made no special indications, it could not be proposed that “it gathered everything up into the highest point” to make it the reason for the “impetus” of all things (meaning that Xie denied



u Sanli, “Wuwu wenda [Inquiries of the Wuwu Year],” Tianzhong Xuzi zhengxue heyi ji, 165:571; “Lixue wenda [Inquiries on the Study of the Principle of Reason],” ibid., 165:487.

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Catholicism’s “teaching of the creation”).14 Nevertheless, Xie also differed from Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, because in his re-interpretation of the “Mandate of Heaven,” he restored the significance of intentionality, feeling, and ruling authority to Heaven. ii. “Heaven” bestowed a “heart/mind” of “spiritual brilliance” only on humanity, a “heart/mind” with the capacity for “unique knowledge.” Xie’s discussion of the relationship of knowledge to action emphasized knowing first and acting second as a “sequence of entering into virtue,” stating, “first there is true knowledge and sight, and then there can be true undertaking; otherwise what is called undertaking will only be partially righteous, will easily dissipate and perish, and will definitely be of no use.”15 The core meaning of what Xie called “true knowledge and sight” was “knowing the Mandate of Heaven.” The “Mandate of Heaven” was in turn the “fundamental sources as they were in themselves” of humanity and learning. Why must humanity “be in awe” facing the “Mandate of Heaven?” It was because this “heart/mind” had unique knowledge of the “presence” (real existence) of the “Mandate of Heaven,” its “presence” not being just ordinary existence, but meant rather “to completely fill every place,” signifying that there is nowhere that it is not present. Someone had to first know “Heaven” and its “mandate,” before they could “be a person” and “become human,” therefore Xie wrote: “If one does not know that there is Heaven, then one cannot be a human being.”16 Furthermore, in the middle of the passage from “knowing Heaven” to “being a human being,” there must be an experience of “awe” and of “fear.”17 For the aim of “becoming human” to be realized, one had to pass through the heteronomous stage of “Heaven’s inspection” (天监). iii. “Heaven” had mandated an “innate knowledge of the good” and a “fundamental innate nature” for all of humanity, so while bearing the burden of the “Mandate of Heaven” was “a duty on the part of the inherent nature” of all people, the “Mandate of Heaven” was not something to be shouldered separately and alone. Rather, it was there in the encounter with any “thing,” so that the practical morality of “being in awe of the Mandate 14

15 16 17

Xie Wenjian 谢文洊, “Ri lu 日录 [Daily Records],” Xie Chengshan ji: shiba juan, fulu san juan, nianpu yi juan 谢程山集十八卷附录三卷年谱一卷 [Collected Writings of Xie Cheng-Mountain: Eighteen Volumes, with Three Appendix Volumes, and One Volume of Biographical Chronology], juan 1, in Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, Jibu 集部 [Miscellaneous Section], 209:39–40. Xie, “Ri lu,” 209:37. Ibid., 209:15. Ibid., 209:1

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of Heaven” was not just an empty, lofty sermon on character and fate, but was something inherent in the quotidian utility of social relations, or what could be called “encountering duty” with “awe.” By comparison with Xu Sanli and Xie Wenjian, the “Venerating Heaven” teachings of Lu Shiyi, Chen Hu and others of the “Loudong School” (娄东学派) had begun even earlier. According to Lu’s own account, his adoption of “Venerating Heaven” as “the heart/mind method of entering sagehood,” came to him as a result of sudden awareness in the midst of travelling one day in the ninth year of the Ming Chongzhen 崇祯 Emperor’s reign (1636), after which he “came to know the word ‘veneration’ anew.”18 What Lu actually meant by “came to know” referred to “entirely renewing the knowledge” of traditional Confucian learning in the light of the idea of “Venerating Heaven.” In his view, whether a person had already become a sage or a worthy depended on seeing if their heart/ mind had already united with “Heavenly reason” or not, and whether they could unite with Heavenly reason depended at its very foundation on whether they could “constantly recall that the Sovereign-on-High is watching you”: The two words ‘Venerating Heaven’ are particularly grave and urgent; If you want to venerate Heaven, you must always have the thought that the Sovereign-on-High is watching you, so that the world of your convictions can become sharply clear and discerning;19 Heaven is equivalent to the Principle of Reason, heart/mind is equivalent to Heaven, so striving to know how to make the heart/mind accord completely with Heaven and with the Principle of Reason without deviation, that is true veneration; otherwise, it is merely disaster and fortune fluctuating in fearful movement.20 If one only has thoughts of disaster and fortune while maintaining a reverent attitude towards the Heavenly Principle of Reason, then that is simply because 18

19

20

Lu Shiyi 陆世仪, “Shu Huaiyun wenda hou 书《淮云问答》后 [Afterword to the Book Inquires of Huaiyun],” Futing xiansheng wenji 桴亭先生文集 [Collected Writings of Sir Futing], juan 6 (Facsimile of Tang Shouqi 唐受祺 woodblock edition of Lu Futing xian­ sheng yishu 陆桴亭先生遗书 [Surviving Books of Sir Lu Futing], Qing Guangxu 25 [1899]), in Xuxiu siku quanshu 续修四库全书 [Continued and Revised Complete Library of the Four Treasuries], Ji bu 集部 [Miscellaneous Section] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1995), 1398: 516. Lu Shiyi, Sibian lu jiyao 思辨录辑要 [Essential Selections from the Record of Speculations], ed. Zhang Boxing 张伯行, juan 3, in Wenyuan ge Si ku quanshu 四库全书 [Wenyuan ge Edition of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries], Zi bu 子部 [Masters Sections] (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshu guan, 1983), 724:35. 2, 724:23.

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of fear and cannot be considered truly uniting with Heaven, nor “truly venerating” it (merely being motivated by “fear” is not enough). Truly venerating “must go from being in a place of awe and fear to a place of joy” (with the place that it comes from being the same), while “a place of joy” represents bringing Heaven and humanity, antiquity and contemporaneity into communion, making the feelings deep in one’s heart clear and bright, sober and calm, like the fresh and lively state of sitting in a spring breeze. Without reaching this state, but still straining to insist that one is “being reverent” can cause one to plunge deep into a “wooden and rotten” state and will not vanquish one’s displeasure and anguish. This shows that the difference between Lu’s conception and that of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism resided in the fact that here “veneration” included “Heaven’s inspection,” that is it resided in making “the heart/ mind able to face spiritual brilliance and face the Sovereign-on-High in every moment.” As a result, the “veneration” of Lu Shiyi was a type of moral sentiment possessing a certain degree of heteronomy.21 On the question of the inner meaning of “Venerating Heaven,” Chen Hu completely agreed with Lu Shiyi and didn’t have much of a different view of his own, but his more important contribution was shown in his designation of ceremonial guidelines for “Venerating Heaven.” 2) In the designation of ceremonial guidelines for “Venerating Heaven,” the figures mentioned above all had one point in common: they all more or less strove to combine moral practice with external ceremonial conduct. Xu Sanli’s efforts in this capacity were the most remarkable. He used administrative resources to construct a tower for beseeching Heaven directly behind the seat of Haining 海宁 county, on the northeast side of which he built the Haichang Lecture Hall (海昌讲院). Every day at dawn and dusk, Xu himself performed rites of beseeching Heaven at the tower and arranged for local scholars to lecture on the Confucian classics every month; the most solemn and auspicious ceremony was the rite of beseeching Heaven held every year on the first day of spring, for which Xu assembled the head of the local administrative yamen (衙门), the prestigious elder members of the gentry, and county scholars and students together to execute a grand, elaborate ceremony to beseech Heaven according to a manual written by Xu himself, entitled the Method of Entreaty at the Tower for Beseeching Heaven《告天楼告法》. This text mainly used records from the “Proceedings of Government in Different Months”《月令》section of the Book of Rites《礼记》, in combination with 21

Lu Shiyi, “Da Yang Liangwen lun jujing qiongli shu 答杨亮闻论居敬穷理书 [Text of a Discourse on Residing in Reverence and Impoverishing Reason in Answer to Yang Liangwen],” Futing xiansheng wenji, juan 1, in Xuxiu siku quanshu, 1398:449.

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an amalgam of two divinatory theories on the Book of Changes《易经》, the “hexagram-matter theory” (卦气说) of Jing Fang 京房 (77–37 BCE) and the “image-and-number theory” (象数论) of Shao Yong, to show people that the human body is completely interrelated with the physical laws of Heaven’s functions and the seasonal changes, and that sagehood depends on all of their drinking, eating, and living arrangements, with every aspect of their speech and behavior being in intimate harmony with the “Heavenly heart/mind.”22 Under the guidance of Lu Shiyi, a group of literati scholar-officials in the city of Taicang 太仓 treated “Venerating Heaven” as a ladder for “advancing virtue through repentance,” having drawn its technical aspects from Yuan Huang’s 袁黄 (1533–1606) “ledgers of merit and demerit” and Liu Zongzhou’s “(registers of) witness,” supplemented by various methods such as holding large and small lecture meetings, making “daily records” for people to encourage each other, and even having people display their good deeds and indiscretions together in “virtue examination meetings.” An extant text by Lu Shiyi, entitled the Book of a Record for Learning Purpose《志学录一卷》, records Lu’s daily accounts of details related to the improvement of his virtue from the first day of the third month to the thirtieth day of the twelfth month of the fourteenth year of the Chongzhen Emperor’s reign (1641), including such things as his good and bad deeds, his friends’ admonishments to each other for their indiscretions, and small summaries for ten days;23 Chen Hu’s Introductory Text for the Study of Sagehood《圣学入门书》took such methods of examining virtue a step further by implementing them among a group of brethren and the members of their inner-quarters (families), requiring them to make a record each day in the form of a ledger of all their good and bad deeds and moments of reverence and negligence before going to bed, so their progress could be examined twice each month at a small review and once a year at a large one. On the occasion of these “small and large reviews,” they would always, “first fast for three days, burning incense and beseeching Heaven.”24 At the beginning of the Qing 22

23



Xu Sanli, “Gaotian lou zaofa 告天楼告法 [Method for Creating a Tower for Beseeching Heaven],” Tianzhong Xuzi zhengxue heyi ji, 165:548–552; See also Xu Sanli, “Cong tian dingxian hou tushuo 从天定宪候图说 [Illustrated Account of Following Heaven to Establish a Charter],” ibid., 165:552–562. Lu Shiyi, Zhi xue lu yi juan 志学录 [A Record for Learning Purpose: One Volume], (Facsimile of Qing Daoguang 15 year [1820] edition), in [Three Volumes of Collected Anthologies] (Taibei: Xin wenfeng chuban gongsi, 1997), 15:173–224. Hu , “Shengxue rumen shu [Introductory Text for the Study of Sagehood],” Shengxue rumen shu sanjuan [Three Books of Introductory Texts for the Study of Sagehood] (Wuxing Liu shi ke Liu yu cao tang congshu ben

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dynasty, this practice had quite a large influence upon the literati population of the eastern Wu region. Xie Wenjian and the “Mount Cheng School” seem to have never promoted daily records of merit and demerit, nor ritual virtue examinations according to regularly timed judgements, being more concerned with the sagely learning to be gained by experiencing the “awe of Heaven’s mandate” and its implementation within Confucian lecture meetings and individual practice. Xie’s Three Scrolls of Daily Records《日录三卷》mostly contains discussion about the individual personal experience of Confucian learning and how to theorize such study in concerted effort with others, while lectures were the most important form of public activity; Xie Wenjian’s “ study of being in awe of Heaven’s mandate” and the “Mount Cheng School” went on to arouse the enthusiastic response of such intellectual circles as the “Nine Masters of the Hall of the Book of Changes” (易堂九子) and the “Cuiwei School” (翠微学派) that were widely renowned at the time, as well as the “Mount Ji School” (髻山学派) that had flourished in Jiujiang’s Xingzi 九江星子 county since the Song dynasty.25 3) Whether directly or indirectly, the examples of the study of “Venerating Heaven” discussed above all possessed some relation to Catholicism. Among the three schools covered above, Xie Wenjian’s establishment of “the awe of Heaven’s mandate” as the main precept of his teaching obviously showed a type of oppositional impetus in relation to Catholicism. Xie’s Three Scrolls of Daily Records accurately recounted his debate with his hometown friend, the famous early Qing Catholic convert Liu Ning 刘凝 (1620–1709), around the topic of the “attributes of the Sovereign-on-High” (Xie completely denied such “true principles of enlightenment” as “the Sovereign-on-High had been born in the world”). He also very positively evaluated the book the Seven Overcomings《七克》by the Jesuit Diego de Pantoja, saying of it that, although in sentiment it feigns generosity, all of its many accounts and myriad notions are revealing to the utmost and, with scarcely any obscure allusions, it seems exceptionally well-crafted. Each time, in the middle of something tricky or playful, it arouses like ice-water being poured down one’s back, and suddenly you are awakened with a shock, its flavor being

25

氏刻留余草堂丛书本 edition, Qing Xuantong to early Republican era [1908–?]), juan 2, in Si ku quanshu cunmu congshu, Zi bu, 19:904. Liu Yunhua 刘耘华, “Qing chu ‘Chenshan zhi xue’ yu xixue: yi Xie Wenjian we zhongxin 清初“程山之学” [The Early Qing “Mount Cheng School” and Western Learning: A Study on Xie Wenjian],” [Historical Review] 1 (2011): 74–85.

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rather like that of Zhuangzi’s parables. Yet while Zhuangzi makes the reader drift, the Seven Overcomings startles them.26 Therefore, Xie himself “expunged the passages in it that were incorrect and kept a copy of it on the desk, to aid in self-cultivation and introspection.”27 The relatively deep knowledge of Western astronomy, calendrics, geography, and firearms that was touched upon in Lu Shiyi’s Record of Speculations《思 辨录》reflected a level attainable only with significant devotion of studious energy, however, it seems that he did not have direct contact with any missionaries; Chen Hu was the one who had intimate encounters with Catholics, since he had two followers that were famous converts, Wu Li 吴历 (1632–1718), one of the “six master painters of the early Qing,” and Sun Zhimi 孙致弥 (1642–1709), a specialist in the Book of Odes with an appointment at the imperial Hanlin Academy 翰林院. Sun came from a clan of Catholic converts of longstanding reputation (his grandfather was Sun Yuanhua 孙元化, who played an important role in the dramatic transition from Ming to Qing dynastic rule), while Wu came from the town of Changshu 常熟, in Jiangsu 江苏 province, where Catholic belief was a very pervasive custom. Nevertheless, although Wu Li, also known by his sobriquet Yushan 渔山, claimed to “have been baptized in youth,” he resolutely abandoned following “(The Lord of) Heaven” in the fourteenth or fifteenth year of the Kangxi 康熙 Emperor’s reign (1675–76), making this author think that Chen Hu’s teaching of “Venerating Heaven” actually succeeded in its objective of positive promotion.28 No matter the case, Chen Hu definitely had quite a significant understanding of Catholicism, despite the fact that it had been revealed to him only indirectly. The origins of Xu Sanli’s teaching of “Venerating Heaven,” like that of Lu, Chen and the others, was never directly explained by him in writing, but judging from things like his following’s lineage of teacher transmission and the relationships of its members it can be indirectly conjectured that Catholicism had the effect of promoting the influence or coloring the impact of Xu’s ideas.29 26 27 28

29

Xie Wenjian, “Qi ke yi xu 七克易·序 [Preface to the Expurgated Seven Overcomings],” Xie Chengshan ji: shiba juan, fulu san juan, nianpu yi juan, juan 14, in Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, Ji bu, 209:251. Ibid. Liu Yunhua 刘耘华, “Xinglü zhong de jingshen qiusuo zhe: Wu Yushan zhi xinyang shanbian tanxi 行旅中的精神求索者：吴渔山之信仰嬗变探析 [A Sojourning Seeker of Spirit: Investigations on the Evolution of Wu Yushan’s Beliefs],” Daofeng: Jidujiao wenhua pinlun 道风: 基督教文化评论 [Logos and Pneuma: Chinese Journal of Theology] 36, no. 2 (2012): 261–88. Liu Yunhua, “Yi ‘tian’ li yi: Xu Sanli jingtian sixiang zaitan 依“天”立义: 许三礼敬天思想 再探 [Relying on “Heaven” to Erect Righteousness: A ReInvestigation of Xu Sanli’s Idea

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Conclusion

The Chinese literati of the late Ming that “studied endeavoring for the Lord of Heaven,” who for the most part were united in feeling that they faced a situation of deteriorating end times, intended to utilize their learning to boost the failing, disintegrating heart of mankind. However, those that ultimately achieved their aim of managing the world and saving the day, such as Wang Qiyuan, who attempted to utilize certain writings to establish a type of Confucian religion, were very rare at the time. By the time of the early Qing dynasty, the situation was much different. Some literati scholar-officials who had never converted to Catholicism came to believe that “Heaven” possessed the supreme authority of intention and feeling, organizing and restructuring their systems of thought around these convictions. This naturally resulted in their differentiation from the orthodox Cheng-Zhu school of Neo-Confucianism, which in short means that their main distinction from orthodox Neo-Confucianism was to give a new dimension to such leading methods of contemplative selfcultivation as silent meditation, introspection, and self-restraint, in which “Heaven” participated as a supervisory “transcendental other;” furthermore, through a process of ritualization, “Venerating Heaven” was externalized and made practical, which to a certain degree resulted in imparting certain heteronomous characteristics to the concept; however, from another angle, the “Heaven” that they configured as a “transcendental other” was too broad and vague in meaning. While “Heaven” always inhabited an axial position in the thought of the aforementioned figures, in each case its precise character was rather distinct: among all of them, only Xu Sanli’s “Heaven” possessed a certain degree of ontological significance, while the others all limited “Heaven” to the practical level of being an instrument of technical realization. What’s more, the notions of “Heaven,” “Heaven’s mandate,” and the “Heavenly Emperor” (Sovereign-on-High) of each (again with the exception of Xu) were always intermingled with and indistinct from the established noumenal concepts of Song and Ming Neo-Confucianism, such as the “Heavenly Principle of Reason,” the “supreme ultimate,” “fundamental inherent nature,” and “innate knowledge of good;” on the one hand, they believed that “Heaven” had feeling, intention, and sensation, while on the other hand they steadfastly denied that “Heaven” possessed any extraordinarily unique attributes of supreme authority, such as being the creator of all things or of transcending matter as the only of Venerating Heaven],” Hanyu Jidujiao xueshu lunping 汉语基督教学术论评 [Critical Review of Chinese-Language

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truly existent being. To put it another way, in their hearts and minds, “Heaven,” the “Sovereign-on-High,” and such concepts were that which existed because of things and that which was manifest because of things, always remaining a functional vessel for the Way, something expressed through the notion that all people and things share in one supreme ultimate. This type of thought was the main current of the early Qing dynasty tide for “Venerating Heaven.” The situation shows that if there is a total conversion without true belief, then a fundamental transformation and restructuring of thought cannot be accomplished. Huang Zongxi, Sun Qifeng, and Li Yong were the most renowned, great Neo-Confucian exemplars of the early Qing. Therefore, it is also worth trying to recount their “view of the Sovereign-on-High,” in order to further clarify that the mainstream of teachings about “Venerating Heaven” indeed placed the significance of the intentionality and feeling of “Heaven” on the level of a technical theory of practical realization and self-cultivation, and only very marginally took it as a singular, unique, and absolute ontological entity. First, there is Huang Zongxi. His early view of the Sovereign-on-High seemed to have come out of the same trajectory as Liu Zongzhou, that is, he explained Heaven and the Sovereign-on-High as equivalent to the Principle of Reason and denied it any suggestion of personality: Between Heaven and Earth there is only an area permeated by the material force (qi 气), which gives birth to humans and all things; human sense is born of material force, the heart/mind is the place in the material force where spirit resides, while that which is explained by the phrase the material force of knowledge is situated on high; the heart/mind and the body flow and move together, and when its flowing action has organization, this is called inherent nature; … although the human body is just the flowing actions of one and the same material force, in the midst of its actions, there must be a supreme authority; this supreme authority is not outside of its flowing actions, but is what organizes it; that which happens when it changes are called flowing actions, while that which can be seen when it doesn’t change is called its supreme authority.30

30

Huang Zongxi 黄宗羲, “Mengzi shishuo. Danglu yu qizhang 孟子师说·当路于齐章 [My Teacher’s Teachings on Mencius: On the Road to Qi Chapter],” in Huang Zongxi quan ji 黄宗羲全集 [Complete Writings of Huang Zongxi], eds. Shen Shanhong 沈善洪 and Wu Guang 吴光

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That which is the Sovereign-on-High is close to that which comprises human reason; humankind is one creature among the myriad things; supposing it was the case that Heaven had knowledge, and ruled and commanded all that was born, then there may never have been the round-headed, flat-footed being with ears and nose that eats and breaths like humans; today what is called the divine emperor to make people endeavor for heaven, is proposed for the purpose of bringing Heaven closer, to make it more intimate and familial; in human families, there is no human relation like the father, thus King Wen of the Zhou dynasty applied the notion of the Sovereign-on-High.31 By saying “that which is the Sovereign-on-High is close to that which comprises human reason,” Huang means that in order to get people to serve Heaven (through their feelings), a name that is revered among them must be projected upon high heaven, following the type of comparative logic of metaphorically projecting the near on the far. In this case, the “Sovereign-on-High” doesn’t really possess personal intention, but is only the utmost beneficent and unchanging “order” that exists in the midst of the “greatly profound and never ceasing” movement of everything. Thirty years after he authored My Teacher’s Teachings on Mencius《孟子 师说》, at the age of eighty years old, Huang Zongxi wrote Discourse Against Heresy《破邪论》, making an explicit statement on the question of the Sovereignon-High. By this time, his view of the Sovereign-on-High had already seen rather significant changes, the most important of which was that he now opposed discussing “Heaven” in terms of the Principle of Reason, but rather proposed that “Heaven” was equivalent to the “Sovereign-on-High,” with the concept now showing obvious shades of feeling and intention: These days when Confucian scholars speak of Heaven, they simply mean the Principle of Reason. Yet the Book of Changes says, “Heaven gives birth to humanity and all things,” while the Book of Odes says, “when Heaven declines, there is death and disaster,” because in the world of the unseen and mysterious, there really is a ruler over all. Otherwise, the four seasons would become reversed and chaotic, and humankind, birds, beasts, plants and trees would all be confused in a muddle and indistinguishable from each other. How could the truth of the rituals that the ancients established as the jiao sacrifices (郊祀) be taken merely as a story made up for enjoyment, something heard but not knowable? There must be 31

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something true and not meaningless in it, for wouldn’t it be wrong to speak emptily and meaninglessly in terms of the Principle of Reason?32 Here Huang clearly affirms the significance of “Heaven’s” intentionality and feeling, for which he accepts that “Venerating Heaven” can be used to promote practical moral efficacy.33 However, another side of this is that he also denies that the Sovereign-on-High or the soul can exist absolutely and solely on its own, since in Huang’s view, “Heaven” cannot be separate from the conditions of the yin and yang forces and the cycle of the four seasons, as it can only be present and manifest through things. Therefore, in Huang’s perspective, Catholicism can only be a “heretical teaching.” Next, there is Sun Qifeng (1584–1675). Sun was the teacher of Xu Sanli and much of the latter’s thought is entirely in accord with Sun’s, such as his high esteem for Shao Yong, his view of the soul, and his proposal for a technique of “experiencing the reason of Heaven constantly and everywhere,” all principles which would have come from Sun’s influence. On the fourth day of the third month in 1672, the twelfth year of the Kangxi Emperor’s reign, Sun discussed the question of the study of Heaven with Xu, who had sincerely asked his teacher for guidance on the issue, probably after the latter realized that it was ultimately the same as the study of sagehood. Sun wrote a letter in reply, offering his own understanding. It was recorded as the following: Having contemplated the “three aspirations” (三希) of Lianxi 濂溪 (Zhou Dunyi 周敦颐 1017–1073), they all amount to aspiring to reach Heaven above. What kind of place is Heaven? How can people get there? Lianxi’s comment was that, “from the age of fifteen I wanted to study,” and then went from, “wanting to study” to “knowing Heaven’s mandate,” then “hearing and according with it,” and then “following it with my mind/heart,” so that in moving, standing, sitting, and sleeping, he journeyed with Heaven at every moment, until he declared: “Now I know of Heaven!” Not everyone believed him. Zisi 子思 (483–402 BCE), all on his own and with no preparation, put down the word “Heaven’s mandate” without any pretense to do so, then put down the word “limit” (率), and then totally 32 33

Huang Zongxi, “Poxie lun. Shangdi 破邪论·上帝 [Discourse Against Heresy. The Sovereignon-High],” in Huang Zongxi quan ji, 1:195. This transformation was a result of the influence of Xu Sanli, see Liu Yunhua, 刘耘华, “Qing chu Ningbo wenren de xixue guan: yi Huang Zongxi wei zhongxin lai kaocha 清初 宁波文人的西学观：以黄宗羲为中心来考察 [An Early Qing Ningbo Literati View on Western Learning: A Case Study of Huang Zongxi],” Shi lin 史林 [Historical Review] 2

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and all at once, in an indescribable state, put down the word “center” (中) and the word “lone” (独), representing the true transmission of the teaching of “aspiring to Heaven.” Zengzi 曾子 (505–435 BCE) claimed that illuminating virtue was aspiring to Heaven. Perfect accordance with Heaven must be sought among things, such that the self, the heart, intention, knowledge, the family, the kingdom, and everything under Heaven are all considered things, while to examine means examining the spirit and thoughts, what is called to feel and achieve communion. The scholar doesn’t make his heart/mind serve things, but should always receive things with consideration, and since there is no matter which does not have its own inner share, they should always carefully be mindful to remain abstentious and watchful. A filial son should endeavor for family members, and one should be benevolent towards other people in order to serve Heaven, for originally there was no other divergent view.34 The phrases in Sun’s letter, “with no preparation,” “without any pretense,” and “in an indescribable state,” meant that Zisi’s “mandate of Heaven” was a continuation of Confucius’s “Heavenly learning,” which was something that descended directly down from an indescribable, incomprehensible, and unfathomable fundamental being, to pass through a “limit” and a “center” as it entered into the “things” of human endeavor, guiding and directing the “heart/mind,” as it was “examined” in order that its spirit could be felt, and thus make service to family and Heaven into one and the same effort. This kind of scholarly inquiry into “aspiring for Heaven” was very similar to Xu Sanli’s, however for “Heaven” to be a fundamental being ultimately required that “perfect accordance with it must be sought among things” and that the aim of “serving Heaven” should be accomplished within the human realm, which, simply stated, meant: First, things must be handled in perfect accordance, next they must aide in “illuminating luminous virtue.” When “serving Heaven” and “engaging with things” can be combined into one, that alone is the highest realm. In his Invitation for an Appeal to Heaven《吁天约》Li Yong himself wrote of burning incense twice every day to ritualize the beseeching of Heaven, yet it was only to request that “all endeavors may be in accord with the reason of Heaven.” Only when “Heaven” didn’t contradict the “Principle of Reason,” was it able to become “Heaven.” The present author has offered discussion of Li’s thought of “Venerating Heaven” elsewhere, so here it need not be discussed further.

Qifeng , “Fu Xu Youshan [In Response to Xu Youshan],” [Collected Writings of Sir Fufeng], ed. Zhu Maohan (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 87–88.

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Weiji’er Binuo 维吉尔·毕诺 [Virgile Pinot]. Zhongguo dui Faguo sixiang xingcheng de yingxiang 中国对法国哲学思想形成的影响 [La Chine et la formation de l’esprit philosophique en France, 1640–1740]. Translated by Geng Sheng 耿昇. Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2000. Xie Henai 谢和耐 [Jacques Gernet]. Zhongguo yu Jidujiao: Zhong xi wenhua de shouci zhuangji 中国与基督教 – 中西文化的首次撞击 [China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures]. Translated by Geng Sheng. Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2003. Xie Wenjian 谢文洊. Xie Chengshan ji: shiba juan, fulu san juan, nianpu yi juan 谢程山 集十八卷附录三卷年谱一卷 [Collected Writings of Xie Cheng-Mountain: Eighteen Volumes, with Three Appendix Volumes and One Volume of Biographical Chronology]. Vol. 209 of Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, Ji bu 集部 [Miscellaneous Section]. Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1996. Xu Sanli 许三礼. Tianzhong Xuzi zhengxue heyi ji 天中许子政学合一集 [Combined Collection of the Politics and Learning of Master Xu of Tianzhong]. Kangxi 康熙 woodblock edition. Vol. 165 of Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, Zi bu 子部 [Masters Section]. Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1996. Xu Sumin 许苏民. “Ming Qing zhi ji de ru ye duihua yu Zhongguo zhexue chuangxin 明清之际的儒耶对话与中国哲学创新 [The Dialogue Between Confucianism and Christianity and the Renewal of Chinese Philosophy During the Ming-Qing Transition].” Zhongguo shehui kexue 中国社会科学 [Chinese Social Science]  6 (2011): 26–40. Yu Yingshi 余英时. Shi yu Zhongguo wenhua 士与中国文化 [The Literati and Chinese Culture]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin, 2003. Zhang Xiping 张西平. Zhongguo yu Ouzhou zaoqi zongjiao he zhexue jiaoliu shi 中国与 欧洲早期宗教和哲学交流史 [A History of Early Religious and Philosophical Com munications Between China and Europe]. Beijing: Dongfang, 2001.

Chapter 5

Interpretation and Divergence: Responses to the Dissemination of Jesus’s Image in Ming and Qing Society Xiao Qinghe Abstract When Catholic missionaries came to the East in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, they constructed and disseminated the image of Jesus through such forms as paintings and Chinese-language writings. In important works such as Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty, the missionaries intentionally pointed out the dual nature of Jesus as both divine and human in order to disseminate this key Christological concept to their Chinese audience. However, the tensions that existed within the very image of Jesus constructed by the missionaries itself led opponents of the religion to form certain misunderstandings and distortions of Jesus’s image. The dismantling and criticism of the image of Jesus on the part of opponents to Christianity in China continued all the way up to the high tide of nationalism in the late Qing dynasty. The “fragmentation” that appeared in the missionaries’ construction of the image of Jesus was one of the main reasons leading to the appearance of such errors in Chinese people’s understanding of Jesus’s image. The dissemination of the image of Jesus and the process of its reflection in Ming and Qing society can thus be seen as a classic case of the transfiguration of Western knowledge or culture in the early modern Chinese context.

Keywords image of Jesus – Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty – cultural contact – interpretation/divergence

Ever1 since Catholic missionaries came to China in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, they employed such artistic creations as Western paintings and 1 Originally published as Xiao Qinghe 肖清和, “Quanshi yu qibian: Yesu xingxiang zai ming qing shehui li de chuanbo jiqi fanying 诠释与岐变 ,” Zongjiao yu lishi 1 (2013):219–244. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004532120_007

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sculptures as tools to help disseminate their religion. Alongside the increasing circulation of these artistic works, as well as the creation of written works on Catholicism in Chinese, the image of Jesus Christ began to be disseminated within Ming and Qing society, arousing different levels of response. Why was the image of Jesus constructed by these missionaries through illustrations and Chinese-language writings unable to elicit comprehension on the part of the Chinese literati, but rather lead to their misunderstanding, even to the point of becoming a target of attack? This study takes relevant original documents as sources for analyzing the characteristics and logic of the construction of Jesus’s image in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties; in particular, it takes the Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty《进呈书像》as a case for investigating the image of Jesus constructed by the missionaries and its influence. As this study finds, while Catholic missionaries succeeded in introducing the image of Jesus Christ during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties and although they attempted to explain that Jesus’s image was equivalent to that of the Lord of Heaven (天主), on several key issues, such as the passion of Jesus, there nevertheless always remained room for opponents and critics of the religion. While there have already been many accomplishments in historical scholarship on the transmission of Western religious art in China during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, this study pays attention to such relatively understudied texts as Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty, among others. Building on the findings of earlier scholarship, it sets out from the perspective of the construction and interpretation of the image of Jesus to offer a new examination of the formation, dissemination, and influence of the Catholic image of Jesus in the late Ming and early Qing.2 This study first analyzes how 2 On the history of the arrival of Western religious art in China during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties and the use of paintings for missionary work, see Xiang Da 向达, “Ming Qing zhi ji Zhongguo meishu suo shou xiyang zhi yingxiang 明清之际中国美术所 受西洋之影响 [The Influence of West on Chinese Art During the Ming-Qing Transition],” Dong fang zazhi 东方杂志 [The Eastern Miscellany]  27, no. 1 (1930): 19–38; Tang Kaijian 汤开建, “Ming Qing zhi ji Tianzhujiao yishu chuanru Zhongguo neidi kaolüe 明清之际天 主教艺术传入中国内地考略 [Investigation on the Transmission of Catholic Art to the Chinese Interior During the Ming-Qing Transition],” Jinan xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue) 济南学报 (哲学社会科学) [Jinan Scholarly Bulletin (Philosophy and Social Science)] 5 (2001): 123–131; Mo Xiaoye 莫小也, Shiqi shiba shiji chuanjiaoshi yu xihua dongjian 十七十八世纪传教士与西画东渐 [The Eastward Flow of Western Paintings and Missionaries in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries] (Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan, 2002); Gu Weimin 顾卫民, Jidu zongjiao yishu zaihua fazhan shi 基督宗教艺术在华 发展史 [The History of the Development of Christian Religious Art in China] (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 2005); Fang Hao 方豪 Zhong xi jiaotong shi [History of the Interaction Between China and the West] (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1983), 907–28; He Jun and Luo Qun , “Chuxiang jingjie yu wan Ming Tianzhujiao de chuanbo

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missionaries introduced the image of Jesus to China through such examples as the Holy Mother and Child and the holy icon of Jesus, examining how Jesus’s image was propagated via this iconography in Ming and Qing society; second, it analyzes the image of Jesus constructed by the missionaries through their Chinese-language writings, including the understanding and interpretation of Jesus’s image as contained in the writings of Chinese Catholic converts; next, it takes the Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty as a case study for investigating how the missionaries utilized methods of indigenization in their paintings to disseminate the image of Jesus; subsequently, it analyzes the reactions of the Ming and Qing literati to the image of Jesus, focusing particularly on the understanding of the image of Jesus on the part of opponents of the religion; last, this study offers a critical analysis of the successes and failures, as well as the method of interpretation, involved in the construction of the image of Jesus in Ming and Qing China. 1

The Lord of Heaven or Jesus: the Introduction and Dissemination of the Image of Jesus

Although the Jesuit missionaries that came to China in the late Ming dynasty intended to “gain China” “through a spiritual hunting expedition,” the policies tezheng《出像经解》与晚明天主教的传播特征 [The Illustrated Exegesis and the Characteristics of Late Ming Catholic Dissemination],” Xiandai zhexue 现代哲学 [Modern Philosophy] 4 (2008): 86–93; Pasquale M. d’Elia, Le origini dell’arte cristiana cinese, 1583–1640 (Roma: Reale Accademia d’Italia, 1939); Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China: Volume One (635–1800) (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2001), 809–822; Chen Hui-hung, “Encounters in Peoples, Religions, and Sciences: Jesuit Visual Culture in Seventeenth Century China,” Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 2004; Eugenio Menegon, “Jesuit Emblematica in China: The Use of European Allegorical Images in Flemish Engravings Described in the Kouduo richao (ca.1640),” Monumenta Serica 55 (2007): 389–437; Tang Kaijian and Chen Qingsong 陈 青松, “Ming Qing zhi ji Tianzhujiao de chuanbo yu xiyang zongjiao hua de guanxi 明清 之际天主教的传播与西洋宗教画的关系 [The Relationship between the Propagation of Catholicism and Western Religious Painting During the Ming-Qing Transition],” Anhui shifan daxue xuebao 安徽师范大学学报 [Scholarly Journal of Anhui Normal University] 6 (2005): 662–668. For research on the late Ming and early Qing image of Jesus, see Roman Malek, ed., The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ (Sankt Augustin, Germany: Institut Monumenta Serica and China , 2002); Chu Xiaobai , “Yesu jidu xingxiang zai Ming Qing minjian shehui bianqian [Variation in the Image of Jesus Christ in the Popular Society of the Ming and Qing Eras],” (Ph.D. diss., Fudan University, 2009). For research on the Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty, see Nicolas Standaert, An Illustrated Life of Christ Presented to the Chinese Emperor: The History of Jincheng shuxiang (1640) (Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica, 2007).

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they adopted for their proselytizing were flexible and varied, including such notions as “winning over the sympathy of the literati,” “missionizing through scholarly learning,” and “commencing with the elite and working downwards in society.”3 Among these, the use of images, including such objects as maps and paintings, was one of their most effective supplementary methods. Thanks to the use of three-dimensional visual perspective in the sacred representations of the West, whether in copper engraved printing or oil painting, light and dark were clearly distinguished, the colors were rich, and human figures were vivid and lively, as if leaping from the page; as Chinese commentators at the time noted, “the painting looks as if it were sculpted, the ears and noses project, everything is neatly delineated as if they were living people;”4 “the protruding and sunken contours of faces appear no different from actually seeing living people;”5 “the shapes of the ears are rounded, the shapes of the noses are accurate, the eyes possess a gaze, the mouths possess a voice;”6 “the brows and eyes and folds of the clothing are as clear as they are in a mirror;”7 and, “the people look as if they could be hailed and touched;”8 for these reasons, such techniques aroused wide curiosity among people. The missionaries that came to China in the late Ming, such as Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) and others, used this curiosity to make sacred images attract people to the churches or meeting houses, thus creating opportunities to missionize them. Most examples of such sacred iconography had been gifts presented to the missionaries by their religious orders. As the De Christiana expeditione apud 3 Li Madou 利玛窦 [Matteo Ricci] and Jin Nige 金尼阁 [Nicolas Trigault], Li Madou Zhongguo zhaji 利玛窦中国札记 [De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas], trans. He Gaoji 何高济, et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 180. 4 Wu Changyuan 吴长元, Chen yuan shilüe 宸垣识略 [General Knowledge of the Imperial City], Nei cheng san 内城三 [The Third Inner City], juan 7 (Beijing: Beijing guji, 1981), 125. 5 Gu Qiyuan 顾起元, “Li Madou 利玛窦 [Matteo Ricci],” juan 6, Kezuo zhuiyu 客座赘语 [Unnecessary Words of a Guest],” in Xuxiu siku quanshu 续修四库全书 [Continued and Revised Complete Library of the Four Treasuries], Zi bu 子部 [Philosophers Section] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1996), 1260:192. 6 Liu Tong 刘侗 and Yu Yizheng 于奕正, Dijing jingwu lüe 帝京景物略 [Overview of Scenes and Things of the Imperial Capital], juan 4, in Siku quanshu cunmu congshu 四库全书存目 丛书 [Anthology of Extant Titles of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries], Shi bu 史部 [History Section], 248:271. 7 Jiang Shaoshu 姜绍书, Wusheng shi shi 无声诗史 [History of a Poetry Without Sound], juan 7, in Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, Zi bu 子部 [Philosophy Section] (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1995), 72:789. 8 Wei Xi 魏禧, “Ba boxiong taixi huaji 跋伯兄泰西画记 [Post-Script to Elder Brother’s Record of Paintings from the Far West],” Wei shuzi wenji 魏叔子文集 [Collected Writings of Brother Wei], juan 12, in Xuxiu siku quanshu [Miscellaneous Section] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1996), 1408:689.

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Sinas《利玛窦中国札记》records, on the occasion of the construction of a church in Zhaoqing 肇庆, Guangdong 广东 province, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), “sent some very useful gifts for the work of the mission, among which was a painting of Christ made by a famous painter in Rome.”9 Bishops and priests of other dioceses also sometimes sent paintings as gifts, which usually came by way of Macau to the missionaries stationed in the interior of China.10 Besides being displayed to followers of the religion, such sacred icons were also often given as gifts from the missionaries to local government functionaries or literati scholar-officials, in order to establish friendship or to seek their support for missionary activities.11 To compel Matteo Ricci to open a meeting house in Beijing 北京, Alessandro Valignano (1538–1606) once gifted a sacred icon to Ricci while the latter was in Nanchang 南昌 and, “in order to promote the aim that he envisioned, the Visitor of Missions Father Valignano collected all of the works that he thought would aide him and sent them all to the Nanchang bureau; among them there was a picture of the Holy Mother sent from Spain and a picture of Christ the Savior of the World.”12 After the scholar-officials received sacred icons, they often invited other members of the literati to come see these “unfathomable” paintings and in this implicit manner propagated Catholicism, especially the image of Jesus.13 Since there was a limited number of paintings sent this way, the missionaries also utilized local woodblock printers to print sacred icons or had local converts produce paintings of them.14 Disseminating the religion through sacred iconography achieved good results, so the missionaries paid attention to their use in the churches and other meeting places.15 When Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci were in 9 10 11 12 13 14

15

Li and Jin, Li Madou Zhongguo zhaji, 194. Ibid. Tang, “Ming Qing zhi ji Tianzhujiao yishu chuanru Zhongguo neidi kaolüe,” 124–125. Li and Jin, Li Madou Zhongguo zhaji, 314. Ibid., 323. Such as the “Icon of the Holy Mother” painted by Zhao Lun in the early Qing dynasty; see Zhao Lun 赵仑 and Wu Yushan 吴渔山, “Xu Kou feng ri chao 续《口铎 日抄》[Addendum to the Diary of Oral Admonitions],” in Wu Yushan ji jianzhu 吴渔山 集笺注 [Notes and Commentary on the Collected Writings of Wu Yushan], ed. Zhang Wenqin 章文钦 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2007), 596. See Gao Huashi 高华士 [Noël Golvers], Qing chu Yesu hui shi Lu Riman Changshu zhangben ji lingxiu biji yanjiu 清初耶稣会士鲁日满常熟账本及灵修笔记研究 [François de Rougemont, S.J., Missionary in Ch’ang-Shu (Chiang-Nan): A Study of the Account Book (1674–1676) and the Elogium], trans. Zhao Dianhong 赵殿红 (Zhengzhou: Daxiang chu banshe, 2007), 381.

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Zhaoqing 肇庆, they began to venerate an image of the Holy Mother.16 The “Holy Mother with Child Icon” that Ricci displayed for veneration when he was in Nanjing 南京 left a profound impression on the scholar-official Gu Qiyuan 顾起元 (1565–1628), who recorded, “it was a painting of the Lord of Heaven, a small baby, and a woman holding it, called the Heavenly Mother.”17 Ink tablet designer Cheng Dayue 程大约 (1541–1616) re-printed four Western paintings that Ricci gave him as woodblock prints in his album entitled Mr. Cheng’s Ink Garden《程氏墨苑》. Images of the adult and infant Jesus both gained wide dissemination in the late Ming through Cheng’s album. During the early Qing dynasty, François de Rougement (1624–1676) served as a missionary in the southern Jiangnan region and used sacred iconography intensively to propagate the faith.18 At this time, besides the veneration of sacred images of the Holy Mother and the Lord of Heaven, religious paintings of other subject matter were also hung in the church, including even some pictures with more secular contents: “inside of the building’s colonnade and chapel hang images and paintings, including European works, which arouse the admiration of the Chinese; they come rushing from near and far to enjoy them, and often visit to see them.”19 In an early Qing church located in Hangzhou, besides hanging images of the “Lord of Heaven,” there were also paintings of the disciples and saints, which were paired with verses written by the convert Zhang Xingyao 张星曜 (1633–ca. 1715). These paintings, which “exquisitely paired pictures and writing,” became able “narrators propagating the gospel.”20 In the mental world of average people in the late Ming, the figures in such images all seemed to express some type of faith similar to Buddhism.21 This 16 17 18 19 20

21

Pei Huaxing 裴化行 [Henri Bernard-Maitre], Tianzhujiao 16 shiji zaihua chuanjiao zhi 天主教16世纪在华传教志 [Aux Portes de La Chine Les missionaires du XVI Siecle], trans. Xiao Ruihua 萧睿华 (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936), 281. Gu, “Li Madou,” 1260: 192. Gao, Qing chu Yesu hui shi Lu Riman Changshu zhangben ji lingxiu biji yanjiu, 173, 198, 208, 210, 230, 381–395. Ibid., 384. Zhang Xingyao 张星曜, Shengjiao zanming 圣教赞铭 [Engraving in Praise of the Holy Teaching], in Faguo guojia tushuguan Ming Qing tianzhujiao wenxian 法国国家图书 馆明清天主教文献 [Catholic Documents of the Ming and Qing Dynasties from the National Library of France], ed., Zhong Mingdan 钟鸣旦 [Nicolas Standaert], Du Dingke 杜鼎克 [Ad Dudink], Meng Xi 蒙曦 [Nathalie Monnet] (Taibei: Lishi xueshe, 2009), 8:583–587; D. E. Mungello, The Forgotten Christians of Hangzhou (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994) 111–112. In 1600, a painting of the Holy Mother with child that resembled the white-clothed Guanyin appeared, in which the baby Jesus had the image of a Chinese infant; see d’Elia, Le origini dell’arte cristiana cinese, 1583–1640

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explains why, when the missionaries placed the image of the Holy Mother on the sacred altar, people “bent over to kneel down and kowtow on the floor, as they were accustomed to do.” Quite a few people thought that Catholicism was simply a religion of venerating the Holy Mother.22 There were even some people who, according to the customs of Buddhism or folk religion, “greeted the sacred icons with total reverence, worshipping them like spirits,” and who, “lit sandalwood incense lanterns in front of the sacred images.”23 When Nicolò Longobardo (1559–1654) served as a missionary in Shaozhou 韶州, Guangdong 广东 province, in one village “pavilion there was a lectern or something like a prayer corner, where he was very surprised to find a vivid image of the Holy Mother, holding the infant Jesus in her arms, among about fifty idols.”24 Cai Ruxian’s 蔡汝贤 Ming dynasty Picture of a Heavenly Orchid《天兰图》, included in the album Pictorial Images of the Eastern Barbarians《东夷图像》, used the term for “buddha” (佛) to gloss the “Teaching of the Heavenly Lord” (Catholicism 天主教), since the picture of the Heavenly Mother and infant was similar to the image of the Boddhisatva Guanyin (观音).25 When Cheng Dayue was editing Mr. Cheng’s Garden of Ink, he grouped the four pictures from the gospels that Ricci had given him under the category of the “Black and Yellow” (缁黄), a traditional rubric referring to the Buddhist and Daoist clergy made in reference to the colors of their habits.26 In the city marketplaces of the late Ming, sacred images of Jesus were often treated as “foreign treasures,” like images of the Buddha from Tibet or Japanese fans.27 Clearly, people easily took Catholicism to be a similar religion to Buddhism, since the figures in Catholic sacred icons appeared similar to divine Buddhas or Daoist spirits to them; the only difference was that the people depicted in Catholic sacred icons had a bit of a “foreign flavor” about them.28 Consequently, when it came to the earliest images of Jesus that circulated in China, people did not pay particular attention to the specific religious meanings that they possessed, such as the belief in one god, the salvation, or the 22 23 24 25 26

27 28

Li, Li Madou Zhongguo zhaji, 169. Ibid., 376. Ibid., 503. Cai Ruxian 蔡汝贤, Dongyi tuxiang 东夷图像 [Pictorial Images of the Eastern Barbarians], in Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, Shi bu, 255:414, 426–427. Chen Yuan 陈垣, “Ba Ming mo zhi ouhua meishu ji luomazi zhuyin 跋明末之欧化 美术及罗马字注音 [Post-script to the Europeanization of Late Ming Art and Roman Transcription],” Chen Yuan xueshu lunwen ji 陈垣学术论文集 [Collected Scholarly Essays of Chen Yuan] (Beijing: Zhonghu shuju, 1980), 1:8. Craig Clunas, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), 173. Li, Li Madou Zhongguo zhaji

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future judgement day. Observers could only start from the religious background of the time in trying to understand sacred Catholic icons. People were doubtful of claims about the passion of Jesus and his Jewish identity, thinking that the figure represented in sacred iconography was the “ancestor” of the missionaries or even that he simply represented the missionaries “themselves.”29 Ricci and the other missionaries were aware of such problems as these that resulted from the differences in cultural, intellectual, and religious background. On the one hand, Ricci intentionally avoided frequent displaying images of Jesus’s passion on the cross, because average people in the late Ming period had a hard time accepting the sight of the nude, suffering figure; on the other hand, Ricci also intentionally constructed an image of Jesus as the Lord of Heaven, as the true, sole ruler of Heaven and Earth. However, as can be seen from relevant records, in the conceptual world of Chinese converts the image of Jesus that Ricci constructed clearly was not really equivalent to the Lord of Heaven. In many instances of “holy miracles” that were reported, the Lord of Heaven often appeared to people in the image of an “old man,” while the Holy Mother appeared in a manner similar to the Bodhisattva Guanyin in her white attire; yet Jesus’s image always remained that of the “Holy Infant.”30 In the famous account of Xu Guangqi’s 徐光启 (1562–1633) dream vision of the “Three Selves in One,” the most noticeable sight that first appeared was “the image of an old man,” while the image of the “Holy Son” was not described in much detail. Obviously, even for a believer like Xu, the impression that the Lord of Heaven had the image of an “old man” was very strong, but it appears that the idea of the very “foreign” looking “Jesus” was weaker for him.31 In fact, this was something that missionaries of other religious orders, as well as some scholars, have attributed to the overwhelming emphasis on “the teaching of the Sovereign-on-High” and neglect of “Christology” in Matteo Ricci’s proselytizing.32 As Ricci himself admitted, his first aim was to make the Chinese acknowledge that “in Heaven above there is a single creator of everything in Heaven and Earth – the Lord of Heaven,” so, “that the many 29 30 31 32

Li Madou [Matteo Ricci], Li Madou shuxin ji 利玛窦书信集 [Collected Letters of Matteo Ricci] (Taibei: Guangqi chuban she, 1986), 2:343. Ibid., 2:267, 283, 291. Li, Li Madou Zhongguo zhaji, 468; Li, Li Madou shuxin ji, 2:266–267, 290. This view was held by members of the Dominican and Franciscan religious orders, as well as by scholars such as Jacques Gernet and others; see Ke Yilin 柯毅霖 (Gianni Criveller), Wan Ming Jidu lun 晚明基督论 [Christology in the Late Ming] (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin, 1999), 4, 97; Sun Shangyang 孙尚扬 [Christianity and Late Ming Confucianism] (Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 1994), 79–80.

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people in the world would open their eyes towards Heaven and declare, ‘indeed there is one creator among Heaven and Earth, who in his extreme wisdom manages everything in the universe.’”33 As for such mysterious teachings as the birth of Jesus, his passion, resurrection, and salvation of mankind through self-sacrifice, it would take time to gradually impart knowledge of them to the Chinese people. 2

Deus or the Sovereign-on-High: the Image of Jesus in Chinese-Language Catholic Writings

It was for this reason that Ricci and the other missionaries tried to trace or construct an image of the “Lord of Heaven” as the sole divinity in their Chinese-language writings. Nonetheless, Ricci didn’t expect that the image he constructed of this divine being from the “Far West” would be accepted by people on a completely empty basis, but instead attempted to utilize the image of the “Sovereign-on-High” (上帝) as fashioned in the ancient Chinese Confucian classics as a means of religious “transplantation” or “disguise.” The ultimate aim of this was to set the tone for the birth, passion, and redemption of Jesus through the notion that the “Sovereign-on-High” represented the singular divinity. The first four chapters of Michele Ruggieri’s The True Record of the Lord of Heaven《天主实录》and the first chapter of Ricci’s The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven《天主实义》mostly offered proof that this singular divinity was the “Lord of Heaven,” the supreme ruler of Heaven and Earth, who, “in the beginning created Heaven, Earth, and all things, ruling and peacefully nurturing them.” Ricci even used Thomas Aquinas’s (1225–1274) “Five Ways” to argue for the existence of the Lord of Heaven. As Ricci held, “the Lord of Heaven of our nation is called the Sovereign-on-High in the Chinese language” and, “the Lord of Heaven is what in our Western countries is called Deus.”34 Therefore, Deus was equivalent to the Lord of Heaven. At the same time, in The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, Ricci offered detailed discussion of all the attributes of Deus, such as his being singular, formless and soundless, omniscient, all-benevolent, omnipotent, all-hearing, rewarding of good and punishing of evil, and the creator of everything.35 Furthermore, Ricci offered criticism and 33 34 35

Li, Li Madou shuxin ji, 2:168. Li Madou 利玛窦 [Matteo Ricci], Tianzhu shi yi 天主实义 [The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven], in Li Zhizao 李之藻., ed., Tian xue chu 天学初函 [First Collection of Studies on Heaven] (Taibei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 1965), 1:381, 415. This topic received further discussion in other missionary works, such as Aleni’s The True Origin of the Ten-Thousand Things《万物真原》and Schall’s Collective Proofs of the Lord’s Creation《主制群征》

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condemnation of other religions’ worship of multiple gods, thereby further affirming the image of Catholicism’s singular divinity. However, Ricci only wrote of sparingly of Jesus in the last chapter of The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven. Ricci was very aware that in late Ming society there were many images similar to that of Jesus, including narratives, stories, legends, and various imaginings of stories similar to the incarnation of the Lord of Heaven in the form of a man. Ricci even concocted a story that the Chinese discovery of Buddhist scriptures was in reality an accident that occurred in the course of the search for Christianity by the Han dynasty Emperor Ming 明, writing that, “from the examination of Chinese history, one finds that when Emperor Ming of the Han heard of these matters, he sent ministers to the West to seek scriptures, but, halfway on their voyage, his ministers mistakenly happened upon the country of India, where they obtained Buddhist scriptures and spread them to China instead.”36 Afterwards, Ricci offered proof that Jesus was the Lord of Heaven by invoking the prophetic “omens” of the Old Testament and the “miracles” from the New Testament’s gospel stories from the Bible. However, he essentially offered no answers to the doubts that most people had about Jesus, such as why he was born in Israel, why he had to suffer if he was the Lord of Heaven, and why he had the image of a “foreigner.” Questions like these were left to the missionaries that came after Matteo Ricci. In the Record of Studies on the Doctrine of the Three Mountains《三山论 学记》, by Giulio Aleni (1582–1649), a series of questions about Jesus’s salvation of the world raised by Ye Xianggao 叶向高 (1559–1627) are very representative of the situation. Among these, the first most important inquiry was, if the Lord of Heaven is all-benevolent, omnipotent, and was able to “create the world,” then why “couldn’t he save the world,” but had to “come down to be born”? The second question was, if the Lord of Heaven had to be born, but was entirely capable of “being born from Heaven above,” then “why did he have to be delivered from the womb of a woman?” Next, why was Jesus born in “Judea” (Israel), “and not born in the territory of our Chinese civilization?”37 In reality, these three questions reflected the typical thinking habits of average people during the late Ming period. The traditional imagination of figures such as buddhas, spirits, and immortals had made it hard for average people to comprehend the birth of Jesus and caused them to misunderstand it in certain ways, especially as it related to key Catholic teachings such as the trinity,

36

, 1:628–632. Rul [Giulio Aleni], [Study Record of Doctrine of Three Ridges], in Tianzhujiao dong chuan wenxian xupian [Supplementary Editions of Writings on the Eastern Propagation of Catholicism], ed. Wu Xiangxiang (Taibei: Xuesheng shuju, 1966), 1:486–492.

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the passion of Jesus, and his redemptive salvation. In the intellectual milieu of the literati represented by Ye Xianggao, the fact that the Lord of Heaven was omnipotent and all-benevolent meant that he should not have had to be born as a man; even if he had to be born, he should not have had to be born through the impregnation of a virgin woman, but should have been able to be directly “born from Heaven;” at the same time, if he had to be born, he also should have been born in the civilized land of China.38 In response to these questions, Aleni ultimately could only emphasize “faith,” saying that, “the all-important word faith is the root of the Way, the chief of all merit, and the guiding principle of all things good.”39 To put it another way, under circumstances in which neither reason nor logic could make people understand, Aleni could only appeal to “belief” itself. According to the Diary of Oral Admonitions《口铎日抄》, which Erik Zürcher (1928–2008) called an “encyclopedia” of the lives of late Ming Catholic converts in Fujian 福建 province, on different occasions the missionaries constructed the image of Jesus by telling stories of the gospel and displaying pictures. These gospel stories, even if they contained many “miracles,” were to a certain extent still incapable of reconciling the images of Jesus and the Lord of Heaven. Average people were particularly incapable of understanding such contents as the passion of Jesus, his dual divinity and humanity, and how he redeemed the world through his suffering, while they were even less able to comprehend how the image of an omnipotent Lord of Heaven could have been bestowed upon the bodily form of Jesus. On the contrary, average people and even converts thought that Jesus was a human being born to the Holy Mother in the same way that the Buddha could also be the savior of the world: “Although Shakyamuni came from humankind, how is one to know that he was not born to save the world in his body?”40 Here we can clearly see that Buddhism, Daoism, and the whole indigenous Chinese religious cultural background heavily influenced how people understood and received Jesus. As one member of the literati said to a missionary, “the reason for people’s doubt that Jesus was truly a great sage born from Heaven is because he is just like the scholar-officials’ Confucius, the obscure Daoists’ Laozi, and the Zen Buddhists’ Shakyamuni, so he is not necessarily the true Lord of Heaven.”41 In fact, if one really considered things 38 39 40

41

Ke, Wan Ming Jidu lun, 281–284. Ai, Sanshan lun xueji, 1:491. Li Jiubiao 李九标, et al., Kou duo ri chao 口铎日抄 [Diary of Oral Admonitions], in Yesuhui Luoma dang’an guan Ming Qing Tianzhujiao wenxian 耶稣会罗马档案馆明清 天主教文献 [Chinese Christian texts from the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus], eds. Zhong Mingdan [Nicolas Standaert] and Du Dingke [Ad Dudink] (Taibei: Taibei lishi xueshe, 2002), 7:326.

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from the perspective of the ancient Confucian classics, then the notion that Lord of Heaven had to be born at all was incomprehensible. On the one hand, the ancient Confucian classics never had any records related to anyone being born in order to offer salvation; on the other hand, although the figure of the Sovereign-on-High of the ancient Confucian classics or of later Confucianism could be understood as a personalized divinity, this entity wasn’t described as having been born in order to save the world. As one member of the literati put it, “The Book of Odes says: ‘The doings of Heaven have no sound or smell;’ and Confucius said: ‘Does Heaven speak?’ Although Heaven has authority, there has never been any attempt to indicate who was the Lord of Heaven, therefore it is doubtful that the Lord of Heaven needs to appear as having been born.”42 Although there are descriptions of the image of Jesus in The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, The Record of Studies on the Doctrine of the Three Mountains, and Diary of Oral Admonitions, specific introductions to the life of Jesus and the gospel stories were only contained in works like Aleni’s Guide to the Meaning of the Birth of the Lord of Heaven《天主降生引义》and Brief Account of the Birth, Sayings and Deeds of the Lord of Heaven《天主降生言行纪略》.43 There were also explanations and formulations of the image of Jesus in the writings of Chinese converts, such as Yang Tingyun’s 杨廷筠 Essay in Place of Doubt《代 疑篇》and Zhu Zongyuan’s 朱宗元 Answers to Questions of a Visitor《答客 问》and Brief Account of the Salvation of the World《拯世略说》. Concerning the matter of Jesus’s birth, Yang Tingyun admitted that, “its reasoning is very lengthy and requires reading many writings in their entirety, before it can be comprehended,” so his Essay in Place of Doubt could only “briefly discuss it.”44 Even when Yang himself received baptism, he expressed “terribly irreverent” questions about the birth of the Lord of Heaven.45 Zhu Zongyuan thought 42 43

44



Li, Kou duo ri chao, 7:495–496. Ai Rulüe 艾儒略 [Giulio Aleni], Tianzhu jiangsheng yinyi 天主降生引义 [Guide to the Meaning of the Birth of the Lord of Heaven], in Dong chuan fuyin 东传福音 [Eastern Transmission of the Gospels], ed. Zhongguo zongjiao lishi wenxian jicheng bianzuan weiyuan hui (Hefei: Huangshan shushe, 2005), 4:17–41; Ai Rulüe, Tianzhu jiangsheng yanxing jilüe 天主降生言行纪略 [Brief Account of the Birth, Sayings and Deeds of the Lord of Heaven], in Yesuhui Luoma dang’an guan Ming Qing Tianzhujiao wenxian, 4:1–336. Yang Tingyun 杨廷筠, “Dai yi bian 代疑编 [Essay in Place of Doubt],” in Ming mo Tianzhujiao san zhu shiwen jianzhu – Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao, Yang Tingyun lunjiao wenji 明末天主教三柱石文笺注 – [Annotated Inscriptions of the Three Pillars of Late Ming Catholicism: The Collected Writings on Religion of Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao, and Yang Tingyun] (Hong Kong: Daofeng shushe, 2007), 234. Zhilin , “Yang Qiyuan xiansheng chaoxing shiji [The Extraordinary Achievements of Mr. Yang Qiyuan],” in Xujiahui cangshulou Ming

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that, “nothing makes people today more skeptical and uncertain than the matter of Jesus’s birth.”46 Liu Ning 刘凝 also held a similar view, stating that, “the reasoning of the birth and redemption is mysterious and obscure; unless Heaven enlightens its inner meaning, it is difficult to fathom all at once.”47 Concerning what the Essay in Place of Doubt and Answers to Questions of a Visitor had to say about the image of Jesus, most average people could not comprehend such matters as Jesus’s birth, passion, and redemption of the world, therefore these texts were written to explain the doubts of the populace. Judging from the Essay in Place of Doubt, there were many questions among both converts and average people concerning Jesus’s incarnation, the virgin birth, his suffering on the cross, and whether Jesus was the Lord of Heaven or not. Some people even thought: “For him to have been crucified to death on the cross, why was the Lord of Heaven so helpless to do anything?”48 Another question was: “Since the Lord of Heaven is the most benevolent and compassionate one, why couldn’t he just pardon people’s sins to begin with, but had to redeem them by sacrificing himself instead?”49 These statements actually reflect the comprehension and interpretation of the image of Jesus by converts and average people at the time. In his Examination of Similarities and Differences Between Catholicism and Confucianism《天儒同异考》, the convert Zhang Xingyao expressed his belief that Jesus was the Lord of Heaven and also treated Jesus’s passion and salvation of the people of the world as one of the main ways that Catholicism surpassed Confucianism.50 However, in one of his other writings, the Clear Explication of the Heavenly Teaching《天教明辨》, Zhang also said that he thought Jesus was “the son of the Lord of Heaven,” who “leads people to revere the Lord of Heaven, so that they will know that there is a Lord of Heaven for proper veneration.”51 In other words, only after Jesus was born did people finally know

46 47 48 49 50 51

Qing Tianzhujiao wenxian 徐家汇藏书楼明清天主教文献 [Ming and Qing Catholic Documents of the Xujiahui Book Archive] (Taibei: Fangji chubanshe, 1986), 1:220. Zhu Zongyuan 朱宗元, Zhengshi lüeshuo 拯世略说 [Brief Account of the Salvation of the World], in Dominic Sachsenmaier, Die Aufnahme europäischer Inhalte in die chinesische Kultur durch Zhu Zongyuan (ca.1616–1660). (Nettetal: Steyler, 2001), 353. Liu Ning 刘凝, Jue si lu 觉斯录 [Record of Awakening], in Yesuhui Luoma dang’an guan Ming Qing Tianzhujiao wenxian, 9:583. Yang, “Dai yi bian,” 259. Ibid., 259–260. Zhang Xingyao 张星曜, Tian ru tongyi kao 天儒同异考 [Investigation of Similarities and Differences Between Catholicism and Confucianism] (Bibilothèque nationale de France, Courant Chinois 7171), 57. Zhang Xingyao 张星曜, Tian jiao ming bian 天教明辨 [Clear Explication of the Heavenly Teaching] (China National Library 中国国家图书馆藏 Archive, Record Number 13363),

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to revere the Lord of Heaven. In this case, Jesus was still not so clearly distinguishable as either the son of the Lord of Heaven or the Lord of Heaven. Zhang Xingyao also said: “The Lord of Heaven that was born was truly the son of the Sovereign-on-High; he lived that way with people for thirty-three years while he established the principle guidelines of his teaching, so why wouldn’t he be worshipped in that form?”52 In other words, it was exactly because Jesus was born that God finally had a form and could be seen by people, hence they could organize their worship according to that form. In a short simple passage, the “Preface to the Clear Explication of the Heavenly Teaching,” Zhang summarized the experience of Jesus’s birth: A long time ago, the Lord of Heaven, the Sovereign-on-High, worried that the heart of humanity had gone bad, having been led astray into recklessness by demons; when this began, he graciously promised to be born and in the second yuanshou year of Emperor Yuan’s reign during the Han dynasty, he was born in Judea, to carry out his teaching for three years, with untold miracles. At that time, the government feared him and falsely accused him of wanting to become King of Judea, resulting in his passion of suffering and death. It was in order to redeem the sins of every single person that the Lord of Heaven was born and that the suffering of his passion was his own willing act. After being resurrected back to life, he inhabited the world for forty days, instructing his four disciples to go out to spread his teachings and establish the kingdom of his religion, to select the pure of virtue and have them go to the poor countryside and remote places, to bring his teaching on human relations and enlighten them, thus uniting the countries of the West in morality and purifying their customs for the past thousand years.53 Generally speaking, the missionaries’ writings were the main source of information about the image of Jesus for converts. Although there were some discrepancies in their understanding of the image of Jesus, they could basically rely upon the image constructed by the missionaries as a standard measure. One of the reasons for this was that in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Chinese-language writings on Catholicism normally all had to pass through internal church approval and revision by missionaries or converts before they 52 53

Ibid., 1:131. Zhang Xingyao 张星曜, “Tian jiao ming bian zixu 天教明辨自序 [Preface to the Clear Explication of the Heavenly Teaching],” in Tian jiao ming bian 天教明辨, 1:3; Zhang Xingyao’s Sheng jiao zan ming圣教赞铭 [Engraving in Praise of the Holy Teaching] also demonstrated his understanding of such core teachings as Jesus’s passion, see D. E. Mungello, The Forgotten Christians of Hangzhou

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could be printed and published. Thus, it was unlikely for any information departing from the image of Jesus constructed by the missionaries to appear in such writings. 3

Divine and Secular: the Image of Jesus in the Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty

Before the printing of the Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty, a similar work was The Method of the Rosary《诵念珠规程》by João da Rocha (1566– 1623), which included a total of fourteen illustrations.54 In that book, the Holy Mother was depicted as a young woman wearing white, while Jesus was transformed into the image of an old man after ascending to Heaven. The image of Jesus stayed mostly faithful to other sources that it was based upon, as there were no major differences besides some changes to the settings represented. This depiction was perhaps the precise source of the many images of the Holy Mother wearing white and the Lord of Heaven as an old man that appeared in a number of converts’ dreams. Besides this, there was also Giulio Aleni’s Illustrated Exegesis of the Incarnation of the Lord of Heaven《天主降生出像 经解》, also known as the Illustrated Exegesis《出像经解》, which contained fifty illustrations (not including the cover).55 Among these illustrations, the images of the Holy Mother and the Lord of Heaven were the same as those in The Method of the Rosary, however the images of Jesus were much richer. The original source of these two illustrated editions of the gospel story was the work of Jérôme Nadal (1507–1580). In 1593, Nadal published the Evangelicae historiae imagines in Antwerp, with copper engraved etchings. In 1594 and 1595 it was revised and republished under the new title of Adnotationes e meditations in evangelia. The 1596 edition had one-hundred and fifty-three illustrations, arranged in a different sequence from the 1593 edition. As early as 1605, in a letter sent to Europe, Matteo Ricci mentioned a copy of the Evangelicae historiae imagines that the religious order’s European headquarters had sent to him; at the same time, the missionary Father Manoel Diaz, based in Nanjing, also possessed a copy.56 Combined with the fact that woodblock printing and illustration techniques were highly developed and widely used 54 55 56

The author may have been Fei Qigui 费奇规 (Gaspard Ferreira, 1571–1649); See Luo Ruwang 罗儒望 [João da Rocha], Songnianzhu guicheng 诵念珠规程 [The Method of the Rosary], in Yesuhui Luoma dang’an guan Ming Qing Tianzhujiao wenxian, 1:515–574. See Yesuhui Luoma dang’an guan Ming Qing Tianzhujiao wenxian, 3:527–582. , 2:271.

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in the late Ming, since the cost of printing was cheap, it was very easy for Ricci and the other missionaries to republish these works in China. Actually, in the foregoing discussion it was already mentioned that Matteo Ricci gave three woodblock illustrations of Nadal’s Evangelicae Historiae to the famous inkmaker of Huizhou 惠州, Cheng Dayue.57 However, the image of the adult Jesus included among these illustrations shows some change: it may have been that Ricci intended to conceal the facts of Jesus’s torment and had the wounds that appeared on him in the original illustration removed.58 Through comparison of the original illustrations and those of the Chinese edition, it can be told that the makers of the Illustrated Exegesis indeed attempted to construct an image of Jesus that was slightly different from that of the original. On the cover of the 1593 Nadal original edition is an image of the Lord of Heaven as an old man, but the cover page of the Illustrated Exegesis shows the middle-aged Jesus. Also, the attire, gestures, and facial expression of the middle-aged Jesus are not very similar to that of the original. Obviously, this depiction of the middle-aged Jesus was deeply influenced to some degree by the sacred figures of Buddhism.59 In addition, the Chinese edition shows some subtle efforts at indigenization, such as in the case of the fifth illustration, “Following the Ancient Ceremony of Naming”《遵古礼命名》, which is entitled “The Circumcision of Jesus” in the Nadal original. Its Chinese explanatory caption reads: “Second, the priest performs circumcision and bestows the name of Jesus, which means savior of the world;” while the original says: “The priest performs circumcision” (Sacerdos cum caeremoniis circumcisionis). According to the expectations of its environment, the Chinese edition added the contents about “bestowing the name of Jesus” and being “savior of the world,” yet also ignored “circumcision” from the illustration title, something with which average people would not be familiar, changing the scene to a “naming ceremony” in order to better accommodate the comprehension of both Chinse converts and non-converts. Also, in the thirty-third illustration, entitled “Entering the City to Exclamations”《入都城发叹》, the clouds in the upper right are obviously rendered in the familiar style of Chinese mountain and water paintings (山水画). The last illustration, “The Holy Mother Being Crowned in the Abode of the Divinities Above”《圣母端冕居诸神圣之上》, added an “emperor” and a “nobleman” wearing Chinese clothing to the original 57 58 59

Craig Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 173; Gu, Jidu zongjiao yishu zaihua fazhan shi, 121. Mo, Shiqi shiba shiji chuanjiaoshi, 105. Junhyoung Michael Shin, “The Reception of Evangelicae Historiae Imagines in Late Ming China: Visualizing Holy Topography in Jesuit Spirituality and Pure Land Buddhism,” The Sixteenth Century JournalNo. 2 (2009): 303–333.

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image to show that its reference to “the emperors and noblemen of the many kingdoms” also included China.60 The Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty of Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1591–1666) was printed in Beijing in 1640. Before that, Schall had presented some gifts brought from Europe by Nicolas Trigault to the Chongzhen 崇祯 Emperor. Included among them was a set of color paintings of the life and accomplishments of Jesus sent by Duke Maximillian of Bavaria and others; “Schall took the miracles depicted in the paintings, explained them in Chinese, and wrote them out in clear regular script; then, Schall respectfully presented them by approaching the court and submitting them to the Emperor.”61 In order to more effectively explain the life and achievements of Jesus in the paintings to the Chongzhen Emperor, Schall produced an explanatory text, entitled the Brief Explanation of Images in a Booklet《书像解略》, which explained and interpreted its forty-eight pictures. After submitting it to the Emperor, Schall had these images printed again, paired with the text from the Brief Explanation of Images in a Booklet to make a complete volume, entitled the Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty.62 The sources of the forty-eight pictures in the Images in a Booklet included a variety of different works, among which at least ten came from Nadal’s Evangelicae historiae imagines.63 Although the Images in a Booklet can be seen as a pairing of illustrations and writing introducing the life and actions of 60 61

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Ke, Wan Ming Jidu lun, 251–252. Huang Bolu 黄伯禄, Zheng jiao feng bao 正教奉褒 [Honorable Presentation of the Correct Teaching], in Zhongguo tianzhujiao shiji huibian 中国天主教史籍汇编 [Compendium of Historical Records on Catholicism in China] (Taibei: Furen daxue chubanshe, 2003), 480–481; d’Elia, Le origini dell’arte cristiana cinese, 1583–1640, 122–124. Tang Ruowang 汤若望 [Johann Adam Schall von Bell], “Jincheng shuxiang zixu 进呈书 像自序 [Introduction to the Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty],” in Nicolas Standaert, ed., An Illustrated Life of Christ Presented to the Chinese Emperor: The History of Jincheng shuxiang (1640), 101. There are only four copies of the Images in a Booklet Presented to His Majesty extant. One is held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, one by La Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma in Italy, and two are kept at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, Austria. However, according to relevant book catalogs, there may also be another copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Courant 7276). The Fu Sinian Library of Academia Sinica in Taiwan has two copies (610 and 067R), which were originally housed in the Xujiahui Book Archive in Shanghai and have already been digitized in CD-ROM format. Besides these copies, the author has also seen a mimeographed copy at the documents archive of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Paris. Also, the China National Library has an incomplete copy (catalog number 213680), with only two pages of the Tianzhu zhengdao jielüe 天主正道解略 [Brief Explanation of the Correct Way of the Lord of Heaven], which was re-printed in 1661 and is recorded as the Xinchou mengxia wulin zhaoshi tang woodcut-print edition 辛丑孟夏武林昭事堂刻

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Jesus to its audience, considering the intentionality revealed by its producer’s selection of illustrations, the creation of the Chinese edition, and the relevant explanatory writing, it can also clearly be seen as a purposeful construction of the image of Jesus by Schall and the other missionaries. First of all, in order to diminish the “foreignness” and “otherness” of Jesus’s birth and incarnation, the visual backgrounds of the pictures in Images in a Booklet utilized the style of landforms, rivers, trees, clouds, and rocks from Chinese mountain and water paintings as embellishment, in order to create a setting for these events that would be familiar to the reader. Next, in fortytwo of the paintings, the main character is “the Lord of Heaven Jesus.” There are six illustrations from before the birth of Jesus, five from his early life up to his baptism, sixteen illustrations of his miracles, sixteen of the sequence of his passion, and five illustrations from after his death. This shows that the Images in a Booklet placed emphasis on introducing Jesus’s miracles and the sequence of his passion. Actually, the miracles of Jesus demonstrate that he is the Lord of Heaven, that he possesses divinity, while the passion of Jesus demonstrates that he is a man, that he also possesses humanity. Furthermore, by contrast with de Rocha’s The Method of the Rosary and Aleni’s Illustrated Exegesis, the Images in a Booklet also contained two illustrations from the Three Kings’ Offering to the Court《三王朝献》, one of which adorned the front page; it also included elements from the Images of the Lineage of the Holy Mother Mary《圣母玛利亚宗系像》. The purpose of these additions was to demonstrate to the reader that although Jesus was born in a manger, his background was noble, because indeed he was the Lord of Heaven. Due to the fact that Jātaka tales of the Buddha’s previous births (本生故事) and stories of all kinds of “miraculous signs” circulated very widely in China, it was easy for people to understand the scenes of Jesus’s miracles against the background of religious ideas provided by Buddhism. Criticizing the miracles surrounding the birth of Jesus, Zhong Shisheng 钟始声 (1599–1655), an opponent of Catholicism, asked, “how is this supposed to be any different from the sayings about the birth of the Buddha by the followers of Shakyamuni?”64 Indeed, to some degree, the “indigenization” methods utilized in the Images in a Booklet were also those used in Buddhist painting. In the woodcut illustrations of the Ming edition of the Original Transmission of Shakyamuni《释氏源流》, the figures (their attire, expressions, gestures, etc.), backgrounds (mountains, water, trees, buildings, etc.), and settings (lectures, paying respect, receiving 64

Zhong Shisheng 钟始声 (Ouyi Zhixu 蕅益智旭), Pixie ji 辟邪集 [Collection on Refuting Heresy], in Dazang jing bubian 大藏经补编 [Supplement to the Great Buddhist Scrip tures] (Taibei: Huayu chubanshe, 1986), 24:149.

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visitors, etc.) were all changed in appearance to be familiar for contemporary Chinese audiences. To woodcut artisans accustomed to producing Buddhist pictures, it was impossible to avoid some traces of such “deviation” when they carved the print blocks for the Images in a Booklet. The clothing and mannerisms of the Holy Mother, the hand gestures of the Lord of Heaven, and even things like the clouds in the Images in a Booklet thus all clearly show Buddhist features.65 Nevertheless, compared to the Original Transmission of Shakyamuni, the effort at indigenization in Images in a Booklet was very limited. The main characters, settings, and events were all unfamiliar to its readers and redolent with “foreign” characteristics. The image of Jesus in works like the Images in a Booklet was clearly situated in-between “divine” and “earthly.” People could rely upon similar stories and scenes from Buddhism or Daoism to understand the “divine” Jesus; however, it was much more likely for people to encounter difficulties trying to understand the “earthly” Jesus. More specifically, it was easy for people to understand the transformation from “the earthly” to “the divine” (or from human to spirit); yet there was no way for them to understand the passage from “the divine” to “the earthly” (especially the passion, suffering, and humiliation of Jesus as the Lord of Heaven). Furthermore, since the specific historical events of Jesus’s birth, passion, and redemption all happened in Judea, what significance could they possess from point of view of Chinese people, to whom they were so distant? 4

“Ringleader” and “Evil Spirit”: Responses to Jesus’s Image in the Late Ming and Early Qing

The understanding of Jesus’s image held by opponents to Catholicism in China depended entirely upon the inherent tension between “the divine” and “the earthly” in the image of Jesus that was constructed by the missionaries. To a conservative Confucian, the “divinity” of Jesus could be understood as entirely “fictional” or as an “embellishment,” while the specific historical events of Jesus’s crucifixion and passion could be understandable as a “political affair” that simply had nothing to do with the Chinese. In the early Qing dynasty, the collection of writings by Yang Guangxian 杨光先, entitled With No Alternative《不得已》, reflected the views of conservatives, or at least of one part of Confucian intellectuals, towards the image of Jesus: 65

Jidu zongjiao yishu zaihua fazhan shi, 118; Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 175–176.

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The high priest Caiaphas saw that Jesus repeatedly performed miracles, that people’s hearts were open to following him, so suspicious talk greatly increased, and they realized that Jesus was gathering followers in a conspiracy to rebel … seeing this, since Jesus was the ringleader of this conspiracy, they exposed the matter and had him executed to clarify everything. But his followers did not change their wayward thinking and thus made the claim that after three days he had been resurrected, to fool the gullible people of the land … when someone’s heart and mind was open to following him, this was the sign that he had gathered them in his group; but when he was informed upon by someone, it meant his scheme had failed; when he was made to face difficulty, he could not escape his crime; when his followers feared being detained, many made confessions; when he left the city at dusk, it was to travel in the dark; when he entered a mountain enclosure, it was to make a deep escape; when he kneeled in prayer to Heaven, it was to make offerings for its blessing; when he was clothed in the crown and mantle of the king, it was just a ploy to win the most ordinary desires; when he pretended to kneel in worship, it was a ploy to become the king of his times; when the mob flogged him in pentup anger, it was to give vent to their resentment for being duped by him; when he was nailed to death up on the cross, it was to prove the country’s laws correct and calm the hearts and minds of the people… What kind of thing exactly is crucifixion? Examining it in terms of Chinese implements of punishment, it is like the wooden horse used to dismember the worst criminals.66 Here, the Images in a Booklet became evidence for the “confession” of Jesus’s “gathering followers in a conspiracy to rebel.” Yang Guangxian thought that Jesus was the “ringleader of a conspiracy.” The notion that Jesus had been resurrected three days after his death to rise to Heaven was something made up by Jesus’s followers, “to fool the gullible people of the land.” All of the auspicious events in the Images in Booklet that should have been understood as divine and holy were all “constructed” as “political” events by Yang Guangxian: “For a person’s heart and mind to be open to following him” was “the sign that they had been gathered in a group” by Jesus; for him “to be informed upon by someone,” was thus “the failure of his scheme;” his “leaving the city at dusk,” was so that he could “travel when the sky was dark;” his “entering a mountain enclosure” was Jesus’s “deep escape;” his “kneeling in prayer to Heaven” was Jesus’s “offering for 66

Yang Guangxian 杨光先 [With No Alternative], in chuan wenxian xupian, 3:1113–1115.

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blessing;” his “being nailed to the cross above” was “correcting the laws of the country” by Jesus’s example; and the crucifixion was like “the wooden horse used to dismember the worst criminals.” At the same time, “since Jesus was nailed to death on the cross, his teachings had to be prohibited by the country.” In actuality, Yang Guangxian’s comprehension of Jesus’s crucifixion and passion was not entirely “distorted” or “incorrect.” As a specific historical event, Jesus’s passion indeed is truly a “political” event. Judging solely from the Images in a Booklet, it is extremely easy for Jesus to be understood as the “ringleader of a conspiracy.” Obviously, Yang Guangxian separated the “divine” from the “earthly” Jesus and completely ignored and discounted the image of Jesus as the Lord of Heaven, in order to strategically emphasize the “earthly” image of Jesus. Although Ricci, Schall, and the other missionaries intended to prove that Jesus was the Lord of Heaven, according to the mentality of people during the late Ming and early Qing, especially that of the opponents of Catholicism, whether Jesus was equivalent to the Lord of Heaven or was the Lord of Heaven was a significant question. The core viewpoint of Yang Guanxian’s Discourse on Refuting Heresies 《辟邪论》 was that Jesus was nothing but “a criminal opposed to the proper laws of his country.” In his anti-religious work Record of Correcting Religion 《弼教录》, the brother of convert Zhang Xingyao also pointed out: The Emperor is the one that we say has sufficient virtue to rule over all under Heaven. Therefore, the nobleman who rules the earth is called the emperor. Since it is Heaven that rules all things, with merit and virtue that is greater than all and situated on high, being revered as Heaven according to the observance of the Way of a reverent nobleman, Heaven is therefore called the Sovereign-on-High; even though it doesn’t have the ears, eyes, mouth, nose, body or appearance of a human, it is called the Sovereign-on-High. The creation of all things by Heaven is the working of nature. Divine work is not human work, so it is said that the accomplishments of Heaven above have no sound or smell; however, the source of affliction and the root of the problem lie in the limited understand of average people, who have no learning and who imagine the heavens above by thinking of the works of humankind, even to the extent of regarding and calling the common person named Jesus as the Lord of Heaven, talking carelessly of such things.67 67

, 1:127–128.

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Here, Zhang Xingyao’s brother not only denied that Jesus is the Lord of Heaven, but also denied the doctrine that the Lord of Heaven created everything. In reality, the source of the views of Zhang Xingyao’s brother was the cosmology of Song and Ming Neo-Confucian lixue (理学), the “Study of the Principle of Reason.” The reason for Ricci’s criticism of “contemporary Confucians” also resided in the cosmology of Neo-Confucian lixue, which implied a type of rationalistic but vague theory of existence and development that ran counter to the Catholic belief in a personalized deity. Even earlier, some opponents of Catholicism had already raised similar views during the late Ming. In 1617, after the Nanjing Incident took place, the Ministry of Rites in Nanjing opined in a Bulletin From the Inspection Bureau of the Moved Capitol《移都察院咨》that the missionaries, “take the phantom of an executed criminal of the Western lands as the Lord of Heaven.”68 The bureau designated the historical events of the birth of Jesus as having only particular and not universal significance. In other words, Jesus was just the “Western” Jesus, so his birth did not possess universal significance. In this official report, the idea expressed was that “China has one Heaven and the West also has its own Heaven! Before the Han dynasty there was no Lord of Heaven and only after the Han dynasty did there begin to be a Lord of Heaven! Judging from such ridiculous claims, this is simply the heretical tricks of a sorcerer.”69 The plan of Matteo Ricci and other missionaries to “unveil” the outer appearance of ancient Confucianism in order to construct the image of the “Lord of Heaven” as equivalent to the “Sovereign-on-High” from the early Confucian classics, while advantageous for diminishing the “otherness” of Catholicism, also led them into certain difficulties when formulating the image of Jesus. According to their plan, Ricci and the missionaries would prove that Jesus was the Lord of Heaven when the time was ripe, but, for opponents of the religion, the historical events of Jesus’s crucifixion and passion actually became the key points for doubting that he was the Lord of Heaven. The Bulletin of the Nanjing Ministry of Rites explained it this way: The Discriminating Annotations《辩疏》and Discriminating Revelations《辩揭》of the foreigners claim that the Lord of Heaven refers to the Heaven that has been revered in China. Those that echo what they 68

69

Xu Changzhi 徐昌治, ed., Mingchao poxie ji 明朝破邪集 [Collection on the Ming Dynasty’s Obliteration of Heresy], juan 1, in Siku wei shou shuji kan 四库未收书辑刊 [Books and Publications Not Included in the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries] (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2000), 10.4:336. Xu, Mingchao poxie ji

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say also ask: “When has our China not tried to serve Heaven?” These foreigners even had a General Explanation of Catholicism《天主教解 要略》engraved and printed, which clearly declares that “the Lord of Heaven was born sometime during the reign of Emperor Ai of the Han dynasty,” his name was “Jesus,” his mother was “Mary,” and they were Western barbarians. It also says that he “was crucified to death by a wicked government official,” who contrived to have him die for his crime. How is it possible that a barbarian criminal could be called the Lord of Heaven? The Discriminating Annotations even directly declare that “the Lord of Heaven was born in a Western country;” with such false pretense and indecorousness, daring to dupe and deceive people within the hearing of Heaven, how could there be no one in our China that can tell how deceptive this is?70 To put it another way, the literati scholar-officials represented by the Nanjing Ministry of Rites could not comprehend such events as the birth and incarnation of the Lord of Heaven or Jesus’s passion and redemption. They could only start from the premise of ordinary historical events to comprehend Jesus as an ordinary historical personage, in which the passion was just a case of “someone dying for his crime.” Furthermore, because the birth of the Lord of Heaven was a specific historical event, the individual social status of Jesus and Mary, even the location of Jesus’s birth, were deeply embedded in their unique historical background and could therefore easily be refuted and criticized by opponents of the religion. Regardless if it was Jesus and Mary, or Judea, or Jesus’s passion, they simply thought that these were all historical figures, settings, and events that had nothing to do with China, therefore Catholicism could only be the religion of Judea or the West and could never become a “universal” religion. Actually, the problems that Ricci and the missionaries encountered during their construction of the image of Jesus were a reflection of the tension between the universality of Catholicism and the historicity of Jesus. For the birth of the Lord of Heaven to be a specific historical event, which happened at a specific time and place, was hard to comprehend and accept without the background of the Old Testament and Judaism. The missionaries who came after Ricci, such as Giulio Aleni, were the most diligent in their dissemination of Christology and construction of the image of Jesus. As part of the progress of Aleni’s missionary work in Fujian, Christological writings were continuously printed and published. The relevant research shows that in the missionary work of the late Ming, “Christology was 70

Xu, Mingchao poxie ji

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not marginalized, but rather took its place at the core of the spiritual formation of Chinese believers and converts.”71 Nevertheless, the image of Jesus that Aleni constructed and propagated never really relinquished its “foreign” features. In his “Preface to the Collection on Obliterating Heresy”《破邪集序》, Jiang Dejing 蒋德璟 (1593–1646) mockingly satirized the image of Jesus to an extreme: Recently I had an ancestral temple built to make offerings to my ancestor and a Westerner saw it, asking: “Do you know that there is an even greater lord than this noble patriarch?” I laughed and said to him: “The greatest lord is the Sovereign-on-High and in our China only the Son of Heaven (the dynastic emperor) may make offerings to the Emperoron-High, so I do not dare to do so. According to our Confucian study of life, one fears Heaven and reveres Heaven, and since there is nothing that is not Heaven, how could there be a painting of it? Although it exists, I’m afraid it doesn’t have deep-set eyes, a big nose, and a thick beard.”72 As far as Jiang Dejing was concerned, with his deep-set eyes, big nose, and thick beard, Jesus could not really be the “Lord of Heaven.” The missionaries were clear on this too, that the Lord of Heaven could not have any specific form or image, saying, “the Lord of Heaven … has no shape or sound, so how could there be an image of him?” It was precisely because the Lord of Heaven had been born in Judea through the virgin birth that he had the image of Jesus, “that he was born with this holy image.”73 However, what Chinese people could not comprehend was that the “deep-set eyes and big nose” of Jesus could be the features of the Lord of Heaven. Furthermore, since the image of Jesus that the missionaries constructed always gave the impression that he was no different than the spirits and buddhas of Daoism and Buddhism, the Chinese also couldn’t understand how the missionaries could so forcefully criticize these two other religions’ worship of such beings alongside their own construction and dissemination of Jesus’s

71

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Liu Xing 刘星, “Wan Ming Jidu lun gaimao 晚明基督论概貌 [The General State of Christology in the Late Ming],” Chongqing jiaotong daxue xuebao (sheke ban) 重庆交通 大学学报(社科版) [Journal of Chongqing Jiaotong University (Social Sciences Edition)] 13, no. 2 (April 2013): 96. Jiang Dejing 蒋德璟, “Poxie ji xu 破邪集序 [Preface to the Collection on Obliterating Heresy],” in Mingchao poxie ji, juan Tianzhu shengxiang laili [The Historical Origin of the Holy Icon of the Lord of Heaven], in Faguo guojia tushuguan Ming Qing Tianzhujiao wenxian, 24:603–604.

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image.74 In his Collection on Refuting Heresies《辟邪集》, Zhong Shisheng, also known as Ouyi Zhixu 蕅益智旭, said: “If you say that Shakyamuni was born to Maya, therefore he was just a man; but since the Lord of Heaven was born to a Holy Woman, then he alone was not a man?”75 In other words, from the point of view of the opponents of Catholicism, because Jesus was just a particular historical figure who had been crucified and persecuted, he could not be a god, nor could he even be judged a “sage” on par with Confucius, since, “according to the ancients, none of the sages ever died, yet that was indeed the case with the Lord of Heaven?”76 In his Faithful Mirror of Reverence for Confucianism《尊 儒亟镜》, one of the leaders of the anti-Catholics, Huang Zhen 黄贞, explained that “even today, seeing how frightful it is that they revere the torture-frame of the cross, how they honor a criminal crucified to death, and how there is nothing they won’t venerate and raise high, it is truly lamentable.”77 Generally speaking, from the perspective of the opponents of Catholicism, the most important content of Christology, the passion of Jesus as a human being, was the hardest thing for the Ming and Qing literati to comprehend and accept. Just as Liu Ning had once written of average people’s view of Jesus: “he is an evil spirit, it never ceases being exclaimed; and moreover, exclaimed that he is an evil spirt of someone who was executed in jail, who tried to overthrow the country in the form of Jesus.”78 Of course, there were also some literati in the Ming and Qing who held a negative attitude towards the “image of Jesus,” even though they were not opponents of Catholicism. In his late Ming Overview of Scenes and Things of the Imperial Capital《帝京景物略》, Liu Tong 刘侗 (1593–1637) thought that the “image of Jesus” constructed by the missionaries was “similar to that of Mozi 墨子.”79 In the early Qing text Outline of Knowledge of the Three Ridges《三冈 识略》, Dong Han 董含 (b. 1624) reproduced the description of Jesus’s image from Aleni’s Records From Beyond the Official Side《职方外纪》, but also raised some suspicions and criticisms: “Its fundamental claims are all generally like 74 75 76 77 78 79

Chen Houguang 陈候光, “Bian xue chuyan: xixue bian yi 辨学刍言·西学辨一 [Humble Comments on the Study of Discernment: First Discernment on Western Learning],” Mingchao poxie ji, juan 5, 10.4:402. Zhong, Pixie ji, 24:149. Dai Qifeng 戴起凤, Tian xue pou yi 天学剖疑 [Examining Doubts about the Study of Heaven], in Mingchao poxie ji, juan 5, 10.4:406; Xu Dashou 许大受, Shengchao zuo pi 圣朝佐辟 [Aide for Refutation of the Holy Dynasty], in Mingchao poxie ji, juan 4, 10.4:381. Huang Zhen 黄贞, Zun ru ji jing 尊儒亟镜 [Faithful Mirror of Reverence for Confucianism], in Mingchao poxie ji, juan 3, 10.4:369. Liu, Jue si lu, 9:583. Liu and Yu, Dijing jingwu lüe4, 248:271–72.

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this, absurd and preposterous, rambling, ignorant, and baseless.”80 Dong also called Aleni and the other missionaries “little foreign barbarians,” while declaring Catholicism an “unorthodox teaching.”81 Huang Zongxi 黄宗羲 (1610–1695) thought that the Catholic sacred icon of “Jesus” was made from a “human specter,” therefore it amounted to nothing but an “unorthodox teaching.”82 Wei Xi 魏禧 (1624–1681) also thought that Catholicism, “because of its claims about Jesus and the like, was absurd and shallow and, quite contrarily, laughable.”83 Wei even thought that while it was obvious that the teachings about the Lord of Heaven “had existed in Western countries from ancient times,” afterwards “some insolent man turned it into another doctrine and tried to embody it himself,” an episode meant to represent the origins of Catholicism, which was then “propagated by his followers and increasingly spread as something to venerate.”84 Wei Xi was comparatively willing to acknowledge the contents of Catholicism about the “Lord of Heaven” or the “Sovereign-on-High,” but thought that the parts about Christ and Jesus were the invention of some “insolent man” and were therefore “absurd and shallow.”85 5

Conclusion

In reality, it was the rupture between the missionaries’ emphasis on Jesus’s identity as a historical figure, including the passion as a particular historical event, and his identity as the Lord of Heaven which created the obstacle to people’s understanding of his image during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Without the background of Judaic religious thought, it was inevitable that difficulties would arise in peoples’ understanding of the gospels, which was one of the main problems encountered in the process of propagating Catholicism in China. As the anti-Catholic writings of the time show, the image of Jesus constructed by the missionaries was never really understood by people during 80 81 82 83 84 85

Dong Han 董含, San gang shilüe 三冈识略 [Outline of Knowledge of the Three Ridges], juan 5, in Siku wei shou shuji kan, 429:686. Ibid. Huang Zongxi 黄宗羲, “Pi xie lun 辟邪论 [Discourse on the Refutation of Heresy],” quoted in Xu Haisong 徐海松, Qing chu shiren yu xixue 清初士人与西学 [The Early Qing Literati and Western Learning] (Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 2000), 305. Wei Xi 魏禧, “Wei shuzi rilu 魏叔子日录 [Daily Record of Brother Wei],” quoted in Xu, Qing chu shiren yu xixue, 171. Xu, Qing chu shiren yu xixue, 171.

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Ming and Qing times. This incomprehension and resistance gradually continued all the way up to the climax of nationalism during the late Qing dynasty. In the Hunan Joint Provincial Public Proclamation《湖南合省公檄》of 1861, the biggest suspicion that opponents of the religion held towards the image of Jesus concerned the notion that the Lord of Heaven could have a human personality as Jesus. For the opponents of Catholicism, if Jesus was the Lord of Heaven, then not only would he have provided salvation for humanity, but he also would have defended himself from being crucified to death, not to mention that he would have been aware that Judas was going to betray him in the first place: If Jesus was the Lord of Heaven, then his divinity and holiness did not extend as far as people might think, for if you examine what is said of him, he couldn’t really do more than heal the sick  … The only consequence of the Lord of Heaven’s being born on earth was that Heaven had to save him. Jesus was in the world for only thirty some years and then was executed by crucifixion on orders of the Badou King 巴斗 国王 [Herod]. He couldn’t even protect his own body, but it is said that his spirit can bring good fortune to people, which it doesn’t take a wiseman to see through… the most ridiculous thing is that it was his own disciple and merciful protector who betrayed him … he couldn’t even know what his own disciple was up to, but they say that he knows the good and evil of people; who believes in this stuff?86 In other, similarly anti-Catholic writings, opponents of the religion took their orders from the tradition established by the Nanjing Incident and Yang Guangxian’s opposition by treating Jesus’s humanity and the notion that the passion was an historical event as their targets for attack. Among the various “rumors” that circulated in the late Qing, one group concerned descriptions of the image of “Jesus,” such as, “some say there is a Jesus who is supposed to be the Sovereign-on-High …; some say Jesus is supposed to be the son of the Sovereign-on-High and is called the Son of God;… some say Jesus died without end; some say Jesus was a posthumous child after dying, whose name was Jesus the Prince; some say Jesus rose to Heaven in his incarnate body, while his wife was taken by an evil man.”87 These different “inconsistent” descriptions 86

87

“Hunan hesheng gongxi 湖南合省公檄 [Hunan Joint Provincial Public Proclamation] (1861),” in Wang Minglun 王明伦, ed., Fan yangjiao shuwen jietie xuan 反洋教书文揭 帖选 [Anthology of Writings and Posters Against Western Religion] (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1984), 2. See The Most Broken-Hearted Person Under Heaven 天下第一伤心人 [Collected Sayings of Heretical Teachings on the Lord of Heaven],

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actually just represent various misunderstandings and doubts about Jesus being the “Sovereign-on-High” or the “Lord of Heaven.” At the same time, the anti-Catholic community was also fully aware of the usefulness of illustrations for disseminating images and therefore they devised many critical, denigrating illustrations of Jesus, such as those mentioned in the Illustrations of Ghouls Worshipping a Pig Demon《鬼拜猪精图》: Jesus the prince, the heavenly pig demon, was by nature extremely lewd; all of the ministers’ wives of the Judean kingdom were defiled by him; later, by tricking the consort of the king into being lustful with him, he conspired to overthrow the country and take his place, until the officials tried him for his crimes, had him placed on the crucifix, burned red hot, and nailed to it, which made him cry out many times, after which he then manifested his pig form and died.88 Here, the anti-religionists attempted to use the subversion of Jesus’s divinity as a weapon to attack Catholicism and Christianity. Although they are filled with slander and misunderstanding, the illustrations of this text and their “interpretation” of Jesus relied precisely upon the image of Jesus that had been constructed by the missionaries during the Ming and Qing, as well as rested on tensions that were already inherent in the image of Jesus itself.89 As Nicolas Standaert has pointed out, the interaction between China and the West during the Ming and Qing dynasties was marked by a dynamic of reciprocal interpretation.90 In the process of each sides’ interpretation of one another, some of the contents of both Eastern and Western culture were subject to “drift,” “miscomprehension,” “distortion,” and “deconstruction” to a

88

89 90

in Poxie jishi 破邪纪实 [Recorded Actualities of the Obliteration of Heresy], juan 1 (reprint of Tongzhi xinwei jixia 同治辛未季夏重刊 edition), Hong Kong Chinese University Archive Micro-Film Collection. See Lin Zhipin, ed., 林治平, Jidujiao yu Zhongguo lishi tupian lunwenji 基督教与中国 历史图片论文集 [Collection of Illustrations and Essays on Christianity and Chinese History] (Taibei: Yuzhou guang chubanshe, 1979), 12; Shao Yong 邵雍, “Jinzun shengyu pixie quan tu zhi jiedu《谨遵圣谕辟邪全图》之解读 [A Reading of the Sincere Observance of the Imperial Decree on Complete Illustrations Refuting Heresy],” Shi xue yuekan 史学月刊 [History Studies Monthly] 9 (2007): 131–134; Anthony E. Clark, “Early Modern Chinese Reactions to Western Missionary Iconography,” Southeast Review of Asian Studies 30 (2008): 8. On average people’s understanding of the image of Jesus after the Opium Wars, see Roman Malek, “Faces and Images of Jesus Christ in the Chinese Context,” The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ, 1:42–45. Zhong Mingdan [Nicolas Standaert] Yang Tingyun: Ming mo Tianzhujiao ruzhe 杨廷 筠 [Yang Tingyun: A Late Catholic Confucian] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxuan chubanshe, 2002), 275–276.

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certain degree. Taking the case of Jesus as an example, the propagators, that is the members of the Society of Jesus, wanted to transmit the core Christological significance of the image of Jesus according to the religious and theological traditions of the West to the Chinese people as something true; at the same time, they made adjustments according to the responses they gathered from the Chinese audiences of their messages, adopting this information in order to find more effective methods for improving the results of their dissemination efforts. However, the religious traditions and cultural background of their audience, that is of both Chinese converts and opponents of the religion, caused discrepancies to appear in the Chinese understanding of Christology, which ultimately led to misunderstandings, denials, and attacks. Included among the causes for this “divergence” was, on the one side, what Jacques Gernet explained as the differences in Eastern and Western cultural structures, psychological mentalities, and the like; and on the other side was the complexity of Christological doctrine itself. As a result, we can understand that in the West the “glorious” image of Jesus was regarded as the great mystery of “salvation;” but in China he was called a “criminal barbarian” and even the “pig-demon prince.” Besides such factors as the traditional Chinese cultural and religious background, as well as the content and manner of its construction, the reception of “Jesus’s image” in China was also influenced by the relevant social, political, and economic circumstances of the time. With the climax of nationalism in the late Qing, an “image of Jesus” full of “foreign color” came to be treated as a part of the cultural invasion of Western imperialism and aroused an extremely negative reaction on the part of the literati and gentry. The dissemination of the image of Jesus and the response to it in Ming and Qing society shows a classic case of the transfiguration of Western knowledge and culture in early modern China. Bibliography Ai Rulüe 艾儒略 [Giulio Aleni]. Tianzhu jiangsheng yinyi 天主降生引义 [Guide to the Meaning of the Birth of the Lord of Heaven]. In Vol. 4 of Dong chuan fuyin 东传福音 [Eastern Transmission of the Gospels], edited by Zhongguo zongjiao lishi wenixian jicheng bianzuan weiyuan hui, 17–41. Hefei: Huangshan shushe, 2005. Cai Ruxian 蔡汝贤. Dongyi tuxiang 东夷图像 [Pictorial Images of the Eastern Barbarians]. In Vol. ce 册 255 of Siku quanshu cunmu congshu 四库全书存目丛书 [Anthology of Extant Titles of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries [History Section], 409–430. Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1996.

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Chapter 6

Mary in the Poetry of Heavenly Learning during the Ming-Qing Transition Dai Guoqing Abstract The Catholic Church heavily promotes the veneration of the Virgin Mary, so with the eastward voyage of missionaries and their arrival in China during the Ming era, the theological figure of Mary was also disseminated, arousing an enthusiastic response among those Chinese who respected the religion. In the Poetry of Heavenly Learning that appeared during the Ming and Qing dynastic transition, Confucian scholars who revered Catholicism such as Xu Guangqi, Zhang Xingyao, Wu Yushan, and others, competed at singing the praises of the Holy Mother, which not only promoted the theological figure of Mary, but also invented a whole new indigenized method of proselytizing. This marked the inauguration of Catholic poetry in China.

Keywords Ming-Qing transition – Poetry of Heavenly Learning – the Virgin Mary

Chinese1 ancient-style shi poetry (诗) is a written form of artistic expression that bears the thoughts and feelings of the poet and gives release to exclamations from the very bottom of the heart. In the preface that he wrote for Hu Yinglin’s 胡应麟 Thickets of Poetry《诗薮》, the Ming dynasty figure Wang Daokun 汪道昆 (1525–1593) wrote: “Poetry is the sound of the heart. It is not separable into old and new but is unitary. Since poetic forms change with the different eras and poetic ability depends on personal distinctiveness, and since the world sees the passage of time and the Way rises and falls, when someone is speaking of poetry the intention of the poem must be apprehended by 1 Originally published as Dai Guoqing 代国庆, “Ming Qing zhi ji tianxue shi zhong de Maliya 明清之际天学诗中的玛丽亚,” Zongjiao yu lishi 宗教与历史

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004532120_008

Mary in the Poetry of Heavenly Learning

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considering its meaning, then it may be grasped.”2 The Chinese Catholic converts of the Ming-Qing transition period followed the traditional dictum that “poetry is an expression of the will” (诗以言志), competing at the creation of Chinese ancient-style shi poetry to give expression to their pious devotion and their hopes for propagating the religion. As a result, the “Poetry of Heavenly Learning” (天学诗) was born. The Chinese Catholic priest Wu Yushan 吴渔山 (1631–1718) first proposed the term “Poetry of Heavenly Learning” in the fifth month of 1697, the thirty-sixth year of the Kangxi 康熙 Emperor’s reign, having once said to the Catholic convert Zhao Lun 赵仑: “The hardest thing to write is poetry of heavenly learning, because nothing compares to His poetry.”3 The earliest authorship of such poetry by a figure within the church can be traced back to the Collection of Chinese Poetry《中国诗集》of Michele Ruggieri (罗明坚 1543–1607), written between 1582 and 1588.4 The earliest creation of Heavenly Learning Poetry by someone outside of the church, as far as this author knows, is Tang Xianzu’s 汤显祖 (1550–1616) “Two Occasional Verses on Meeting Two Western Scholars Refuting Buddhist Doctrine in Duanzhou”《端州逢西域两生破佛立义， 偶成二首》.5 Later scholars noticed that this was a literary category with unique characteristics. In an article on records of late Ming and early Qing Catholicism by figures outside of the church, Chen Yuan mentioned poems touching on religion by such figures as Xu Zuanzeng 许缵曾, Mei Wending 梅文鼎, Quan Zuwang 全祖望, and the monk Jishan 迹删和尚, and even wrote one himself, entitled “Two Verses on Father Franciszek Białas’s Translation of the Songs of Chu”《题鲍润生司铎译楚辞二绝》.6 Besides this, Chen was one of the earliest people to begin research on Wu Yushan and take note of his many

2 Hu Yinglin 胡应麟, Shisou 诗薮 [Thickets of Poetry] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1979), 1. 3 Wu Yushan 吴渔山 and Zhao Lun 赵仑, “Xu kou duo ri chao 续口铎日抄 [Sequel Diary of Oral Admonitions],” in Wu Li 吴历, Wu Yushan ji jianzhu 吴渔山集笺注 [Anthologized Collection of Texts by Wu Yushan with Commentary], ed. Zhang Wenqin 章文钦 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2007), 616. 4 On Ruggieri’s Collection of Chinese Poetry, see Albert Chan, “Michele Ruggieri, S.J. and his Chinese Poems,” Monumenta Serica 41 (1993): 129–176. 5 See Tang Xianzu 汤显祖, Tang Xianzu shiwen ji 汤显祖诗文集 [Collected Poetic Writings of Tang Xianzu], ed. Xu Shuofang 徐朔方 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1982) 1:440. 6 Chen Yuan 陈垣, “Cong jiaowai dianji jian Ming mo Qing chu zhi Tianzhujiao 从教外典籍 见明末清初之天主教 [Seeing Late Ming and Early Qing Catholicism Through Non Church Documents],” in Chen Yuan xueshu lunwen ji [Collected Scholarly Essays by Chen Yuan] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), 1:192–226.

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pieces belonging to the category of Heavenly Learning Poetry.7 Chen’s research emphasis resided specifically in citing this poetry to verify historical reality, entering history by way of history, to offer what might be called a model for the scholarly use of poetry and history to confirm each other. However, his attention to issues related to religious doctrine was scanty. By comparison, Fang Hao engaged more with the religious matters expressed in Heavenly Learning Poetry. In his detailed commentaries and explanations, Fang focused mostly on interpreting the rich religious ideas expressed in such poems as those in Wu Yushan’s Compendium of Orthodox Sounds of Heavenly Music《天乐 正音普》, Three Spare Moments Collection《三余集》, San Paulo Collection《三 巴集》, and Crying for Bishop Luo《哭司教罗先生》, as well as Xu Guangqi’s 徐 光启 “In Praise of an Icon of Jesus”《耶稣像赞》.8 The recent scholar Zhang Wenqin has also produced significant research on the Poetry of Heavenly Learning, having systematically edited and corrected Wu Yushan’s poetic oeuvre, compiling it under the title Collected Writings of Wu Yushan with Annotated Commentary, as well as having written a book entitled Wu Yushan and his Sinicized Heavenly Learning.9 In addition, Lin Jinshui has written much on another anthology of Heavenly Learning Poetry, the Presented Poems of the Gentleman of Min 《闽中诸公赠诗》.10 On the foundation of these earlier scholars’ research, this study focuses attention on the expressive poetic rhetoric and theological meanings related to the figure of the Holy Mother Mary in 7

8 9 10

Chen Yuan has produced eight studies on Wu Yushan, including such pieces as, “Wu Yushan nianpu 吴渔山年谱 [The Yearly Chronology for Wu Yushan]” and “Wu Yushan ru jing zhi chouzuo 吴渔山入京之酬酢 [The Friendly Exchanges of Wu Yushan after Entering Beijing].” See Chen, Chen Yuan xueshu lunwen ji, 2:228–326. See Fang Hao 方豪, Fang Hao liushi ziding gao 方豪六十自定稿 [Essays Selected by Fang Hao at Age Sixty] (Taibei: Taibei xuesheng shuju, 1969), 1604–1687. Wu, Wu Yushan ji jianzhu; Zhang Wenqin 章文钦, Wu Yushan ji qi huahua tianxue 吴渔 山及其华化天学 [Wu Yushan and His Sinicized Heavenly Learning] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2008). Lin Jinshui 林金水, “Yi shi ji shi, yi shi zheng shi: cong Minzhong zhugong zengshi kan Ming mo Yesu hui shi zai Fujian de chuanjiao huodong 以诗记事，以史证诗 – 从< 闽中诸公赠诗>看明末耶稣会士在福建的传教活动 [Recording Events with Poetry, Explaining Poetry with History: Seeing the Missionary Activities of Late Ming Jesuit in Fujian through the Presented Poems of the Gentlemen of Min],” in Zhuo Xinping 卓新平, ed., Xiangyu yu duihua: Ming mo Qing chu Zhong Xi wenhua jiaoliu guoji xueshu yanjiu taolunhui wenji 相遇与对话 – 明末清初中西文化交流国际学术研讨会文集 [Encounter and Dialogue: Proceedings from the International Scholarly Conference on Chinese and Western Cultural Interaction of the Late Ming and Early Qing] (Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 2003), 275–294; Lin Jinshui, “Ai Rulüe yu Minzhong zhugong zengshi yanjiu 艾儒略与