Modern Chinese Theologies: Volume 3: Academic and Diasporic 1506488005, 9781506488004

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Modern Chinese Theologies Chloë Starr

Published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers Starr, Chloë. Modern Chinese Theologies: Volume 3: Academic and Diasporic. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2024. Project MUSE.

muse.jhu.edu/book/113931.

For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/113931

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-04-07 01:50 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

MODERN CHINESE THEOLOGIES Volume 3: Academic and Diasporic

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-04-07 01:50 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

Chloë Starr editor

Praise for Modern Chinese Theologies This collection of studies of global Chinese Christian leaders and academics shows the diversity, interconnection, and dynamics of Chinese Christian theological explorations. It helps illuminate the extraordinary phenomenon of the rise of Christianity in modernizing China. —Fenggang Yang, professor of sociology and director of the Center on Religion and the Global East, Purdue University, and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule and Atlas of Religion in China: Social and Geographical Contexts A standard and illuminating work of reference, the third volume of Modern Chinese Theologies promises to break new ground and traverse the boundaries of multifaceted theological debates by engaging with Chinese academic voices and diasporic perspectives. Chloë Starr’s monumental contributions will be recognized and celebrated by scholars of Chinese Christianity and Sino-Christian Theology. —John T. P. Lai, professor of religious studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and author of Literary Representations of Christianity in Late Qing and Republican China

MODERN CHINESE THEOLOGIES

MODERN CHINESE THEOLOGIES Volume 13 Academicand andProspect Diasporic Heritage

Chloë Starr editor Fortress Press Minneapolis

MODERN CHINESE THEOLOGIES Volume 3: Academic and Diasporic Copyright © 2024 Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [email protected] or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209. Library of Congress Control Number: 2023031326 (print) Cover design: Kristin Miller Cover art: Rev. Wang Chunren 王纯仁 : traditional ink painting with Proverbs 22:2 Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-8800-4 eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-8801-1

CONTENTS Acknowledgments Series Preface

vii ix

Part I Sino-Christian Theology in Practice 1. Liu Xiaofeng’s Transcendent Christ and the Predicament of Chinese Public Theology Li Quan

3

2. Metaphors and Controversy The Cross in Modern Chinese Art Chen Jiushuang

25

3. Scholar, Critic, Scribe Zha Changping’s Humanist Criticism Naomi Thurston

49

4. Shi Hengtan’s Comparative Cultural Readings of the Confucian Analects and the Chinese Union Bible  Lauren F. Pfister

67

5. What Should Theology Do While Lives Are Engulfed in Mud and Fire? He Guanghu

87

Part II Sino-Christian Theology as Mode and Method 6. Sino-Christian Theology A Peek into the Future Jason Lam

111

7. Sino-Christian Theology and the Veil of Politics Revisiting Liu Xiaofeng  Liang Chia-Yu

129

C O N T E N T S

8. Decentering China in Chinese Christianity Reconsidering Sino-Christian Theology and the Prospect of Sinophone Theology Easten Law

149

Part III Hong Kong and Diasporic Theologies 9. Diasporic Theology in the Making The Identity and Experience of Princeton Hsu and N. Z. Zia Hing-Cheong Ho

173

10. Holy Spirit, Mission, and Formation Exploring Philip Teng’s Pneumatology Wenjuan Zhao

195

11. The Queer Theology Academy A Praxis Community for Chinese Queer Theologies Hung Shin-Fung

215

12. The “Lifescape Theology” of Thomas In-Sing Leung Han Siyi

237

Part IV Theological Inquiry in Taiwan and Singapore 13. Natural Law as the Fulfillment of Chinese Law John C. H. Wu’s Critical Reading of Chinese Legal Thought Mao Cheng 14. A New “Homeland” Theology? Remembering George Leslie Mackay amid the Continued Surge of Nationalism in Taiwan Liu Ya-chun 15. The Theology of Yi The Diasporic and Indigenous Theology of Chow Lien-Hwa Cindy S. Lu 16. Localizing Chinese and American Fundamentalism Timothy Tow and His Construction of a Separatist Biographical Theology in Singapore Joshua Dao-wei Sim

257

279

297

317

341

Index vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to all of the scholars and students from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, North America, Europe, and Australia who have attended the three Chinese Theology conferences online and in person between 2020 and 2022. The papers that have not made it into the volumes for a variety of reasons, including sensitivity of publication for authors, greatly enriched our discussions and understanding of the field. I am very grateful to the Council of East Asian Studies at Yale for funding the three conferences and to the Council and Yale Divinity School for research funds that have enabled the translation of select chapters. Carey Newman at Fortress Press has been an enthusiastic supporter of the project since the outset, and I am glad to record our appreciation for his editorial oversight. Lisa Eaton has been an exemplary project manager, and we are very thankful for her work bringing the books to print. Many thanks also to a great team of translators, including for this volume Huang Yu-huei and Professor Leopold Leeb; to Professor Peng Yin, editorial consultant extraordinaire; and to a series of anonymous reviewers working to tight deadlines—your help was much appreciated. On a personal note, I am very glad for, and grateful to, all who have trained and mentored the new generation of China Christianity scholars: it has been a pleasure to work with so many bright and invested students alongside more seasoned scholars.

SERIES PREFACE Chloë Starr This is the third volume in a series of three exploring modern Chinese theology. The first volume covered church theologians of mainland China associated with missionary-established denominations, whose writing and thinking engaged a predominantly Western church heritage. The second volume presented indigenous and independent church voices: essays on house-church and charismatic Christians who left mission denominations to establish their own congregations in the early twentieth century or whose churches in the People’s Republic operated outside of the state registration system, often called “unregistered churches.” This third volume in the set expands and questions the scope of “China” and of Chinese theology. It addresses two distinct groups: scholarship by mainland Chinese academics and the writings of Chinese-speaking theologians beyond mainland China. The architecture of the set of volumes is as much a pragmatic as a theological statement. The boundary between historic missionary denominations and independent or newer churches prior to 1949 was far from fixed, and many of the theologians discussed in volumes 1 and 2 were raised or trained in one branch of the church before starting afresh in another. Likewise, some of those discussed in this volume who are in the academic world of Sino-Christian Theology are also church members whose work might have been included in the previous two volumes, while among the Hong Kong and Taiwanese writers discussed in the final section are several mainland émigrés whose life’s work straddles the volume boundaries. In combination, the three volumes allow us to draw together key themes in theological debates among natural conversation partners and to illustrate those commonalities and collective visions that stem from a shared social or spiritual habitus, while pointing to the fissures that traverse the ideological and geographical borderlines of Chinese theology.

S E R I E S P R E FA C E

Volume III Modern Chinese theology exists beyond the Chinese church, and far beyond mainland China. This book joins two types of theological discourse that on the surface may seem to belong to different spheres. Just as the border between Shenzhen and Hong Kong at Lo Wu (Luohu) has different meanings and pronunciation depending on direction of travel, the relationship between Sino-Christian Theology and diasporic Chinese theologies is complex and contested. “Sino-Christian Theology” describes an academic movement developed by mainland scholars in the 1990s, but the term is also used by some to refer to all theology in the Chinese language, encompassing the likes of Taiwanese, Malaysian Chinese and diasporic writers.1 The “diasporic” of this volume’s subtitle is an imprecise shorthand for “Chinese persons outside of mainland China,” and points to the rich histories of theological thought in Chinese communities across the globe. Once concentrated in East and SouthEast Asia, increasing numbers of Chinese church communities now exist in North America, Australasia and Europe. While many Taiwanese and Hong Kong theologians, including several discussed here, are diasporic Chinese who were born in the mainland, Taiwanese theologians in general cannot be labeled “diaspora” in any meaningful sense, and the term cuts across Taiwanese depictions of its own historic waves of immigration, as well as erasing aboriginal populations—and is even less fitting for Hong Kong writers resident in Hong Kong post-1997. The relationship between language and theology, language and culture, between Chinese, Chineses (Mandarin, Hokkien, Mongolian . . .) and Chineseness is one strand that connects discourses among mainland scholars and other academics writing in Chinese or of Chinese ethnicity. Mainland China calls these last two categories “overseas Chinese” (華僑) and “Chinese descendants” (華裔), pointing to an immediate area of contention between the spheres: who gets to set the terms of identity ascription. Sinophone and Sinitic are alternative options to describe theologies in Chinese language(s), but these terms have technical definitions in different fields that entrain their own particular debates on the nature of “Chinese theology.” 1 See, for example, the Sino-Christian Theology Reader Vols 1 & 2 of He Guanghu 何光滬 and

Daniel H. N. Yeung, 楊熙楠, Hanyu shenxue duben 漢語神學讀本 (Hong Kong: Institute of Sino-Christian Studies, 2009), whose second volume covers Hong Kong, Taiwan, and diasporic Chinese theologians. x

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The two halves of this volume may be read separately, as studies of academic Christian scholarship in China and of Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Singaporean, and Canadian-Chinese theologies, or considered in conjunction. Forged in different political, economic, and social settings, cultural and linguistic coherences may still be found among these modern Chinese theologies. Hong Kong Protestant theologies are particularly closely tied to mainland Chinese ones in terms of historical development, for example, with shared denominational and revival histories in the early twentieth century, and overlap in contextualization debates over Confucian-Christian readings or interreligious dialogue—but they also have their own focus, in what has, until very recently, been a markedly different setting (as exemplified by Hung Shin-fung’s essay below on Queer theological praxes). Parts I and II discuss Sino-Christian thinkers or practitioners, and Sino-Christian thought as methodology and movement. Parts III and IV bring Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and other Chinese thinkers to the fore with representative chapters that range from Homeland and Borderland theologies to biographical theology and Yijing theology. The studies present a selection of texts, individuals, and theological movements from across the ecclesial spectrum, from the early twentieth century to the present. The majority of chapters in the volume are on contemporary topics and theologies, creating a rich diversity of contrastive thought. Academic study of Christianity in mainland China gradually returned in the early 1980s, during the Reform and Opening Up era of Deng Xiaoping. By the 1990s and 2000s, dozens of MA and PhD programs in some form of academic Christian studies were in existence. Those directing them were historians, philosophers, literary scholars, and sociologists of religion: very few had any training in theology or biblical languages, and “theology” was not deemed an academic subject, its teaching relegated to seminaries outside of the university system. Sino-Christian Theology (SCT), as it was conceived by Liu Xiaofeng, He Guanghu, and others, was academic, rational, and primarily non-­confessional.2 It was not aimed at churchgoers or nurturing faith; it was promoted as a helpful intervention in debates on ethics in a post-Mao world, and as a methodology, in its search for truth or ultimate meaning, that could benefit study of the humanities in China, and even expand its Marxist vision. It was also deeply tied to the 2 See further Chloë Starr, “Sino-Christian Theology: Treading a Fine Line between Self-­

Determination and Globalization,” in Globalization and the Making of Religious Modernity in China, edited by Thomas Jansen, Thoralf Klein, and Christian Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 379–410. xi

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West, at a time when “modernization” was a key political buzzword.3 For those for whom theology must by definition be of the church and for the church, SCT as practiced by “Cultural Christians” in China could not be theology, a debate that rattled back and forth over the Hong Kong border for a few years in the late twentieth century. “Sino-Christian Theology” usually translates Hanyu shenxue 漢語神學 (Chinese-language theology), a term that conceals in English two factors evident in Chinese: that it refers to one particular language (Modern Standard Chinese, or Mandarin, the official language of the People’s Republic of China) and to that language as so termed in China, thus by extension to a theology whose framework is centered in a mainland perspective. When Liu Xiaofeng and others were determining (in Hong Kong) a name for the movement circa 1993, they debated a number of terms that indicated different meanings of “Chinese” (i.e., pertaining to the nation-state of China, to Chinese ethnicity, etc.) before deciding on a linguistic denominator. The nature and scope of SCT, and whether it describes a theology that is predicated on cultural or linguistic belonging, was an early focal point of debate. For He Guanghu, it is important that this is a “theology of the native language,” or “mother-tongue theology,” which transcends geographic or national boundaries. This cuts both ways, however, in an era contemporaneous with China’s soft-power expansion of Confucius Institutes and promotion of Hanyu abroad, and internal insistence on Hanyu as the only language for state education, when language becomes a cipher for the mother-culture, and China the arbiter of which Chinese signifies. These debates are broached in the essays by Easten Law and Liang Chia-Yu in part II. While Sino-Christian Theology as envisaged by its founders might embrace all theology written in Chinese worldwide, its instantiation in China reflected its local context. SCT was to be—in an updated version of mainstream May Fourth thought—modern and relevant, drawing on social science data and methods, not engaged in interminable debates on Confucian classics; it was to be aligned with socialism and socialist values. In keeping with the latter, and a 3 As Zhao Dunhua, a philosopher at Peking University, noted, scholars took as their main

concerns “the reconstruction of Chinese modern culture, the comparison between Chinese and western traditions and the integration of modernization with tradition.” Zhao Dunhua, “Recent Progress of Christian Studies Made by Chinese Academics in the Last Twenty Years” in eds. Yang Huilin and Daniel Yeung, Sino-Christian Studies in China (Newcastle-­ upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006), 250.

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socialist interpretation of the gospel, it raised the question of what, and who, theology was for—the individual or society. Fostered in post-modernity, it saw religion as part of culture and held no truck with universal theologies. It was not to be nationalist but was to recast religious ideas in accordance with Chinese interests, and it inevitably tracked government discourses, so that Sinicization, for example, became less a benign process of inculturation or contextualization than a series of government expectations. As the number of scholars engaged in the academic study of Christianity in China grew, and a younger generation of students had greater access to texts, archives, and study-abroad programs, the breadth of subject matter and field has expanded greatly. Work on topics such as the relationship of Chinese theology to the Christ-event has continued, alongside comparative textual work between Western and Chinese classics, but recent scholarship covers a great range of inquiry, from medieval philosophy to environmental ethics, with Christian literature and biblical studies emerging alongside ecclesial history and philosophy of religion. Part I exemplifies this range of subjects, with one theological essay, one comparative study, and two chapters exploring contemporary Christian art and art criticism. In part I, Li Quan returns to the beginning of the Sino-Christian Theology movement to reconsider Liu Xiaofeng’s concept of the transcendent Christ. Liu’s thinking, and his Christology in particular, Li argues, have been considerably more affected by the violent legacies of the Cultural Revolution than has been understood to date. While Liu and others of his generation have seen themselves as victims of Maoist excess, Li suggests that the specter of the heroic, revolutionary, morally perfect Socialist New Human has pervaded Liu’s thinking and negatively shaped his Christ. The next two essays in part I expand SinoChristian Theology into art criticism. Chen Jiushuang’s essay on the use of the cross in contemporary Chinese art draws together the work of “Cultural Christians” and their relationship to Christianity, especially their political use of the symbol of the cross as a tool of cultural critique, with more recent work from professing Christian artists like Ding Fang. These latter, in what Chen terms “post-Cultural Christian art,” similarly speak to suffering and persecution but also deliver a gospel message in their inculturated art forms. Naomi Thurston’s essay offers a complement to Chen’s study of Christian-themed art, by developing her discussion beyond the artists to the thought of art critic Zha Changping, a professor and cultural commentator. Zha’s system of “world relational aesthetics” is a theologically informed reading of art that creates xiii

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art criticism out of seven sets of relationships perceived in the artist’s lives or works, with an especial focus on the divine-human relationship: a mode of “humanist criticism” that connects art appreciation, spiritual quest, and intellectual history. In the fourth chapter, Lauren Pfister assesses a recent book by Shi Hengtan that offers comparative readings of the Confucian Analects and the Chinese Union Version of the Bible, with commentaries from each tradition and reading aids. The volume provides students with an amplified understanding of each wisdom tradition through the pairings, alongside an applicable section of interpretation that addresses contemporary moral issues (such as lavish expenditure or overbearing parents) and offers questions for reflection. Pfister’s essay excavates Shi’s implicit Protestant Evangelical worldview and points to divergences from traditional Ruist readings of the Analects, while showing how Shi’s project occupies a space newly opened up for engaged, post-secular Christian reflection. A third essay by He Guanghu, one of the “Church Fathers” of the SinoChristian Movement, offers a personal theological view, tackling the contentious issue of nationalism via the Ukraine war and the Shanghai lockdown, to propose a comparative theology of nations and a critique of Chinese “national-statism.” Part II of the volume probes further the meaning and scope of Sino-­ Christian Theology as a movement. Jason Lam’s essay provides an introduction to the genesis and history of the movement, including the role of Hong Kong in its development. Lam worked for many years at the Institute for Sino-­ Christian Studies in Hong Kong, which acted as an early pintle, or fulcrum, for the movement, and his essay discusses the future potential for diasporic platforms as places for publishing or transmitting SCT, given the current compression of Hong Kong. Liang Chia-Yu takes Christian involvement in the Hong Kong protests of 2014 as the starting point to question an absence: the lack of writing about such protests in SCT and its implications. Using the writings of Liu Xiaofeng and Straussian “esoteric writing” to examine the theological lacuna, Liang suggests that the concept of civilizational politics provides an answer. The “Sino” in SCT, Liang suggests, identifies a civilization in its proponents’ thinking, and this both includes Hong Kong and Taiwan within its ambit, and necessarily eschews politics. The third essay in this set by Easten Law begins in the contested domain of a name. The topic is pertinent to this book: unlike previous volumes, where we have used mainland Chinese romanization (pinyin) as standard with dialect or preferred transliteration in parentheses, and given Chinese names xiv

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in Chinese-language order with surname first, in this volume, which expands beyond mainland theologies, usage follows author’s preference for personal names and local usage for transliteration. So, for example, Cantonese names are romanized from Cantonese, not given in the pinyin into which Modern Standard Chinese (putonghua, “the universal tongue”) is transcribed. Like Liang Chia-Yu, Easten Law addresses the implicit center-periphery thinking in SCT with regard to other Chinese-speaking peoples and territories but adopts a linguistic rather than civilizational perspective. The current orientation of SCT, and the movement’s captivity to Beijing, is self-limiting, argues Law. Instead, Law proposes the adoption of a Sinophone Theology, drawing on Sinophone Studies, with its recognition of the hybrid, polyglot, and culturally diverse nature of global Sinitic communities—and the decoupling of “Chinese” from China. Part III: Hing-Cheong Ho’s essay is a fitting anchor for the second half of the volume, as it reads two Hong Kong theologians and their writings through the lens of diaspora. Princeton Hsu (Xu Songshi), a pastor resident in Hong Kong from 1957 to 1975, and Nai-Zing Zia (Xie Fuya), a theologian and professor of philosophy, were both onward migrants of the generation who sought asylum in the post-war period and eventually left Hong Kong for life in the United States. Ho tracks the changes in their respective theologies over the course of their diasporic journeys and contrasts their participation in their new communities, before reflecting on what this earlier generation of emigrants from Hong Kong can teach Christians in the current exodus. The next two papers in part III offer analyses of markedly different parts of the Hong Kong ecclesial spectrum. Zhao Wenjuan’s essay examines the work and thought of Philip Teng, one of the cofounders of the Lausanne movement, focusing on his pneumatology. When debates on the nature of charismatic gifts, and especially speaking in tongues, threatened to cause schisms among Hong Kong churches after a second wave of Pentecostal-Charismatic revival in the territory in the 1980s and 1990s, Teng offered a rare mediating voice, affirming the presence and value of spiritual gifts but not the necessity of glossolalia. Zhao’s essay explores Teng’s beliefs regarding the role of the Spirit in initiating mission and transforming lives. Hung Shin-fung’s chapter offers a potent overview and analysis of the Queer Theology Academy in Hong Kong and its ministries. The Academy is characterized by its contextualizing and communal, praxisoriented theologizing, empowering individuals to understand their own lives theologically and encouraging activism in civil society, as its members challenge heteronormative hegemony, legacies of Confucian and colonial sexual ethics, and xv

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gender-binary interpretations of Scripture. Hung’s chapter examines the development to date of this pioneering Academy begun by feminist and queer theologian Rose Wu: it sketches the challenges ahead as it pivots from a Hong Kong perspective to an Asian one and from contextualizing queer theologies in Hong Kong to challenging imported models and constructing locally derived ones. The final chapter in part III by Han Siyi skillfully introduces Thomas In-Sing Leung’s complex “Lifescape Theology.” Leung, a Canadian-Chinese born in Hong Kong and trained in Chinese philosophy, draws on Tang Chun-I’s realm theory and the likes of Bonaventure’s realms of journeying to God to create his own realm or “lifescape” theology, with a sixfold set of relationships by which the human heart-mind perceives God, truth, and beauty, and lives into harmonious relations with other humans, God, and nature. Leung’s theology, which reaches toward a realm of “affective communion” where God manifests Godself, offers a model of interreligious dialogue, where Christians may expand their knowledge and understanding of God through experiencing the truths of other realms in Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian belief and thought. Part IV offers three papers on historic and present Taiwanese Christian voices, and one from Singapore. Mao Cheng’s study of John C. H. Wu (Wu Jingxiong), lawyer, hymn writer, statesperson in Republican China and Roman Catholic intellectual in Taiwan, brings a new perspective to this renowned figure. Cheng examines how Thomist thinking on Natural Law permeates Wu’s later interpretation of legal thought, softening his stance on the Confucian binary of morality and law and providing a means of unifying two other core ideas in Chinese legal history, the Mandate of Heaven and the concept of harmony. Cheng concludes with the assessment that Wu’s use of Aquinas is creative but not necessarily true to the Chinese philosophers under discussion. Liu Ya-chun’s essay surveys important figures in the twentieth-century Homeland Theology movement in Taiwan, before turning to the recent anniversary events surrounding the celebration of missionary George Mackay’s arrival in Taiwan in 1872. As Liu explores, these show how different sectors of the Taiwanese church have made evangelical and political use of the anniversary, a reflection of surging nativism and nationalism on the island. In a third chapter on an outsider who made Taiwan home, Cindy S. Lu examines the (unfinished) “Theology of Yi,” of Taiwanese pastor and Mainland émigré Chow Lien-hua. Lu employs the work of Michel de Certeau to examine the life and influence of Chow, an activist pastor who identified with the struggles of the Presbyterian church, before turning to Chow’s indigenous Theology of Yi based on the text of the xvi

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Yijing (I-Ching) and its interweaving of this classic of divination with Christian doctrine. The final essay in this section returns to evangelical thought, as Joshua Dao-wei Sim examines Singapore pastor Timothy Tow’s use of biography and history to propound his theological views. In this critical study, Sim asserts that in his extensive biographical and autobiographical writings aimed at members of his own Bible-Presbyterian denomination, Tow “localized” a variety of US and Chinese fundamentalist influences to leverage support for his own strict separatist and anti-ecumenical position. As in Zhao Wenjuan’s study of Hong Kong evangelicalism above, speaking in tongues was a doctrinal flashpoint for Tow, while this phase of Bible-Presbyterian history—before the church’s acrimonious dissolution in 1988—offers another reminder of the lasting impact of John Sung’s revival meetings across East Asia.

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Part I

Sino-Christian Theology in Practice

Chapter 1

LIU XIAOFENG’S TRANSCENDENT CHRIST AND THE PREDICAMENT OF CHINESE PUBLIC THEOLOGY Li Quan, Jinan University This paper presents a postcolonial critique of Liu Xiaofeng’s conception of the transcendent Christ, a theme central to the early Sino-Christian intellectual movement. I first examine Liu’s early political experiences within the context of the New Human project, a distinct postcolonial regime in modern China characterized by revolutionary ideals and extreme violence. I then delve into the critical features of the New Human as it appears in Liu’s theological narratives, proposing that the concept fundamentally represents a religious projection of his generational identity as a suffering hero. This perception, I argue, informs his problematic reception of the transcendent Christ and induces an ambivalent response to the project and its legacy. Through this analysis, I seek to enrich our understanding of the historical and theological situation of Chinese public theologians entangled with the communist vision and violence.

Introduction For the past three decades, the Sino-Christian theology movement (Hanyu shenxue yundong 漢語神學運動) has shaped the public voice and vision of I would like to express my gratitude to Chloë Starr, Sun Yi, Chong Ming, and Ren Xiaopeng,

as well as to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. An early version of this paper was presented at the Yale Conference on Chinese Theologies and at a research seminar on Chinese public theology. I acknowledge the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which funded this research project.

M o d e r n C h i nese T h eo lo g i es

the Christian intellectual community in contemporary China. Liu Xiaofeng (劉小楓, 1956–), as one of the movement’s pioneers, laid the groundwork for the emerging field of academic theology in his magisterial monograph Delivering and Dallying (Zhengjiu yu xiaoyao 拯救與逍遙).1 The theological concepts Liu presents in this work, along with his contextual concerns, have attracted significant scholarly attention.2 For instance, in her book Chinese Theology, Chloë Starr observed that this work reinvigorated the potential for comparing Christian and Chinese conceptions of transcendence. However, she also noted that certain theological inquiries and expressions of faith, specifically those shaped by the Cultural Revolution, remained underexplored.3 Fredrik Fällman devotes his monograph Salvation and Modernity to a more comprehensive study of Liu’s theological concepts, contending that Liu’s exploration of a transcendent source of morality emerged from a concern for his cohort of cultural Christians (wenhua jidutu 文化基督徒), who grappled with a rampant moral crisis and nihilism following Mao’s death. By stressing Christian concepts such as transcendence, salvation, and human sin, Liu critiqued Chinese religions, primarily Confucianism and Daoism, for advocating human self-sufficiency and

1 Liu Xiaofeng, Zhengjiu yu xiaoyao: zhongxifang shiren dui shijie de butong taidu 拯救與逍

遙: 中西方詩人對世界的不同態度 [Delivering and Dallying: Different Attitudes to the World by Chinese and Western Poets] (Shanghai: People’s Publishing House, 1988). Another influential figure of the movement is He Guanghu (何光滬, 1950–), whose early essays focus on the methodologies of Sino-Christian theology. See He Guanghu, Sino-­ Christian Theology: Born in Sorrow, Grown in Grief (Projekt Verlag, 2020). 2 While the English literature is reviewed here, there has been substantial Chinese literature written on Liu’s early thought since the publication of Delivering and Dallying. See, for example, He Guanghu, “Zhege shijie zui xuyao ai: du Liu Xiaofeng zhengjiu yu xiaoyao 這個世 界最需要愛：讀劉小楓《拯救與逍遙》[This World Needs Love Most: Reading Liu Xiaofeng’s Delivery and Dallying],” Du Shu no. 6 ( June 1989): 5–17; Wang Shu, “Quxiangyu zuobiaozhou de shuangquxian: qiantan Liu Xiaofeng de xinlu lichen 趨向於坐標軸的雙曲 線：淺談劉小楓的心路歷程 [Hyperbola Tending to the Axis: On the Intellectual Journey of Liu Xiaofeng],” Nanking Seminary Review 12 (1990): 70–82; Jiang Qing, “Zhongguo wenhua de zhen jingshen yu zhen shengming: ping Liu Xiaofeng zhengjiu yu xiaoyao yishu dui Zhongguo wenhua de kanfa 中國文化的真精神與真生命—評劉小楓《拯救與逍 遙》一書對中國文化的看法 [The Spirit and Vitality of the Chinese Culture: Criticism on Liu Xiaofeng’s view of the Chinese Culture in Delivery and Dallying],” China Book Review 3 ( January 1995); Yao Xinyong and Zhai Chongguang, “Liu Xiaofeng xueshu zhuanxiang pipan 劉小楓學術轉向批判 [A Critique of Liu Xiaofeng’s Intellectual Turn],” Yangtze River Criticism 63, no. 2 (April 2017): 37–43. 3 Chloë Starr, Chinese Theology: Text and Context (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2016), 268. 4

L i u X i a o f en g ’s T r a nscen d ent C h r i st

unequivocal human commitment to political causes or detachment.4 In a similar vein, Alexander Chow conducted an in-depth analysis of Liu’s discussion on transcendence, and concluded that this concept subtly challenged Maoist dogma during the 1960s and ‘70s. From the 1980s onwards, Liu has engaged in debates concerning transcendence in the context of increasing religious fervor and its correlation with China’s pursuit of modernity.5 These studies establish two critical reference points for understanding how the practices in which Chinese public theologians such as Liu Xiaofeng are engaged shape their Christological visions. First, they reveal that Liu’s development of Sino-Christian theology, particularly his concept of transcendence, was a critical response to the Cultural Revolution. This response aimed to establish a religious foundation for China’s modernization. In this regard, the studies suggest any in-depth engagement with Liu’s theological texts, both in their form and substance, must account for the intricacy of his generational experiences, religious convictions, and socio-political background. However, these studies concentrate on the immediate post-Mao context when their authors were interpreting Liu’s theological texts. As such, they only afford marginal attention to the revolutionary regime preceding the Cultural Revolution, which was instrumental in shaping Liu and his generation. Consequently, they tend to underestimate the unique influence of this revolutionary legacy on contemporary Chinese public theology.6 The current paper aims to explore this specific, under-examined aspect of Chinese public theology. By providing a rigorous analysis of the revolutionary project of Chinese Communism and its effect on Liu’s generational identity, along with his subsequent reception of transcendental Christology, this essay will supplement existing literature and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the predicament of Chinese public theologians who find themselves entangled with the communist vision and the accompanying violence. A postcolonial approach reveals a salient feature of Chinese Communism: its constant emphasis on revolutionary struggle and violence as justified by the 4 Fredrik Fällman, Salvation and Modernity: Intellectuals and Faith in Contemporary China

(Lanham: University Press of America, 2008), 35–36.

5 Alexander Chow, Chinese Public Theology: Generational Shifts and Confucian Imagination in

Chinese Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 85–89.

6 Chloë Starr has made some contributions in this direction, particularly in her exploration

of the revolutionary legacy within Sino-Christian theology. In her chapter on Yang Huilin (楊慧林, 1954–), Liu’s later colleague at Renmin University, Starr emphasizes the use of revolutionary language during the Cultural Revolution and the remnants of it in Yang’s hermeneutical theology. See Starr, Chinese Theology, 275–99. 5

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Maoist worldview.7 The three pillars of Maoism—the principle of contradiction, thought reform, and continuous revolution—forge the unique historical and theological consciousness of Chinese public theologians of Liu’s generation. In this paper, I expand my previous postcolonial analysis to encompass the Maoist project of the New Socialist Human (shehuizhuyi xinren 社會主義新人) and endeavor to discern patterns in Liu’s theological and political thought within his notable works. One specific question guiding my inquiry is the following: Being once involved in the massive and extreme violence of the New Human project, how did Liu critically reflect upon the entire project, the participation and suffering of his generation, and in what ways was such reflection both informed by, and influential in shaping, a distinct conception of the transcendent Christ? In the following sections, I will demonstrate first that the New Human project deployed various political and ideological strategies to cultivate revolutionary successors, characterized by absolute loyalty, extensive struggle, and extreme violence. Against this critical background, I attempt to recast Liu’s political identity in light of its themes and thought patterns that emerged from the project’s vision and violence. I further scrutinize the critical aspects of the New Human as it manifests in Liu’s theological work, arguing that his self-identification as a wounded victim of extreme violence leads to his problematic reception of the transcendent Christ and his ambivalent response to the project and its legacy, a critical issue intrinsic to the predicament confronting Chinese public theology.

Vision and Violence of the New Human Born in the formative period of the Communist regime, Liu Xiaofeng once traced his childhood and adolescent development during the Cultural Revolution: I wore a red tie as a young pioneer in P2. . . I had not finished P3. Suddenly, one day, the head teacher rushed into the classroom and claimed with joy on her face: “The Cultural Revolution is coming!” I thus entered the primary stage of the Cultural Revolution through the subsequent courses at primary school, and I saw many bloody terrors. During the four years of middle school (junior and high school), I learned spinning in a factory, farming and silkworm rearing on a production team, field training at a 7 See also Li Quan, “The Question of Communist Violence and the Birth of Chinese Public

Theology,” Studies in Christian Ethics 35, no. 3 (August 2022): 519–41. 6

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military camp, and fierce political accusation in the classroom, during which time I read the intermediate courses produced during the Cultural Revolution. . . . After graduating from high school and settling down in the countryside, I began self-study.8 What Liu recounts in the preceding quotation is a shared experience with his cohort as one of the so-called Red Guards (hongweibing 紅衛兵). This experience effectively shaped his collective identity, which later intertwined with his theological career. Here Liu alludes to, but does not explicate, the revolutionary project of the New Human in which he was involved. Drawing on recent developments in historical and political studies, I will examine the dynamics of this project in this section and assess the profound impact it had on the collective identity of the Red Guard generation in the subsequent section. This critical context will illuminate our textual analysis of Liu’s theological work in the following discussions. The Communist project of the New Human derives from a specific reading of human nature under modern colonialism. For Mao Zedong (毛澤東, 1893–1976) and his associates, the idea of the New Human, or a morally perfect person, served as a lasting paradigm for Chinese culture and society.9 This concept entered nationalist and democratic discourse in the early twentieth century, subsequently becoming a focal point of the Communist revolution, as Mao aspired to perpetuate the revolution and build a strong party and army to resist the invasions of colonial powers such as Japan, as well as the dictatorship of the Guomindang. Decades of guerrilla warfare cemented Mao’s deep-seated belief in volunteerism, leading to his development of the principle of contradictions, a cornerstone of his revolutionary worldview. He posited that various contradictions in one’s thoughts, actions, and circumstances should not 8 Liu Xiaofeng, preface to Geti Xinyang yu wenhua lilun 個體信仰與文化理論 [Individual

Belief and Cultural Theory] (Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin, 1997), 2.

9 A notable example is Liu Shaoqi (劉少奇, 1898–1969), who was Mao’s political ally and

designated successor prior to the Cultural Revolution. His renowned pamphlet, How to Be a Good Communist, explicitly illustrates the cultural connection between Confucianism and Chinese Communist ideology, particularly in relation to moral cultivation. Liu asserts that while Chinese Communists concur with Confucianism on the significance of moral cultivation in principle, they maintain a distinct vision of societal and self-transformation through revolutionary struggle. See Liu Shaoqi, “How to Be a Good Communist,” in Selected Works of Liu Shaoqi, Vol. I, July 1939, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/liushaoqi/1939/how-to-be/. 7

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-04-07 01:50 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

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be feared but instead recognized as a wellspring of energy. Crucially, revolutionary subjects were expected to align the contradictions effectively in a manner most consistent with their revolutionary goals.10 In this way, individuals would evolve toward perfection, particularly in their revolutionary mentalities and capacities.11 Thus, it is not surprising that throughout his political career, Mao did not confine his role to that of the prime leader of a new China; instead, he aspired to serve as a guiding mentor for a new humanity. The principal vehicle through which Mao chose to fulfill his vision was the project known as the New Human. As historian Cheng Yinghong indicates, this Maoist endeavor was launched at the Yan’an military base in the 1930s–1940s, expanded to a national level during the early years of the republic in the 1950s, and reached its zenith during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).12 Over the course of half a century, the concept of the New Human was developed, tested, and ultimately fully implemented as part of the Communist revolution. Moreover, Cheng observed that from the 1960s, the social engineering of the New Human gained momentum and developed some novel characteristics when compared to its experimental stages in earlier eras. These new characteristics included a fervent personality cult of Mao and an unusual emphasis on the power of revolutionary faith, struggle, and self-sacrifice. In 1964, Mao outlined five expectations of revolutionary successors: revolutionaries must serve the majority of the people of China and the whole world wholeheartedly; they must be proletarian statespersons capable of uniting and working together with the overwhelming majority; they must be role models for applying the party’s democratic centralism and leadership based on the mass line; they must exhibit modesty and prudence and be willing to correct mistakes.13 In essence, individuals possessing the supreme virtues of absolute loyalty and resolute dedication represented the new type of human that education was intended to produce. 10 Mao Tse-tung, “On Protracted War,” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Vol. II, May 1938,

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_09. htm. 11 For instance, Mao once named five expectations for the revolutionary youth, drawing from his unconstrained vision of human potential, see below. 12 Cheng, Yinghong, Creating the “New Human”: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), 90. 13 Mao Tse-tung, On Khrushchev’s Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World: Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU (IX) (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1964), https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1964/ phnycom.htm. 8

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Liu Xiaofeng and his peers from the Red Guard Generation were reared as devoted followers of Mao and his ideology, or to borrow the slogan from education campaigns starting in the early 1960s, they were groomed to be “Mao’s good soldiers.” As parcel and product of the New Human project, they were expected to be molded in the reason and emotion of a proletarian revolutionary. Historian Theodore Chen encapsulates this notion succinctly: the New Human must learn to hate class enemies as passionately as they love Mao and the party. They must reject feudalism and imperialism while embracing socialism and Communism. They should acquire proletarian tastes, eschewing luxury and comfort but cherishing labor and thrift. Above all, they must stand ready at all times to respond to Mao’s call and commit their lives to revolutionary causes.14 To achieve this goal, the Red Guard generation underwent systematic ideological indoctrination as a substantial part of their formal education. This indoctrination taught them how to differentiate between friend and foe, how to identify class enemies, and how to confront them in class struggle.15 Beyond school, they were summoned to participate in political campaigns, where they learned to unleash massive violence and destruction. This included but was not limited to burning books, scrolls, and paintings, and demolishing temples, statues, and even desecrating tombstones as a response to the Maoist demand to “Destroy the Four Olds” (old ideology, culture, habits, and customs) in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution.16 However, what set apart the extreme violence of Liu’s generation were the brutal attacks, torture, and murders of people senior to them during the denunciation campaigns, marking the most radical form of “touching people’s souls.”17 While the extreme violence exhibited by the Red Guards might be interpreted as the outburst of anti-authoritarian tendencies common among 14 Chen, The Maoist Educational Revolution, 75. 15 Chen provides a comprehensive examination of various educational methods aimed at form-

ing class consciousness in the students. See Chen, Maoist Educational Revolution, 33–34, 60–61; Chinese Education Since 1949: Academic and Revolutionary Models (New York: Pergamon, 1981), 88–120. 16 The campaign was launched by Mao in the autumn of 1966 and lasted three years when the Red Guards were sent down to the countryside. For details of the campaign, see Bu Weihua,“Zalan jiushijie”: wenhua dageming de dongluan yu haojie (1966–1968) “砸爛舊世 界”—文化大革命的動亂與浩劫 (1966–1968) [“Smashing the Old World”: Havoc of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1968)] (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008), 229–39. 17 Cheng, Creating the “New Human,” 112. 9

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teenagers and young adults in many societies, as suggested by Anita Chan, it is more aptly understood, within the context of Maoist China, as the direct outcome of political socialization rather than a general rebellion of youth against their elders.18 There is scholarly consensus on the intrinsic relationship between the Red Guards’ violence and the education they received, positing that the brutality was deeply intertwined with the political and ideological campaigns aimed at molding the Maoist version of the Communist New Human.19 To be more specific, it was precisely the Maoist vision of continuous revolution and the call for class hatred and struggle that validated their denial of general human dignity and the violence inflicted on unarmed and helpless victims. For this reason, recent developments in contemporary Chinese intellectual history have seen critical reflections on Red Guard violence and its Maoist origins, particularly among former participants. Xu Youyu (徐友漁, 1947–), a peer of Liu and an influential public intellectual, once confessed: “In the Cultural Revolution, all of the Red Guards’ brutal behavior was allowed in the name of class struggle. They had no compassion for their victims and dared to whip their teachers and fire at their classmates. All of these people were under attack because they were thought to be ‘class enemies.’ ”20 Similarly, Liu’s teacher and prominent philosopher, Tang Yijie (湯一介, 1927–2014) recently expressed regret: “This personal cult of Chairman Mao did not start with the Cultural Revolution, it was formed after waves of thought reform. . . . After Liberation, because of various movements against intellectuals and Chairman Mao’s repeatedly insulting intellectuals, the vast majority of Chinese intellectuals lost their sense of self and were reduced to being sheer tools for propagating Mao Tse-tung Thought, often willingly. It is a great tragedy.”21 Echoing these critical voices, Liu once lamented for his contemporaries, 18 Anita Chan, Children of Mao: Personal Development and Political Activism in the Red Guard

Generation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985).

19 See, for instance, Cheng, Creating the “New Human,” 114; Theodore Hsi-en Chen, “The New

Socialist Man,” Comparative Education Review 13, no. 1 (1969): 88–95.

20 Xu Youyu, Xingxingsese de zaofanpai: Hongweibing jingsheng suzhi de xingcheng ji yanbian

形形色色的造反派：紅衛兵精神素質的形成及演變 [Rebels of All Stripes: A Study of Red Guard Mentalities] (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1999), 36. 21 Tang Yijie, Women sandai ren 我們三代人 [Three Generations] (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2016), 276.

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Every generation feels that they come from the depths of the land, but our generation feels a little different, because the land we come from has experienced the cultivation of the “unprecedented Cultural Revolution. ” . . . We must reflect on the spasms of our land in the Cultural R ­ evolution. This is our destiny and wealth, and our enthusiasm for learning comes from it.22 The question is, in Liu’s view, what kind of legacy must be treasured as the destiny and wealth of his generation?

The Dual Identity of the Red Guards Decades of massive and extreme violence produced millions of perpetrators and victims, with the Red Guards being no exception. What made them distinctive was the lens through which they viewed and understood themselves. Many have noticed that the Red Guard generation was nurtured to become revolutionary romantics, identifying themselves in a world populated by heroes. Indeed, the Cultural Revolution was characterized by a celebration of youth, violence, and iconoclasm. As historian Rana Mitter notes, these elements trace their origins to European romanticism, which influenced the May Fourth generation, including Mao, and ultimately the Red Guards: “the mindset Mao revealed in setting the policy forward is heavily rooted in European romanticism, one of the most powerful cultural threads of May Fourth.  .  .  . Romanticism encouraged the belief in a transcendent hero, in a figure who could drag an entire people into the future through the force of sheer will.”23 Yang Guobin’s analysis of the Red Guards’ political activism aligns with this view, suggesting that while Mao was the arch-romanticist, generations of young Chinese people were also romanticists. Yang found that vast numbers of the Red Guard generation were raised up as young romantics, imagining themselves to be the heroes of a worldwide communist revolution. They developed a mission to rescue the world from capitalism and imperialism, bringing about a communist utopia on earth. During 22 Liu Xiaofeng, “In memory of Meng Meng,” in Meng Meng Academic Studio ed. Zhongguo-

ren wenti yu youtairen wenti “中國人問題”與“猶太人問題” [The Chinese Question and the Jewish Question] (Shanghai: Joint Publishing, 2011), 452. 23 Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 232–33.

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the Cultural Revolution, they painstakingly emulated the young Mao in their relentless effort to live up to the ideals of genuine revolutionaries.24 Identifying themselves as promising revolutionary heroes, the Red Guards launched what they called a “permanent war” against every assumed internal enemy, from intellectuals and the business class to other factions within their own ranks.25 They saw this constant state of war as a crucial training program, equipping them to overcome fear and pain when they deployed violence in accusations, persecutions, and interrogations. Importantly, they also anticipated being imbued with the revolutionary spirit through this process. As Lei Feng (雷鋒, 1940–1962), an ideal model-figure for Red Guards, famously stated, being Mao’s good soldier means “to treat comrades as warmly as spring, and to treat enemies as cruelly and ruthlessly as winter.” To obtain such a clear class position with distinct love and hatred, they needed to fully immerse themselves in the Maoist worldview, accepting Mao’s words and deeds without question. In practice, they engaged fully in power struggles, adopting the brutal maneuvers they had learned from Mao, especially demoralizing, isolating, and attacking “a handful of evil leaders” while winning over “the vast number of deceived comrades.”26 Much like Mao, many Red Guards—particularly those in the ultraleftist wing—knew that aggression alone was insufficient in political struggles; strategy was key.27 In this way, heroism became a part of the self-identity of these young perpetrators. They matured through bloodshed, evolving into a formidable Maoist army. Promoting an image of rising heroes was just one aspect of the Red Guard narrative; the other, as most of them perceived or experienced, involved the suffering and even violent death of these heroes. Like many other victims, they were made to publicly confess their most private affairs or admit to crimes they had not committed. It was also commonplace for victims to be paraded around with heavy items hung around their necks or forced to kneel on broken glass during political accusations. Torture and humiliation, standard procedures of 24 Yang Guobin, The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China (New York: Colum-

bia University Press, 2016), 160–61.

25 For a detailed analysis of the factional politics and thoughts of the Red Guards, see Yin

Hongbiao, Shizongzhe de zuji: wenhua dageming qijian de qingnian sichao 失蹤者的足跡： 文化大革命期間的青年思潮 [Footprints of the Missing: Thoughts of the Youth during the Cultural Revolution] (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2009). 26 Xu, Rebels of All Stripes, 41–42. 27 Xu, Rebels of All Stripes, 156–64, 175–81. 12

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thought reform, often preceded killings, making the suffering unbearable, as can be seen from the fact that many victims committed suicide to end their torment among political black classes.28 Thanks to Mao’s later call for the sent-down movement, widely known as the “Up to the Mountains, Down to the Villages” campaign (shangshan xiaxiang yundong 上山下鄉運動), the romantic heroism of the Red Guards encountered the harsh reality of intensive rural labor and daily subsistence struggles. After this disillusionment, most Red Guards found it challenging to envision themselves as triumphant heroes marching into a bright future. Many began to view themselves as victims of political idolatry and directed their passion towards protest, both intellectually and physically.29 Some even utilized this bitter experience as a resource to help them embark on an inward pilgrimage toward alternative ideals and hopes. “Dark night gives me dark eyes, and I use them to search for light,” as Gu Cheng (顧城, 1956–1993) declared in his poem. The pain and hardship of the sent-down movement marked a defining moment in the trajectory of the Red Guard generation. We may add that this experience completed the self-identity of the Red Guards as tragic heroes and victims of Mao’s “continuing struggle,” providing them with a wellspring of collective nostalgia ever since they returned to cities and campuses.30 The perceived identity of wounded heroes, cherished by the Red Guard generation and Liu Xiaofeng in particular, thus comes into focus. Like his Red Guard contemporaries, Liu Xiaofeng saw himself as a victim of extreme violence rather than a violent perpetrator within the New Human project. This perspective provided him with ample justification to accuse the project of having a dark side, one that has inflicted enduring shock and trauma even after the decline of the Maoist revolutionary regime. He also ascribed his painful enlightenment to this same legacy, 28 Wang Youqin’s documentation recounts the violent deaths and suicides of 659 victims of Red

Guard terror. See Wang Youqin, Wenge shounanzhe: guanyu pohai, jianjin yu shalu de xunfang shilu 文革受難者—關於迫害、監禁與殺戮的尋訪實錄 [Victims of the Cultural Revolution—An Investigative Account of Persecution, Imprisonment and Murder] (Hong Kong: Open Magazine, 2004). As Cheng Yinghong notes, it’s challenging to estimate the nationwide number of victims of Red Guard terror, partly due to the widespread anarchy of the time and partly because of the regime’s attempts to conceal the facts. See Cheng, Creating the “New Human,” 113. 29 Yang, The Red Guard Generation, 149–51. 30 For recent analyses of contemporary memories of the Red Guards, see Xu Bin, Chairman Mao’s Children: Generation and the Politics of Memory in China (Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press, 2021); Yang, The Red Guard Generation, 164–86. 13

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There have been three massive “human earthquakes” in this century— the death toll of natural earthquakes may not be comparable—Nazism, Stalinism, and the Cultural Revolution. The April Fifth generation is particularly entangled with one of them: participation—separation—reflection.31 Here Liu deliberately adopted the term “April fifth generation” (siwu yidai 四五 一代) instead of “Red Guard generation” to characterize his peers, highlighting the grieving and awakening spirit of his generation in the aftermath of the political catastrophe associated with the Red Guards.32 What he dismissed, however, were the violent and iconoclastic elements inherent to that same spirit. In truth, this facet of his heroic self-image remained indelible, particularly as he grappled with the debilitating despair resulting from the collapse of faith and tradition among his generation, or what he later identified as the dangers of nihilism in his work Delivering and Dallying. While such a selective reception of the revolutionary legacy was not uncommon among the Red Guards, Liu’s approach was indeed distinct: he dedicated his first degree to exploring the intellectual origins of heroism in European romanticism and, building on that, developed a nascent depiction of the New Human in the image of the transcendent Christ, a new hero of redemptive love.

The Transcendent Christ as the New Human One point that cannot be overlooked is Liu’s consistent silence regarding the New Human project and the painful experiences of the Red Guards throughout Delivering and Dallying, a common tactic among Chinese intellectuals under stringent censorship. Nevertheless, the external restriction did not deter him from developing the idea of the New Human as the controlling concept of his renowned work, arguably more critical than the two key terms in the book’s title. Given that scholars have not adequately discussed this matter, it is useful to briefly elucidate the role of this idea in Liu’s overall argument. The first factor 31 Liu Xiaofeng, Zhe yidai ren de pa yu ai 這一代人的怕與愛 [The Fear and Love of This

Generation] (Beijing: Huaxia, 2007), 238.

32 Liu, The Fear and Love of This Generation, 96. Here Liu implies the participation of his gen-

eration in the April Fifth movement in 1976, when massive mourning and protest gatherings were held in Beijing and at least 40 provincial cities. See “April Fifth Movement,” Brill’s Encyclopedia of China, https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-china/ april-fifth-movement-SIM_00028. 14

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stems from the relationship among the three terms. Liu’s reviewers have noted that both “delivering” and “dallying” were used to contrast the distinct visions of Christianity and Chinese religions,33 but most commentators neglect to note that these traits are precisely the characteristics of the New Human, or visions of ideal humanity, according to different religious traditions. As Liu clarifies, the central question guiding his theological and comparative inquiry is: how should we live up to a meaningful life after experiencing so much violence and suffering? In this context, it is fair to say Liu’s comparative inquiry serves the overall project—namely, charting different visions of the New Human regarding her goals, actions, and ultimately, her destinies.34 The second factor, more relevant to our current analysis, is Liu’s inclination to conclude that the transcendent Christ, who empathetically suffered with others but never succumbed to despair, represents the supreme form of the New Human. Furthermore, Christ’s transcendent love makes him stand out among other ideal types. In other words, Liu seeks to ground genuine humanity in the transcendent love of God and, based on it, restore a Christian moral vision for Chinese individuals and communities. In summary, the concept of the New Human provides an indispensable heuristic device for Liu to compare different ideal types of humanity and articulate the crucial features of the ultimate form. Specifically, two tasks for thematic comparison can be discerned: a comparison between the old and new ideal types of humanity, and one between the transcendent Christ as the New Human and others. The first task involves a critical review of Chinese cultural and religious traditions. The Chinese poets chosen for investigation are Qu Yuan (屈原, ca. 340 BCE–278 BCE), Tao Yuanming (陶淵明, 365–427 CE), Cao Xueqin (曹雪芹, 1710–1765), and Lu Xun (魯迅, 1881–1936). The second task entails a selective survey of the images of Christ in Western literature, focusing specially on the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881). Liu prioritizes the second task as he intricately intertwines the two lines of comparison. In doing so, he attempts to demonstrate that, in contrast to the tragedies of humanity under Chinese traditions and the failures of various endeavors of the New Human, only the suffering Christ can pave a promising way forward for humanity through his redemptive love. In the following analysis, I will examine this essential account of the transcendent 33 See, for instance, Fällman, Salvation and Modernity, 38–39; and Chow, Chinese Public Theol-

ogy, 81–82.

34 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 299–302. 15

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Christ in contrast to other types of the New Human, with the aim of revealing the dynamics underlying these projected images. For Liu, divine transcendence makes Christianity stand out among other religions: “True transcendence is a divine pattern which surpasses nature, surpasses the cosmos, surpasses life, and surpasses history. True transcendence offers an external cause for nature, the cosmos, life, and history. This pattern of transcendence is only possible in another world when it is beyond this world and the nature of life.”35 The defining character of genuine transcendence is God’s divine love, abundant and generously bestowed upon humanity. Liu thus perceives goodness as the revelation of God’s divine love, and truth as the means by which God unveils this divine love.36 As God’s transcendent love seeks to redeem humanity from a world tainted by sin and violence, God must undertake the task of salvation throughout this revelation. Liu goes on to argue that throughout human history, it was Jesus Christ alone who fulfilled this mission, and for this reason, Jesus surpasses all figures and their ideals, whether from the East or the West: The metaphysical divine being silent, the mystic divine being silent, the Confucian divine being silent, and the Daoist divine being silent, only at Calvary does the incarnate divine refuse to be silent. Jesus Christ not only accused the sinful world, but also drew close to the innocent.37 Nevertheless, a careful reading reveals that what Liu venerates is not Jesus’s life and ministry as typically depicted in Christian beliefs, but a heroic figure projected by his revolutionary identity. Through Liu’s perspective, Jesus discloses God’s divine love towards the victims of a sinful and violent world in a unique way, through his persistent struggle, suffering, and eventually, sacrifice. The configuration of the three elements deserves a more in-depth analysis. First, Liu portrays Jesus’s ministry as resisting the so-called objective laws in reality and devoting himself to the divine.38 In this respect, Liu views Jesus’s prayers and witness as divine actions of struggle rather than of reconciliation. Second, according to Liu, these objective laws define the reality of the sinful and violent 35 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 129. Translation by Alexander Chow. See Chow, Chinese Public

Theology, 83.

36 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 236. 37 Liu Xiaofeng, The Fear and Love of This Generation, 32. 38 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 405. 16

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world and demand unconditional submission from people. Although unnamed, this mirrors the potent image of Maoism for Liu and his contemporaries. By accepting the Maoist worldview as reality, Liu regretfully ascribes its dominant features as absolute and universal, absolving the historical agents (Mao and his Red Guards) of their responsibility for their extreme violence. Third and most relevant to Liu’s romantic reasoning, he asserts that the world that rejects divine love is a world that desperately needs the redemption of divine love. For what can restore people in suffering is not the hope for an afterlife in Heaven, but the suffering of passionate love, as exemplified by Jesus Christ: “The suffering of the innocent is my suffering, and the world wants to destroy love, so let me suffer in love.”39 It is now clear that as the human condition is condemned to violence and suffering, the only hope for Liu’s new humanity comes from a pure will to love. Jesus Christ is this hope. Only Jesus is capable of actualizing this will in his life and work. The way that Jesus demonstrated his divine love was to stand with the suffering victims and struggle against the dominant principle. In other words, this transcendent Christ embodies the ideal of Liu’s romantic heroism. As Liu concludes after a comparative analysis, Jesus Christ unleashed the power of his redemptive love in an evil world purely through his goodwill. By contrast, other attempts made by Chinese poets (and their worldviews) proved futile. This therefore allows Liu to claim that the transcendent Christ as a distinctly suffering New Human is also the supreme form of humanity.40 While it can be argued that such an image of a transcendent Christ was inspired by the Christ-like characters in Dostoevsky’s novels, it is more evidently a heroic projection of Liu’s identity derived from the revolutionary project and his uneasy entanglement with its legacy. This finding will be more convincing if we further consider the destinies of the old and new types of humanity in Liu’s comparative project. Two quintessential archetypes in Chinese traditions are Qu Yuan and Tao Yuanming. Liu employs their lives and poems to illustrate the limitations of the Confucian and Daoist understanding of transcendence. As Liu reasons, the former sought self-cultivation in the hope of moral excellence and social harmony, whereas the latter emphasized retreat from social morality to return to a natural state of individual moral life. However, these attempts became the 39 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 336. 40 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 320–36. 17

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catalysts for the tragedies of the two figures. Qu Yuan, wronged and demoted by the king, experienced the hardship of political exile. He subsequently dedicates his enigmatic poem, Heavenly Questions (Tian wen 天問), to a skeptical inquiry into the wisdom he had received, from the origin of the universe, the sky, and the earth, to the political climate during the Warring States period. Unfortunately, unlike Job or Jesus, Qu Yuan received no response from Heaven or his Confucian deity and ultimately committed suicide. Thus, Liu elucidates that once the Confucian poet grasped the deceitful nature of his ideals within a corrupt and brutal world, his life swiftly plunged into the abyss of nihilism.41 Although tragic, suicide appeared to be the sole escape from despair for Qu Yuan. While labeling Qu Yuan as a Confucian disciple is controversial among scholars,42 Liu’s anachronistic depiction of Qu Yuan’s unyielding loyalty to kingship and his ineluctable fate remains incisive, encapsulating the collective tragedy experienced by the leftist intellectuals and Red Guards under Maoism. Witnessing the rise and demise of the empire centuries after Qu Yuan, and recognizing the limitations of Confucian martyrdom, Tao Yuanming chose a different path toward a meaningful life, by becoming a Daoist hermit. Unlike Qu Yuan, Tao Yuanming eschewed false devotion to political enterprises and unquestioning allegiance to the emperor. He withdrew to an agrarian lifestyle, cultivating his persona as a natural romantic poet.43 This choice was appealing, Liu writes, as it promised a leisurely pursuit of private life for those confronted with the cruelties, absurdities, and misfortunes of the political world. The Daoist vision offered a transcendent world that denounces rights and wrongs, love and hatred, reason and emotion—in essence, all sources of human values

41 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 135. 42 According to Sukhu, the earliest complete commentary by Wang Yi (王逸, d. 158 BCE)

dominated the traditional understanding of Qu Yuan and created a Confucian image of the poet, but Wang and his sponsor, Dowager Empress Deng Sui (鄧綏, 81–121), missed the historical records that suggest Qu’s poems are products of the imperially-sponsored shamanism of his time. See Gopal Sukhu, ed., The Songs of Chu: An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poetry by Qu Yuan and Others (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 11–39. Guo Weisen has compared Qu Yuan and the mainstream schools of thought during the Warring States and found it is not easy to put Qu into one category. See Guo Weisen, Quyuan pingzhuan 屈原評傳 [A Critical Biography of Qu Yuan] (Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 1998), 204–87. Liu takes Wang Yi’s commentary on the Songs of Chu (Chuci zhangju 楚辭 章句) as the only reference, which makes his argument untenable. 43 Lu Shuyuan, The Ecological Era and Classical Chinese Naturalism: A Case Study of Tao Yuanming (Singapore: Springer, 2017), 66–68. 18

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and burdens.44 Inspired by such an ideal, Tao Yuanming appeared to find the ultimate peace for his soul, as he casually “plucked hedge-side chrysanthemums with pleasure, and saw the tranquil Southern Mount in leisure.”45 However, Liu cautions that the very ideal that seemed to offer peace led the poet not towards a genuinely transcendent realm of higher values, but rather towards a naturalistic world driven by lower instincts and desires. In fact, it instructed people that the greatest wisdom lay in remaining indifferent to their own and others’ hardships. In Liu’s judgment, this form of human alienation is even more pernicious as, in the wake of violence and suffering, it encourages people to harden their hearts, becoming as cold as stone.46 Contemporary scholars have acknowledged Liu Xiaofeng’s critique of the plight of humanity under traditional religions. For instance, Alexander Chow astutely remarks that because both Confucianism and Daoism perceive a one-­ dimensional world that collapses Heaven and earth and humanity, these religions fail to guide humanity toward authentic transcendence.47 What scholars have paid less attention to, however, is the fact that Liu Xiaofeng’s comparative project of the New Human does not stop here; it encompasses two more critical attempts to identify genuine humanity. The first character type of the New Human is depicted by Cao Xueqin in his classic Qing dynasty novel Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng 紅樓夢). Liu posits that Cao Xueqin sought to introduce a new element of erotic love into the realm of human potential, supplementing the existing ideals of humanity found in Daoist predecessors. In this regard, Cao portrays one of the main characters, Baoyu (寶玉), as a representative of this new type of humanity who is more receptive to the exploration of erotic love. The reason for this lies in Cao’s belief that the traditional concept of self-leisure (shiyi 適意) alone is insufficient to transcend human suffering. Instead, he emphasizes the necessity of nurturing ourselves through the experiences of erotic love, which stimulate both our bodies and souls in the pursuit of happiness.48 Nevertheless, in Liu’s assessment, the tragedies in the novel exposed how fragile Cao’s New Human was: Baoyu was unable to shoulder the weight of losing his lover and soon found his heart so desolate that the remainder of his life 44 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 258. 45 Tao Yuanming, The Complete Works of Tao Yuanming, trans. Wang Rongpei (Changshu:

Hunan People’s Publishing House), 113.

46 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 239–241. 47 Chow, Chinese Public Theology, 82. 48 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 326. 19

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could only be spent in a Buddhist temple. Here Liu repudiates other romantic ideals beyond his commitment to revolutionary romanticism, mirroring the pattern with which he earlier dismissed Daoism, as our previous analysis has indicated.49 The last decisive effort to create the ideal of New Human was made by Lu Xun, a renowned writer, poet, and essayist in modern China. However, what distinguishes Lu Xun is not merely his standing in modern Chinese literature, but rather, as Liu argues, his lifelong dedication to noble causes, his uncompromising spirit of resistance against evil, and his readiness to make sacrifices for others, which collectively represent the height of the New Human. In Liu’s view, Lu Xun has eclipsed the old types of humanity by dismantling the sage kinghood of Confucianism and dismissing the indifferent tranquility of Daoism. He also caught up with Cao’s incomplete mission by affirming an individual’s right to life, thus charting a fresh vision for the Chinese people.50 For these reasons, Lu Xun deserves to be an intellectual hero and given a rank identical to that of a heroic soldier well-known among the Red Guards: The arduous attempt to remove the stone [the absolute and dominant principle] was carried out in this way: a person used all his might to lift the stone up and let the people of the next generations pass through the cracks in the rock that had been blocked by the huge stone. This is like a hero in the story who blocked the enemy’s machine gunfire with his chest, allowing his comrades to rush through safely.51 Yet, compared with the sacrifice of a battle hero, Liu calls into question the value of Lu Xun’s sacrifice: 49 Liu’s treatment of Cao’s erotic love as a kind of Daoist utopia is strange in contemporary

Redology (Honglou meng, Dream of Red Chambers) scholarship, where there is extensive discussion on Cao’s concept of love. See, for example, Yu Ying-shih, Hongloumeng de liangge shijie 紅樓夢的兩個世界 [The Two Worlds of Dream of the Red Chamber] (Taipei: Linking Publishing, 1987); Ho Ping-ti, “Cong aide qiyuan he xingzhi chuce hongloumeng zai shijie wenxueshi shang yingyou de diwei 從愛的起源和性質初測《紅樓夢》在世界文 學史上應有的地位 [An assessment of the role of Dream of the Red Chamber in the history of world literature in reference of its depiction of the origin and nature of love],” in Ho Ping-ti, Sixiang zhidu shilun 思想制度史論 [Historical Essays on Ideas and Institutions], ed. Fan Yijun and Ho Hanwei (Taipei: Linking Publishing, 2013), 435–72. 50 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 396–98. 51 The heroic soldier Liu mentions here is Huang Jiguang (黃繼光, 1931–1952), a highly decorated Chinese soldier during the Korean War. 20

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What must we care about is: Will the hero who lifts the stone be twisted or even assimilated into a stone by the pressure of the stone? Will he be assimilated by the hardness of the stone when he shoulders it? If he shoulders the stone at the price of being petrified, otherwise having insufficient strength to do it, will people be petrified too when they crawl under him? Even if he shoulders the stone, people will still use the stone as a signpost when entering the new world. Then, isn’t the new world that he has opened the way to still a world of stones? As his shouldering of the stone causes his sacrifice, it is in no way comparable to a redemptive kind of sacrifice, as he does not introduce a new force, or a new value, and does not block what is already there.52 Liu worries that given the fact that Lu Xun doubts any transcendent sources of redemption, both his radical resistance against evil and his compassionate love for victims remain subject to change, thereby putting his proposal for the New Human in jeopardy. The fundamental distinction between Lu Xun and Christ, according to Liu, is that without any assurance from a transcendent God, the former’s goodwill can never subvert the tyranny of the god of this world and save humankind from violence. Thanks to Lu Xun, we now reach the depth of Liu Xiaofeng’s fear of Mao and his ideology, for which he is indebted to the New Human project.

Conclusion Postcolonial scholars might contend that Liu’s account of divine Christology is a mimicry of his European predecessors such as Karl Barth (1886–1968). Indeed, there are instances where Liu aligns with Barth’s early concepts, emphasizing God as the Wholly Other and mounting stern critiques of religions as human projections in his noteworthy work.53 But unlike Barth, Liu’s stress on the transcendent Christ as a New Human continues to facilitate his lingering revolutionary gestalt and project his deepest desires as a wounded hero. I will conclude by summarizing this profound paradox inherent in Liu’s theological reflection. In my analysis above, Liu’s comparative project of ideal humanity embarks upon two strands of criticism. On the surface, he criticizes the optimistic view of 52 Liu, Delivering and Dallying, 393–94. Italics added. 53 Simon Kwan, “Ping Liuxiaofeng de hanyu jidu shenxue 評劉小楓的漢語基督神學 [On

Liu Xiaofeng’s Sino-Christian Theology],” Logos & Pneuma 4 (Spring 1996): 234–38. 21

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human moral capacity embraced by traditional religions such as Confucianism and Daoism. Yet, he leaves their modern successor, Maoist perfectionism, unscathed, without any reference to the military roots of Maoism in colonial China. In doing this, he is eventually waging a war of ideas as he learns from Maoism. Regrettably, his critique invariably falls short; it fails to capture any progressive developments in modern Confucianism and instead exposes his unwavering acceptance of the ideological agenda of the New Human project.54 Liu’s reproach of historical figures for being loyal to or rebelling against religious doctrine resonates with the prevalent practice of self-criticism among intellectuals. He even goes so far as to make religion the scapegoat of Maoist violence while simultaneously redeeming the principal perpetrator and his young followers. All these interpretations indicate that Liu, as a former Red Guard, remains faithful to the creator of revolutionary heroes. He is thus hesitant to acknowledge that the transcendent Christ will enact ultimate judgment in his justice and call those perpetrators to repentance. In other words, he neglects a pivotal aspect of redemptive love. What then, is Liu’s real target? As I have illustrated, he attempts to contest the vision of the New Human as nothing more than a human-centric projection. However, bounded by a perspective of revolutionary romanticism, his partial pursuit of divine transcendence only achieves partial success. On the one hand, he charges that the New Human project, which seeks to elevate and revolutionize humanity, eventually deprived individuals of their humanity and capacity to love, as seen in the collective violence and moral nihilism of the Cultural Revolution. On the other, he insists that only a romantic figure imbued with redemptive love can restore suppressed humanity and rebuild hope in a moral life. Given that the just judgment of Christ has been expunged from his concept of redemptive love, the remaining task is to comfort victims after they have endured suffering and trauma. In conclusion, the heuristic concept of the New Human not only allows Liu Xiaofeng to compare different types of ideal humanity and articulate the crucial features of the ultimate form, but also enables us to expound his problematic reception of the transcendent Christ and his ambivalent response to the revolutionary project and its legacy. 54 Since the 1920s, New Confucian scholars such as Xiong Shili (熊十力, 1885–1968), Zhang

Junmai (張君勱, 1887–1969), and Mou Zongsan (牟宗三, 1909–1995) have made substantial efforts to modernize the tradition by accommodating a Confucian spirit within the modern democratic endeavor. See Huang Yong, “New Confucianism,” in A Concise Companion to Confucius, ed. Paul R. Goldin (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017): 352–74. 22

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It has taken Liu Xiaofeng and his cohort three decades to digest a bitter revolution, and it has taken us another three decades to digest his bitter hope. A postcolonial approach now enables this long-delayed enterprise, many years since the publication of his seminal work, Delivering and Dallying. In this paper, I have raised a critical assessment of Liu’s conception of the transcendent Christ in the context of the New Human project, and by doing this, we can identify the predicament in which Chinese public theology currently finds itself: from its inception, it has remained silent on the persistence of moral nihilism and the political maneuvering of the Red Guard generation, and it has acquiesced to the ideological education and propaganda that justify the resurgence of Communist violent rule under Xi Jinping.55 In doing so, this paper contributes to a fresh understanding of the historical and theological situation of Chinese public theologians who are entangled with the communist vision and violence. Ultimately, it facilitates a critical reflection on Christian praxis in light of the transcendent Word, aiming to liberate the people and the Christian community within Chinese society.

55 Xu, Rebels of All Stripes, 233–40. Sarah Cook, The Battle for China’s Spirit: Religious Revival,

Repression, and Resistance under Xi Jinping (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). For the case of Liu’s subsequent turn to political meritocracy, see Hang Tu, “From Christian Transcendence to the Maoist Sublime: Liu Xiaofeng, the Chinese Straussians, and the Conservative Revolt against Modernity,” Modern Intellectual History (March 2022): 1–22. 23

Chapter 2

METAPHORS AND CONTROVERSY The Cross in Modern Chinese Art Chen Jiushuang 陳久雙, Institute of Sino-Christian Studies, Hong Kong Cultural Christians in China, who are the main contributors to the Sino-­ Christian theology movement, are also among the most active participants in Chinese modern and contemporary art. However, for a long time, the religious significance and cultural impact of the work of Cultural Christian artists have been largely overlooked by art historians and theologians. This paper attempts to illustrate, with the aid of iconology and sociology of art, the genesis, development, and impact of the Cultural Christian artistic phenomenon through studying changes in the metaphoric and representative meaning of the symbol of the cross in the works of Cultural Christian artists in three distinct stages of modern Chinese art history (the 1940s, 1980s, 1990s). The paper also summarizes the social and cultural significance of Cultural Christian art through comparative study of a range of art critics’ viewpoints and debates on this subject. Finally, this paper identifies a number of works by Christian artists in the new millennium as a promising prospect for a new form of Cultural Christian art, or “post-Cultural Christian art,” works that not only inherit key characteristics of the predecessor Cultural Christian art but also remedy some of their deficiencies. Since the beginning of the 1980s, an increasing number of Chinese art works showcasing religious themes and metaphors have appeared, some “curious asides” in Chinese contemporary art.1 Some of these art works can be described as “Cultural Christian art.” This concept is rarely mentioned in academic writing, 1 Philip Tinari, “Thirty Years of Chinese Contemporary Art: Painting (1979–2009),” LEAP,

no. 3 (2010), accessed Jan 10, 2023, http://www.leapleapleap.com/2010/06/30-years-of-­ chinese-contemporary/.

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and to date there have been very limited studies that explore the features, development, and impact of the Cultural Christian art phenomenon. So, what is “Cultural Christian art”? Obviously, not all works involving Christian symbolism or imagery can be characterized as Cultural Christian art. According to Sino-Christian theology scholars, “Cultural Christians” mainly refers to those scholars who, although they may not belong to any established churches, do acknowledge the spirituality and transcendence of the Christian faith, viewing it as a source of enlightenment and redemption of social culture and spirit.2 In light of this, the Cultural Christian artworks discussed in this paper mainly refer to the works of those artists who are independent of church institutions, and have the following three characteristics: they are the products of independent artists not sponsored by any established church denominations or religious institutions; they affirm and align with Christian core beliefs and do not contain any anti-Christian connotations; they express deep social and cultural concern and sympathy. This paper focuses on the symbol of the cross, not only because it is a recurring motif in the works of Cultural Christians but also because of its rich symbolic meanings and political sensitivity in Chinese society.

The Suffering and Redemption of Culture: The “Resurrection” of the Cross in Art The ten-year-long Cultural Revolution (1966–76) all but demolished all visible forms of religion in China. Most churches and church properties were confiscated and expropriated by the government. Bible, icons, and crosses were brutally taken down, burnt and destroyed. After the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government launched a range of social reforms and opening-up policies, as a result of which Chinese artists were no longer bound only to create works with strong propaganda messages aligned with the Communist Party’s agenda— known as “Red and Bright” art—and instead regained unprecedented freedom to study and adapt, including from Western modern art. 2 See Liu Xiaofeng 劉小楓, “現代語境中的漢語基督教神學” [“‘Sino-Christian Theology’

in the Context of Modernity] Logos & Pneuma Journal, no. 2, (1995): 25–26; Fan Zhihui 樊志輝, “漢語言哲學思想的超越取向—對文化基督徒現象之分析” [The Transcendental Orientation of Chinese Language Philosophy: An Analysis of Cultural Christian Phenomenon] Tianjin Social Sciences, no. 3 (2001): 96, 98.

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Within Chinese Protestant churches, some visionary leaders began to support the re-emergence of Chinese Christian art. For example, in the early 1980s, Nanjing Union Theological Seminary ran calligraphy and painting classes, appointing well-known painters to teach in the seminary, and sponsored and nurtured native Chinese Christian art. These programs helped to revive a Chinese Christian art that had been quiescent for decades. However, the artworks had very limited social impact as they were “not divorced from the rigid imitation of former icon paintings.”3At the same time, some secular artists began to use Christian symbols and imagery in their works. Some of these works caught popular attention in China at the time. One such artist was Yuan Yunsheng 袁運生, the first well-known artist to use the cross as the subject in paintings after the end of the Cultural Revolution. In 1981, he painted his masterpiece Martyrs 殉道者 (1980), which shows an image of Christ on a cross in an abstract form. This work was Yuan’s innovative experiment with a fusion artistic style that combined modern Western abstract art with traditional Chinese ink painting, and its subject presented the artist’s unique interpretation of martyrdom, which alluded to Yuan Yunsheng’s personal suffering during the Cultural Revolution.4 This was a bold and radical artistic experiment at the time, when due to the Cultural Revolution, images of the cross had almost entirely disappeared from Chinese art for over a decade. The sudden reappearance of the cross in Yuan’s work brought a reinvigorating yet shocking resonance to the art world, and provoked further questions and debates. Even today this work continues to be censored by the Chinese authorities and was excluded from Yuan’s solo exhibition in Shanghai this year.5 Subsequently, other artists such as Shu Qun 舒群 and Wang Guangyi 王廣義 also started to use Christian imagery to explore a new artistic language. Shu Qun prominently displayed a number of cross symbols in his series entitled Absolute Principles 絕對原則 produced between 1984 and 1986. According to Shu Qun, the crosses in his paintings during this period were derived from the 3 He Qi 何琦, “中國基督教藝術本色化的四個歷史時期” [Four Historical Periods of the

Indigenization of Chinese Christian Art] Nanking Seminary Review, no.1 (2001): 60–61.

4 Yuan Yunfu, Yuan Yunpu, and Li Huajie 袁運甫，袁運生，李化吉, “壁畫問題探討”,

[Discussion on Mural Problems] Meishu Yanjiu [Art Research], no.1 (1980): 6.

5 Quoted in a letter from Yuan Yunshen’s wife to the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture

and Tourism. See Qin Daihua 秦岱華, “我得不安,” “I Am Anxious,” accessed May 1, 2022, https://www.cnkan.com/636843.html.

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“idea” and “rational spirit” found in classical Western art and represented his obsession with the mystery and order of the universe.6 Although these artists exhibit a heightened interest in Christian culture and frequently use Christian symbols in their works to interpret the cultural significance of Christianity, there is no reliable evidence that show whether, or that, they believed in or had a solid understanding of Christian doctrine or theology. Strictly speaking, most of the artists mentioned above may not fall within the scope of “Cultural Christians” as defined by a majority of Sino-Christian theological scholars. These artists adopted Christian schema not for religious or theological purposes but to address various issues in art history and culture, and may be more appropriately described as “SMSC” (Scholars in Mainland studying Christianity) in the term of religious scholar Chen Cunfu 陳村富.7 However, with the arrival of a subsequent artist, Ding Fang 丁方, arguably the most representative Cultural Christian artist of the 1980s, the debates and hype brought by Christian-themed art works in China reached a new climax. Since the early 1980s, many of Ding Fang’s works have displayed a religious overtone. Around 1984, Ding produced a number of his masterpieces including Harvest 豐收, Flood 洪水, City 城, Out of the Castle 走出城堡, and Call and Birth 呼喚與誕生, all of which were set in the Loess Plateau in the heart of central China, commonly known as the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilization. In his works, Ding intentionally combines and juxtaposes this significant cultural locale with images that embody the spirit of Christ to reveal a world of God hidden away in a post-trauma China recovering from the aftermath of social and cultural atrocities. In a triptych entitled Towards Faith 走向信仰, created between 1988 and 1989, Ding takes the fundamental Christian themes of Suffering 受難, Sacrifice 犧牲, and Resurrection 復活 as the subtitles of his works. All three paintings use a cross to frame the composition of the artwork and illustrate pinnacle moments in Christ’s life against a background set in the Loess Plateau and surrounding cities. In doing so they adapt and inculturate Bible stories into China’s cultural context. In Ding’s paintings, fallen cities imply the suffering of the Christ and offer an artistic eulogy of the earth, calling for the resurrection at the end-time. 6 Shu Qun, “一个“猜谜者”的工作报告” [Work Report of a ‘Riddler’] last modified October

14, 2018, https://www.sohu.com/a/258796124_660068. 7 Chen Cunfu, “The Phenomenon of Contemporary ‘Cultural Christian’ in China,” Regent Chi-

nese Journal（維真學刊）IV, no. 1 (1996): 35–37. 28

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Figure 1.  Ding Fang, Towards Faith 走向信仰 (1988–1989).

Ding Fang explained that these works were his personal outcry against the cultural ruins and spiritual barrenness and vulgarity prevalent in Chinese society following the Cultural Revolution. He longed for a rejuvenation of Chinese modern art with energy and vitality through an all-encompassing “Divine Salvation” offered by Jesus Christ.8 In subsequent works from the 1990s, such as Lamentation 哀歌 (1993) and Descent from the Cross 下十字架 (1995), Ding Fang illustrated significant biblical narratives in a figurative way, distinct from his previous freehand approach. In Lamentation, with rich scorched plateau colors and muddy thick strokes, Ding elaborated the critical moment of the crucifixion and gave biblical figures in the painting the likeness of Chinese farmers from the central Loess Plateau. Art critic Zha Changping 查常平commented that “in using the Loess Plateau as the backdrop for his painting, Ding’s works reveal a type of gospel concerning universal salvation.”9 Liu Xiaofeng 劉小楓, the most well-known Cultural Christian, also highly praised Ding Fang’s works in the words of Greek philosopher Epicharmus: “the body is the earth, but the spirit is the fire.” Similar to the other Cultural Christians in this period, Ding Fang presented Christian culture as an important and inseparable part of the culture of all humankind. Through the poignant expression of suffering, Ding Fang’s works reveal deep pains that have been buried in a Chinese history yearning for divine salvation.

8 Ding Fang丁方, “與永恆同行:深度繪畫手記” [Walking with Eternity: Notes on Deep

Thinking Painting] in Humanities & Art—4, ed. Zha Changping (Guiyang: Guizhou People Press, 2003), 123]. 9 Zha Changping 查常平, “當代藝術的人文追思 1997–2007” [The Humane Thinking of Contemporary Arts (1997–2007)] vol.1 (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), 160. 29

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Chinese artists in the 1980s and 1990s were confronted with two universal questions: “What is Art?” and “What is Art for?” In response to these paradoxes, many artists turned to religious schema to search for solutions to both their own identity and artistic crisis and their communal cultural calamity. As survivors of an unprecedented oppression of culture and belief, the post–Cultural Revolution generation of intellectuals has a natural suspicion of traditional values and ideology, yet has been willing to adopt a heterogeneous Christian culture in the hope of cultural revival. In contrast to the fear, brutality, and total depravity of individual freedom and dignity experienced by these Cultural Christian artists during the nightmare years of the Cultural Revolution, many regard the suffering Christ as a “fellow traveler” in their individual via Dolorosa and view the cross as an ultimate promise for personal healing and redemption.

National Suffering and Redemption: The Genesis of Cultural Christian Art Although the concept of “Cultural Christians” was predominantly developed by Sino-Christian theologians in the 1980s, its artistic counterpart can be traced back much further. During the Second World War, in protest against the Nazi invasions in Europe and the Japanese invasion of China, Chinese painter Gao Jianfu 高劍父 created a freehand Chinese ink painting entitled Cultural Calamity 文化浩劫 (1941) in response to the doomed situation the world was facing at the time. The painting comprises a huge leaning cross standing in the storm. Cultural Calamity is one of the first examples in which a Chinese painter appropriated the Christian cross in response to social or political crisis. Gao was a member of the Chinese Revolutionary League prior to becoming an artist, and he took part in the planning and participated in numerous early Chinese revolutionary movements, including the Huanghuagang Uprising in 1911. After 1920, he stepped down from political positions and focused solely on his painting career. As a founder of the Lingnan Painting School (嶺南畫 派), Gao devoted his life to the renewal of Chinese ink painting. In his paintings, Gao Jianfu not only boldly adopted Japanese and Western art techniques but also included many subjects that had been commonly found in Western art, such as skulls, crosses, planes, or cannons, which caused a huge controversy in the Chinese art community at the time. Gao’s controversial style of painting is epitomized in his masterpiece, Cultural Calamity, and it is clear that the purpose of

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the gigantic cross in the painting is not an expression of the artist’s personal faith but a social statement of sympathy and compassion in a time of grave cultural suffering and humanitarian crisis during World War II.10 Whether the artist himself was Christian remained unclear, although many of Gao’s family and friends were publicly identified as Christians. Other artists in Republican and Nationalist China who explored similar themes in their works include Lin Fengmian 林風眠 and Mon (Edmond) van Genechten (Fang Xisheng 方希聖).11 In contrast to Gao’s freehand Chinese ink painting, van Genechten used the cross to illustrate China’s sufferings in his realist works. In 1944, van Genechten completed his oil painting Suffering China 苦難的中國 (1943–1944), which presented Christ carrying a cross and walking among a group of old and sickly looking Chinese people in the depths of suffering. At the focal point of the picture, we can see the cross that Christ carries is made of pine tree, symbolizing the noble character of Chinese literati. Here the painter used the pine tree to symbolize the tenacity and perseverance of Christ in his suffering, and also implied that Christ was sharing the suffering of all compatriots in China at the time. Van Genechten, a Belgium missionary sent to China with CICM, was a key pioneer in the inculturation of the Christian art movement. In Suffering China, we can see that van Genechten used a number of inculturation methods in his painting, such as traditional Chinese painting techniques and images of Chinese people to illustrate biblical stories, placing biblical characters within Chinese social settings. Van Genechten painted Suffering China during the height of the inculturation movement. At the beginning of the twentieth century, two of the most prominent institutional sponsors for the movement were T’ou-Se-We orphanage art workshop (1849–1960) and Fu Jen university (1925–1952), both funded by the Catholic Church in its effort to revive Asian Christian art. Both bore much fruit, especially the latter.12 The teachers and students of Fu Jen University had held various art exhibitions and received encouragement and support from the 10 Ralph Croizier, Art and Revolution in Modern China: The Lingnan (Cantonese) School of Paint-

ing, 1906–1951 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 147–48.

11 See Lorry Swerts and Koen De Ridder, Mon Van Genechten (1903–1974): Flemish Mission-

ary and Chinese Painter: Inculturation of Christian Art in China (Leuven: Leuven Universrity Press, 2003). 12 Daniel Johnson Fleming, Each with His Own Brush: Contemporary Christian Art in Asia and Africa (New York: Friendship Press, 1938), 13.

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authorities of the church, but less from outside of church.13 However, the style of these art works had certain weaknesses from a later viewpoint, such as the overly dramatized or stylized expressions of characters in the paintings, with, for example, the portrait of Jesus often looking like a character from Chinese folk opera. Further, these works were deemed by some art critiques to be of “artisan quality,”14 with critics noting, for example, that “the sensitivity and subtlety that is the strength of Chinese art has not penetrated the Christian content.”15 From the late 1940s, some well-known painters, including Chang Chao-Ho ( Jiang Zhaohe 蔣兆和), Chang Dai-chien (Zhang Daqian 張大千), Zhang Shanzi 張善孖, and Kang Tung Pih (Kang Tongbi) 康同璧 were commissioned by the Roman Catholic church to create religious artworks. Chang Chao-Ho was a nonbeliever who produced more than a dozen high-quality religious works during 1947–1958, including Great Flood 大洪水, Sorrow of Mary 聖母瑪利亞 的悲哀 and Escape to Egypt 逃往埃及. Some of these works, including Escape to Egypt and Sorrow of Mary, were reprinted as postcards and widely distributed in Europe. Compared to other works with similar themes by Lu Hungnien (Lu Hongnian 陸鴻年) and others from Fu Jen University, Chang’s realist paintings with a unique fusion style between the East and West were more vivid and natural, with higher artistic and experimental value.16 Moreover, Chang Chao-Ho was known for painting suffering Chinese. In 1943, Chang completed the work Refugees 流民圖, representing the tragedy of exiled Chinese people during World War II, which caused a sensation at that time. Comparing Refugees by Chang Chao-Ho and Suffering China by van Genechten side by side, it is not difficult to conclude that van Genechten’s work was influenced by Chang’s, especially given the similarities in styles and artistic techniques. The key difference, however, is that van Genechten included many religious elements in his portrayal and interpretation of suffering. Although van Genechten was one of the founders of the inculturation movement in Chinese Christian art, his artistic technique ultimately deviated from the movement and took on the strengths of other artists from outside the church, 13 See Luke Chen’s disappointment at an exhibition, Luke Chen, “An Appreciation of the Cath-

olic Art Exhibit in Shanghai,” Fu Jen Magazine, vol. II (Peking: Catholic University in Peking, 1936), 83. 14 Fleming, Each with His Own Brush, 5. 15 W. A. Dyrness, Christian Art in Asia (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1979), 39. 16 On Fu Jen Catholic Art, see e.g., Chu Xiaobai 褚瀟白, “民國時期基督教圖像的本土化 努力” [The Inculturation of Christian Pictures in the Republic of China] Journal for the Study of Christian Culture 29, (Spring 2019): 160–86. 32

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eventually developing into his own distinctive style. The painting Suffering China was created as a protest against the Japanese invasion of China and also a response to van Genechten’s personal experience in a Japanese concentration camp during WWII. Given his Christian faith, he saw the suffering in war-torn China from a religious perspective, allowing him to merge the biblical narratives and Chinese social reality in his realist artwork, which led to a significant leap in Chinese modern art history. Apart from those artworks sponsored by the church, one of the goals of these artworks mentioned in this section that were created by artists, such as Gao Jianfu and Lin Fengmian, was the hope of reviving a weakened Chinese art.17 At the same time, these artists adopted Christian symbols that were indispensable in composing a historical narrative of national and cultural crisis as salved by the spirit of Christianity. Most art historians, when examining this period of modern art history, have only focused on the artistic language of the works, and have largely overlooked the redemptive significance of the cross in the artworks produced in this remarkable period.

Criticism and Protest: Political Issues Concerning the Cross after 1989 If the Cultural Christian art phenomenon began around the 1940s, its progress and development stalled due to the foreign invasion and subsequent domestic conflicts in China, and was limited to occasional, sporadic practices of certain artists. In the 1980s and 90s after Reform and Opening Up, this “art movement” became more active and quickly regained momentum. Especially after the politically sensitive event of the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, many avant-garde artists joined in this movement, reviving and enriching the art form. ­Christian-themed works remain extremely relevant to China’s contemporary religious and political reality today. The Gao Brothers18 were the first artists in China to use the cross in installation art. Their first famous art work, Midnight Mass 子夜彌撒, created in the late 1980s, is an installation in the shape of a large cross, with a cross structure made out of inflatable condoms and genital analogues. According to the Gao Brothers, this work was not meant to connote sexual innuendo or provoke sexual impulses, 17 Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培,”高劍父的正、反、合” [Gao Jianfu’s Positive, Negative, and Combi-

nation] Art Construction,” no. 1, (1936): 2.

18 高氏兄弟, comprising Gao Zhen (b. 1956) and Gao Qiang (b. 1963). 33

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but was intended to criticize “the inflated and fragile cultural aura at that time.”19 It was a satire and ridicule of an impetuous society. Midnight Mass illustrates the spiritual degradation and poverty of people in an overly consumeristic world. The impact of the work came from the deterrent effect of the cross in China, which carries a different connotation to that in the west. A typical cross in the Chinese Christian church is usually painted red, the same color as the Chinese national flag, which can be seen as a challenge to, rebellion, or provocation against the heart of communist ideology. To display a large cross in public outside of a church setting is very “unusual” and can cause uneasiness among viewers. A few years later, the Gao Brothers created another “big cross,” a series entitled The Critical: Great Cross 臨界·大十字架 (1994–1996), which is composed of five large crosses, each about three meters high. These works were respectively entitled: World Night 世界之夜,20 Century Dusk 世紀黃昏,21 Mass at Dawn 黎明的彌撒,22 The Anxiety of Humanity 人類的憂慮,23 and Gospel: Revelation of Civilization 福音書—文明啓示錄.24 19 See Lü Peng 吕澎, “政治的寓意与象征—高氏兄弟的艺术逻辑” [The Implication

20

21

22

23

24

and Symbol of Politics: Artistic Logic of the Gao Brothers] accessed June 1, 2022, http:// www.99ys.com/home/2010/06/30/09/90241.html. World Night uses metal chains to hang materials such as the Bible, loess, water, blood, matches, watches, pistols, electric lamps, and Tai Chi balls within the frame of a huge wooden cross. This wooden cross has 26 drawers punched with small holes, inside of which are lights and light controllers that control the brightness and extinction of the light automatically. When the temperature of the lights reaches a certain degree, the power is switched off automatically, then lights up again after cooling, on repeat. The Gao Brothers also used metal chains to hang items such as the Bible, loess, water, blood, matches, watches, pistols, electric lamps, and Tai Chi balls on the wooden cross. This cross is installed with fifty-two doors, whose surfaces are inlaid with scattered goldplated numbers. On the side of the doors are numbers that represent historic events, such as 1789, 1966, and 1989, and the other side are random numbers of an unknown future. A globe hangs at the heart of the cross. A tiled wooden cross, which looks like a crashed aircraft with a broken tail, is installed with a set of red bulbs. A light regulator allows the bulbs to be continuously turned on and off. A globe with a metal chain is suspended on the cross, under which is a Tai Chi (Tai ji) Bagua Board 太極八卦盤. This work consists of two crossed frames linked by metal chains, looking like a giant open book. The Gao Brothers put books they had read into glass containers and filled these with a red potion; Red Guard armbands were also sealed in bottles filled with red potion. Newspapers soaked to pulp were placed in medical trays, set on the left and right sides of the cross against a background of photos about industrial waste. At the heart of the cross on the left are the ashes of print inside a glass box: with a red bulb inside the box, the ashes appear to be still burning. An alarm clock is suspended at the center of the right cross. 34

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Figure 2.  The Gao Brothers, The Critical: Great Cross 臨界·大十字架 (1994–1996).

Compared with Midnight Mass, the spiritual overtone of the Great Cross series has changed. The Gao Brothers point out that their inspiration for creating this series of “Great Crosses” came in part from the Bible. In a blog post, they claimed that “there is suffering in everything, which reminds us of Christ on the cross. A strong sense of suffering, all being and consciousness reminds us of the cross, which made us conceive of a broader concept of quasicrosses: the cross of life, the cross of money, the cross of consciousness, the cross of history, the cross of art, the cross of ideals, the cross of conscience, the cross of reason, the cross of power, the cross of the East. . . . Even love, freedom and hope, all remind us of the cross.”25 The Gao Brothers acknowledge that the Great Cross series was their response to the sinful nature of humanity, as well as the spiritual and cultural 25 See Gao Brothers (@Gaoshibrother), “關於十字架與藝術的隨想” [Thoughts on the

Cross and Art] personal blog on WeChat, October 1, 2016. https://freewechat.com/a/ MzI2MzAwNjE1OA==/2649395140/1. 35

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-04-07 01:50 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

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degradation and political stagnation of the period. They felt that China’s lack of a strong national faith was the fundamental reason for the decline.26 In a dialogue between the author and the Gao Brothers in 2016, the Gao Brothers claimed that they believed in Jesus Christ but did not belong to any specific Christian denomination and rarely participated in religious rites. Although the Great Cross series was somewhat inspired by Christianity, it is not evidence of the Gao Brother’s Christian faith, but just one of many recurring political and cultural-­ themed works that they have produced throughout their career. Other works of the Gao Brothers also focusing on cultural and spiritual criticism include their large-scale sculptures, Christ was Shot 槍殺基督 (2009), Confessing Mao 懺 悔的毛 (2009), and Fable of the Blind: Crossing the River 盲人的寓言－過河 (2016). Against the post–Cultural Revolution background, these works attempt to use the Christian concept of original sin to explain prevalent social and political issues. Such a perspective coincides with the views of Cultural Christians like Liu Xiaofeng, who also regarded Christianity as a key opposition to China’s authoritarian government and a major force to bring about social transformation and true democracy.27 Unfortunately, some art works of Cultural Christians were banned in China and never allowed to be exhibited in public, including the Gao Brother’s Great Crosses series,28 due to the political tension and sensitivity associated with the symbol of the cross. The more the Church has been oppressed, the more empathy is given to the cross. Over time, the cross has become increasingly associated with political oppression and a symbol of freedom in China. This metaphor was epitomized by the “Cross Removal Incidents” that swept across China as result of the tightening of religious regulation by the Chinese central government, notably in Wenzhou between 2014 and 2015. These events drew much domestic and international attention, and a number of Chinese artists swiftly responded and expressed their dissent through their works. Artist Cao Yuanming, for example, produced an installation entitled Infinite Information 無限信息 in 2015. The work is a group of inflating and deflating church models that look as if they are “breathing heavily,” symbolizing how Chinese Christians were suffocating in politically rarefied air. Separately, in 2015, artist Kong Yongqian 孔永謙 recorded multiple incidents of the demolition of 26 Gao, “Thoughts on the Cross and Art.” 27 Liu Xiaofeng, 現代性社會理論緒論：現代性與現代中國 [A Preface to Social Theory:

Modernity and Modern China] (Shanghai: San Lian, 1988), 45.

28 Gao, “Thoughts on the Cross and Art.”

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Figure 3.  He Hai, Virtual Art Museum 虛擬美術館.

the church crosses in Wenzhou in his documentary photography series, Crowns 桂冠, as an act of solidarity and support for churches in distress. Another artist, He Hai 何海, made a number of art works from the demolished crosses, including rubbings made over the demolished crosses using calligraphy paper. Rubbing as a traditional Chinese art form is used to copy and preserve ancient writings and patterns on stone carvings and cultural relics, thus, by deploying this ancient method to preserve the fragments of the demolished crosses, He was treating these crosses with the respect due to important cultural relics, and at the same time composing a requiem for these precious crosses and the persecutions they represent. In some photos, he also climbed to the top of a desecrated 37

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church, stood in place of the demolished cross, with his arms outstretched, using his body to imitate the removed cross. The artist named this series of works the Virtual Art Museum 虛擬美術館. The artist called for a memorial hall to be built to safekeep these remains of the crosses, but the current political situation in China would never allow such a physical memorial to be held, therefore he could only use the intangible forums of art to metaphorically commemorate these events.29 After the widespread “cross removal incidents,” many church leaders and human rights lawyers were arrested. In response to these further persecutions, artist Zhu Jiuyang 朱久洋 placed a huge red chair on a frozen river and named the work Wilderness Judgement 曠野審判 (2017), which suggested that judgment would not only take place in the visible world but also in an invisible dimension. During this period, religious and political oppression was instrumental in the art works created at the time, and artistic creation involving the cross as a sign of rebellion and political critique reached a new climax.

Redemption or Blasphemy?—Criticism of Cultural Christian Art The religious connotations of Chinese art have for a long time been largely dismissed by critics. Only recently, since the year 2000, have Christian critics started to pay more serious attention to the religious implications behind these art works, although there is a vast spectrum of different views on this topic. Hao Qingsong 郝青松, a critic and curator, describes the works of Ding Fang and the Gao Brothers as “Public Theological Art.”30 He holds that, due to the absence of a transcendental absolute Geist in Chinese culture, Chinese contemporary art has been in a prolonged state of decadence and weakness. In contrast, the Christian spirit subjects contemporary art to close scrutiny and directly intervenes in social reality by confronting human sinful nature and providing hope for human redemption.31 Hao Qingsong further argued that modern and contemporary Christian art was founded on political theology with a real social concern, and 29 He Hai, interviewed by the author via Wechat, May 20, 2022. 30 Hao divides Christian art into three categories: Missionary theological art, theological

a­esthetic art, and public theological art, the latter aiming at social care and justice. See Hao Qingsong 郝青松, “當代藝術轉型時刻的精神救贖” [Spiritual Redemption at the Moment of Contemporary Art Transformation] Art Monthly no. 12 (2015): 69. 31 Hao, “Spiritual Redemption,” 69. 38

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provided good guidance for the development and transition of Chinese contemporary art. However, Hao Qingsong’s views have been questioned by other critics, such as Zhu Qi 朱其, who argued that “Contemporary art is incompatible with the core value of God. It is unnecessary to advocate for Christian art or explore the role of Christianity in the development of Contemporary Art.”32 Zhu Qi’s view is similar to that of James Elkins, a professor of art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Elkins points out in his book On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, “art that sets out to convey spiritual values goes against the grain of the history of modernism”33; therefore, “sincere” or “openly” religious art that is not critical of religion is virtually impossible in postmodern art. Elkins’ view represents the majority opinion in the field of art history and has caused extensive debate in the Christian community. In 2007, an international seminar series named “Re-enchantment” was hosted by David Morgan and James Elkins to discuss and explore in-depth the issues raised by Elkins.34 Elkins is not suggesting that art and religion are mutually exclusive, and in fact has also claimed that “art is inescapably religious . . . because it expresses such things as the hope of transcendence or the possibilities of the human spirit,” but that “aside from the rare exceptions, religion is seldom mentioned in the art world unless it is linked to criticism, ironic distance, or scandal.”35 So Elkins’ point is that modern and contemporary art is a form of “institutional art” in which religion is excluded, and therefore it is “absolutely right” to “avoid talking about religion together with contemporary art.”36 Despite the popularity of Elkins’ view, it is not without dissent from other art scholars who view art and religion as intricately related and inseparable.37 32 See Zhu Qi 朱其, “當代藝術不應該宗教化” [Contemporary Art Can’t Be Religious]

accessed April 1, 2016, https://read01.com/O3nKg5.html#.Yn-JCy21E6h. 33 James Elkins, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge,

2004), 20.

34 James Elkins, and David Morgan, Re-enchantment (New York: Routledge, 2011). 35 Elkins, On the Strange Place of Religion, 15. 36 See Elkins, On the Strange Place of Religion, 22. Elkins writes “Art is whatever is exhibited in

galleries in major cities, bought by museums of contemporary art, shown in biennales and the Documents, and written about in periodicals such as Artforum, October, Flash Art, Parkett, or Tema Celeste,” 1. 37 Including Sally Promey, William Dyrness, Ena Heller, Jeremy Biles, Daniel A Siedell. See Elkins Morgan, Re-enchantment; also, Jeremy Biles, review of “On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art,” The Journal of Religion 86, no. 2, (April, 2006): 358–59. 39

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Regardless of the outcome of the debate between Elkins and his contemporaries, Elkins’ argument is fundamentally biased and only applicable to the Western art world. If we simply adopt his arguments or methods of art criticism to examine Chinese modern art, especially given the religious and social context of modern-day China, it would produce an absurd result. Unlike in the West, Christianity has never been the dominant or mainstream religion in China. On the contrary, Christians have been consistently persecuted throughout Chinese history and churches continue to be closely scrutinized and controlled by the authorities even today. Under such oppression and persecution, the Christian mission to “uphold the spirit of Christ” has become a banner or metaphor for all forms of resistance and rebellion against the autocratic government from all facets of society, including Chinese artists. This is most evident in the repeated use of the Christian cross in Chinese modern and contemporary art as a form of silent protest against, and deconstruction of, the governing system and authority. This practice of political deconstruction is a typical discourse in modern contemporary art. Despite the efforts of Cultural Christian artists, another camp of Christian art critics has been critical of the works of Ding Fang and the Gao Brothers for being overly concerned with social issues yet failing to draw out the essence of Christian faith. One such critic is Zhang Yi 張羿, who believes that Ding Fang’s works manifest vulnerability and confusion in the artist’s faith, as they showcase the suffering and death of Christ but omit the quintessential message of the resurrection. Zhang Yi condemned some of these works as “on the verge of blasphemy.”38 Zhang Yi also points out that the Great Cross series by the Gao Brothers borrowed the schema of the cross merely to express despair and disharmony between humans and God, “which is not really conducive to the meaning of the cross.”39 Separately, Christian critic Zha Changping also posited that Ding Fang and others’ works are the products of a Christian cultural complex, rather than sound biblical understanding or faith-based life experience. Zha believes some of these works constitute “an occasional misappropriation of the crucified image of Jesus Christ.”40 38 Zhang Yi 張羿, “行走在瀆神邊緣的當代基督教藝術” [Contemporary Christian Art

on the Verge of Blasphemy] last modified May 9, 2010, http://www.art-ba ba.com/main/ main.art?threadId=33868&forumId=8. 39 Zhang Yi, “Contemporary Christian Art.” 40 Zha Changping 查常平, “當代藝術中的受難圖像” [The Image of Suffering in Contemporary Art] Literature & Art Studies, 2009 (11): 7. 40

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Other Christian critics, such as Tan Qin 譚秦, Hao Qingsong, Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky, Li Anle 李安樂 and others, are more tolerant and supportive towards these artists. Li Anle believes that the works of Ding Fang and the Gao Brothers were not blasphemy, but on the contrary were in fact an act of worship, as these works “successfully used the meta-narrative behind the symbol of the cross to witness to the Christian faith” and “conveyed the love of Christ.”41 Tan Qin believes that some works show the artists’ curiosity about faith, which not only reflects the true perception of Christianity by the majority in China today, but may induce people to search for ultimate truth.42 Similarly, Karetzky praised the Gao Brothers in her article “Amazing Grace: Contemporary Christian art in China,” describing their works as “inspired by Christian ethos” and providing “a salve for the isolated and the hurt.”43 This debate concerning the works of Cultural Christians remains highly controversial. On one level, this is because of different methodologies and personal beliefs adopted by the critics, but more fundamentally, the diverging views reveal the range of answers to the open question “What is modern and contemporary Christian art?” It is unnecessary to take sides on this debate. Cultural Christian art is undeniably a unique phenomenon of Chinese modern and contemporary art and has a number of powerful attributes, revealing social maladies, awakening public awareness to freedom of expression, deconstructing traditions and social order, and rethinking the significance of faith in society. The voice and opinions of the Cultural Christian artists carry great weight in society and influence other Christians in China. Yet, as some Christian critics have identified, an over-­ emphasis on the social representation of the cross means that some Cultural Christian art betrays a certain sense of utopian nationalism, and as a result falls into the cliches of “political correctness” in postmodern art. Several deviate from

41 Li Anle 李安樂, “文化研究視域下的精神圖式關懷—丁方及高氏兄弟九十年代藝

術的個案研究” [The Concern for Spiritual Schemas in Cultural Studies: A Case Study of the Art of Ding Fang and the Gao Brothers in the 1990s] in Award Winning Theses of the Youth Art Criticism Award of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing: Art Research, 2008), 142. 42 Tan Qin 譚秦, “中國當代視角藝術中的終極關懷” [Ultimate Concern in Chinese Contemporary Visual Art] accessed March 10, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= cxQfYyBOvcQ/. 43 Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky, “Amazing Grace: Contemporary Chinese Christian Art,” Yishu: Journal of Chinese Contemporary Art 16, no. 1 (2017): 93–94. 41

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the quintessential element of the Christian faith, that is personal salvation made possible by faith in the death of Jesus on the cross.

Transformation and Renewal: “Post-Cultural Christian” Art since 2000 Since the turn of the new millennium, there has been a surge of art works in China that zoom in on personal salvation. With thriving urban churches, many highly educated intellectuals have joined “family churches” in recent years.44 Some of them are well-known artists in China while others are academics working in art colleges. Unlike the Cultural Christians mentioned in preceding sections, some artists, such as Yang Feiyun 楊飛雲, Jiang Liang 蔣梁, or Wang Yongliang 王勇亮 rarely deploy the crucifix in their paintings, rather they mainly explore topics concerning the believer’s personal faith. Take The Prayer series 祈禱系 列 (2002–2006) painted by Jiang Liang for example, which depicts a group of worshipping Christians at a Chinese family fellowship. The artist was deeply moved in that moment where “people were reborn in Christ, became members of one body, loved and were united with one another, as citizens of the kingdom of heaven.”45 Certain recent Christian artworks have retained key characteristics of Cultural Christian art of the 80s and 90s, yet the portrayal of personal spirituality in these works goes beyond their predecessors. We might identify these works as the “post-Cultural Christian.” For example, the painting Alas, the Sea 唉，大海 by Zhu Jiuyang from 2014 was obviously inspired by the oil painting The Memory of Being Pierced 被洞穿的記憶 created by the Gao Brothers in 1999. The Gao Brothers painted a huge punctured hand that alludes to the hand of the crucified Jesus, and through the hole in Jesus’s hand the viewers can see Tiananmen Square in the distance with clouds of human souls floating in the sky. This work evidently commemorates the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989 and calls for the political redemption of the nation. In contrast, Zhu Jiuyang’s Alas, the Sea depicts a pair of huge hands rescuing a drowning person from the vast ocean. Although the two paintings are strikingly similar in composition, color, and expression, the spiritual implications behind the works are entirely different. In Zhu’s painting, the focus is 44 That is, unregistered churches (家庭教會). 45 Jiang Liang, e-mail message to author, April 18, 2022. 42

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the personal salvation of the individual, in contrast to the social and political redemption of the Gao Brothers’ work. Zhu Jiuyang lived in Songzhuang Artist Village on the outskirts of Beijing and was part of a local Christian artists’ fellowship. Zhu remarked that he had benefited a lot from his time in this Christian community.46 Heavily influenced and inspired by the “Threefold vision” 三化異象47 of Pastor Zhao Tian’en ( Jonathan Chao 趙天恩), these Beijing-based Christian artists began to echo the vision in their works. Among this group of artists is Ye Weilin 耶衛林, who created the digital art work Renewing China 復興中國 (1999), with a flock of sheep roaming in front of Tiananmen Square. This work is a direct interpretation and illustration of one of Pastor Zhao’s visions, the “Evangelization of China,” as the sheep represent Christians and Tiananmen Square represents the heart of China. Sharing the same vision, another member of the artist fellowship Zhang Fan 張帆, appropriated the schema of the famous political painting Founding Ceremony 開國大典 (1953–1979) in his work Blessing China 祝福你 中國 (2004). In Zhang’s painting, Christ takes the central place of Chairman Mao and preaches to a group of sheep in Tiananmen Square. Similarly, Zhu Jiuyang also painted a group of people singing hymns in front of Tiananmen Square in his Road to Heaven 天堂之路 series (2015), exploring the theme of faith and life renewal. In 2013, Zhu planned and executed a performance artwork to evangelize to the art community in Beijing. He herded a group of sheep to the art exhibition hall in Songzhuang and hoisted one of them with wires mid-air. When the suspended sheep bleated, the rest of the sheep below also echoed out loud. The metaphor behind this scene in Straying Lamb 迷途的 羔羊 (2013) was shocking and moving at the same time. In recent years, Dao Zi’s 島子 Chinese ink paintings have attracted great attention and discussion internationally. Dao Zi is an art history professor at Tsinghua university, who was a celebrated poet before he became a painter. Since 2000, he has devoted himself to the creation of his own style of Chinese ink painting, which he named “Saintism Ink Art 聖水墨” (also known as “Chinese Ink Art of the Cross”). Responding to the spiritual decline in modern ink painting,48 Dao Zi devoted himself to the innovation of Chinese ink painting. For 46 Zhu Jiuyang, interviewed by author via WeChat, April 19, 2022. 47 Pastor Zhao’s “three visions” compose the Evangelization of China 中國福音化, the King-

domization of the Church 教會國度化, and the Christianization of Culture 文化基督化. 48 Dao Zi 島子, “精神性水墨旨歸” [The Principles of Spiritual Ink],” last modified April 21,

2018, https://www.sohu.com/a/228985371_455444. 43

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Figure 4.  Zhu Jiuyang, Straying Lamb 迷途的羔羊 (2013).

him, the black and white, the wet and dry, the shade, the dryness and the density of the Chinese ink, together with the ever-changing and freestyle lines can all symbolize the word and spirit of God. He believes “the redeemed Chinese ink would be more sorrowful and holy, and can be a visual metaphor for suffering and redemption. Lamentation, requiem and sorrow for the martyred, the innocent land, the freedom of life and thought can be all saved by faith and be freed from fear and temptation.”49 Among Dao Zi’s art works, the symbols of the cross can be seen throughout his career, in works such as Testament: Creation 約：創世 (2006), Testament: Salvation 約：救恩 (2006), Testament: the End of the World 約：末世 (2006), Redeeming Sacrifice of Precious Blood 寶血輓回 祭 (2007), Martyrdom 殉道圖 (2008), Miracles of Mountains and Rivers 山川 神跡 (2010), Spiritual Fountain with Bamboo 靈泉苦竹 (2015), Bitter Bamboo: 49 Dao Zi, “The Principles of Spiritual Ink.”

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Figure 5.  Dao Zi, Triple Scroll of Thorns 荊冠三札 (2018).

Holy Nail 苦竹·聖釘 (2017) Triple Scroll of Thorns 荊冠三札 (2018), Smoking Flax Shall He Not Quench 將殘的燈不吹滅 (2019). As the titles of these works show, Dao Zi’s ink paintings reveal a strong and recurring biblical narrative portrayed within the Chinese cultural matrix. For example, The Triptych of Triple Scroll of Thorns, is “painting notes” created whilst meditating on the crucifixion of Christ during Dao Zi’s devotional time. Reading notes (zhaji 札記) were a common practice among traditional literati to capture their reflections and thoughts when reading ancient scrolls. Meditating on the thorns of Christ after the crucifixion, Dao Zi painted thorns using different media and methods to represent the different dimensions of the pain and sacrifice of Christ. Alongside its spiritual dimension, Dao Zi’s art reveals a deep concern for social justice. For example, Demolition: Disaster and Blessing 拆: 禍與福 (2016) and Autumn Rain and Valley of Tears 秋雨淚谷（2018) were two paintings produced in response to social injustice experienced by the Christian community in recent years. In Demolition: Disaster and Blessing, a cross is being lifted by a huge crane, and at the bottom of the canvas are buildings in the southern China architectural style. Three crosses are found in the painting in total—a large bright red cross lying on the earth, a cross suspended by crane in midair, 45

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and a third cross hidden in the form of a carved seal stamped on the painting in place of the artist’s signature. Each of these crosses has a different symbolic meaning: the visible crosses on top of the churches that had been demolished and publicly desecrated; the invisible cross of the nation of China battered and trampled; and lastly the signature cross represents the artist’s strong Christian identity. Using symbolism and juxtaposition, Dao Zi highlights the tension between the persecutory violence of the authorities and the suffering of the nation and its people, whilst surrounding angels witness the injustice and raise their wings to symbolize the imminent arrival of the final judgment. Similarly, the painting Autumn Rain and Valley of Tears depicts the autumn rainy season, an allusion to the name of the persecuted Chengdu Autumn Rain Church 秋雨教會 where the head pastor Wang Yi was arrested and the church forcibly closed in 2018. The painter boldly used a fallen cross to demonstrate his solidarity with those under persecution. In a series of paintings entitled Umbrella 伞 (2015), Dao Zi also painted a cross in the middle of many overlapping yellow umbrellas, representing a yearning for God’s justice and reign, in response to Hong Kong’s umbrella movement and the Occupy Central protest in 2014. More recently, in response to the “Chained Girl” news story in 2022, Dao Zi created another painting entitled Chain of Sorrow 鏈之殤 (2022). This incident concerned a woman who was trafficked, sexually abused and imprisoned in a rural village in China, and forced to give birth to eight children in the same family, which eventually caused her to lose her sanity. This news went viral on social media and engendered much social and political attention. In Chain of Sorrow, Dao Zi painted images of female genitalia bound by iron chains overlayed with various crosses, representing how Christ suffers alongside the victims of sexual slavery and human trafficking. Dao Zi himself has remarked that “spiritual Chinese ink painting is an art of revelation, prophecy, awakening, foundation-­ building and presentation.”50 Dao Zi’s works not only touch on current social maladies but also explore the theological concept of the “already but not yet” kingdom of God.

Conclusions and Prospects Through studying the changes in the metaphoric implications of the symbol of the cross in modern and contemporary Chinese art, we can map out the 50 Dao Zi, “The Principles of Spiritual Ink.” 46

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transformation and development in the ideology of Cultural Christian artists in modern Chinese art history. This largely results from the polysemy and political sensitivity associated with the Christian cross in China, which tends to induce a shocking and defamiliarizing effect on the audience. There is a striking similarity between the strategic progression of the Cultural Christian art phenomenon and the development of the Sino-Christian theology since the 1980s. This paper, however, has traced the genesis of the Cultural Christian art phenomenon back to the Republic of China era, and sought to understand the reasons for its formation in the historical and cultural context in which it arose. The paper demonstrates how the symbol of the cross has been variously used by Cultural Christian artists in different periods to represent national suffering and redemption in the 1940s; then cultural suffering and redemption in the 1980s; and how the same symbol was adopted for more radical political critique since the 1990s. Despite the fact that many Cultural Christian artists were fearlessly outspoken on issues of social justice and national and cultural redemption, by allowing the cultural significance of the Christian faith to eclipse the redemptive mission of the faith itself, the personal redemption offered by the cross is overshadowed by a collective cultural and social salvation. In spite of this, a promising artistic phenomenon appeared in the new millennium, which is here termed “post–Cultural Christian art.” Unlike its predecessors, post–Cultural Christian art often delivers a strong gospel message focusing on individual salvation, yet at the same time remains relevant to prevailing social and cultural issues. Some of these more recent works, moreover, have been closely connected to the Protestant church as more and more serious Christian art exhibitions were sponsored or supported by churches with a Protestant background.51 Moreover, the works of artists such as Dao Zi, Zhu Jiuyang and Bai Yefu 白野夫 have also been frequently exhibited in Protestant churches and seminaries, both

51 These have included, for example, Transformation and Renewal: the Beijing International Eas-

ter Art Exhibition「蛻變與更新」—第四屆北京國際復活節藝術展 in 2009, held at the 21st Century Theatre (Beijing International Church) and the Golden Mantis Art Center respectively; Love China with Soul and Heart: Contemporary Christian Art Exhibition「以靈 命愛中華」—當代基督教藝術展 (Beijing, 2010); Context and Care: Amity Fifth National Christian Art Exhibition 「處境與關懷」—愛德第五屆全國基督教藝術展 (Nanjing, 2015); Christmas Art Exhibition 聖誕藝術大展 (Beijing, 2016)，Dante in China: Contemporary Art Exhibition「但丁在中國」—當代藝術展 (Beijing, 2016), Matter ­Matters: International Art Exhibition「關乎萬有」—國際藝術展 (Beijing, 2019), among others. 47

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domestically and overseas.52 These evidence a remarkable change to the Chinese local churches’ negative attitudes towards fine art in the past, and may also be a positive sign of improvement in the theology of these local Protestant churches in recent years. As more artists join family churches and more Protestant churches engage with the art community in China, we are reminded of the revival of the Christian art movement sponsored by the Catholic Church in the early twentieth century. However, it may be too early to predict whether the Chinese Protestant churches will provide sustaining support to contemporary art in China, and what new breakthroughs in Chinese Christian art may occur as a result.

52 For example, in 2019, a local (Adventist) city church in Cangnan Distract, Wenzhou hosted

a personal art exhibition of Dao Zi, possibly the first solo exhibition of a contemporary artist on behalf of a regional church 牧區教會 in China. Later, in 2021, a network of local churches in Wenzhou used artists such as Dao Zi’s abstract work God and gold 上帝與黃金 (2014) and He Qi’s Messiah 彌賽亞 (2004) in its church calendar, distributed to families of believers to mark New Year’s Eve. 48

Chapter 3

SCHOLAR, CRITIC, SCRIBE Zha Changping’s Humanist Criticism Naomi Thurston, Chinese University of Hong Kong Introduction: From Cultural Encounter to Cultural Critique Among reform-era intellectuals drawn to Christianity as a lived religion and writers with an interest in Christian theology, are some outspoken Chinese humanists in fields ranging from rights advocacy to pioneering art and from avant-garde literature to academic scholarship who stand out for their employment of Christian concepts and ideas as instruments of cultural critique, particularly of their own society.1 Whether one considers calls for the representation of spiritual transcendence and renewal in pioneering contemporary Chinese art,2 explorations of sin and redemption in twenty-first-century Chinese literature, or the “Cultural Christian” debate of the 1990s: common to all these cultural endeavours or intellectual discourses involving Christian perspectives is the function of culture mediating the dialogue between Christianity and China. Artists and writers who have been involved in cultural work and writings that introduce Christian themes and ideas in their sociocultural critiques include Daozi 島子 (Christian poet, painter, and professor at Tsinghua University, whose works are discussed in Chen Jiushuang’s contribution above); 1 Cf. Ying Fuk-tsang 邢福增, “中國維權運動與基督教信仰” [China’s Weiquan Movement

and Christian Faith], 基督教研究中心暨基督教中國宗教文化研究社通訊 [CCS & CSCCRC Newsletter] 34 (March 2014): 1–7, accessed June 8, 2023, https://www.csccrc. org/newsletter/30/123.pdf. See also Gerda Wielander, “Bridging the Gap? An Investigation of Beijing Intellectual House Church Activities and their Implications for China’s Democratization,” Journal of Contemporary China 18:62 (2009): 849–64, DOI: https://doi. org/10.1080/10670560903174689. 2 Confer, for example, the work of Yunnan-based artist, critic, and curator Luo Fei 罗菲 (1982–), who calls on artists to repossess their traditional role as prophets in modern society and point to transcendence. Luo Fei, 從藝術出發 [To Start from Art] (Shanghai: Shanghai Joint Publishing, 2014].

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contemporary author Bei Cun 北村;3 Duo Fu 朵夫 (the conceptual artist, sculptor, and painter known for his 2013 solo exhibition, “Cross” 十字); the Gao Brothers 高氏兄弟 (Gao Zhen 高兟 and Gao Qiang 高强, who use Christian motifs—the cross or life-size sculptures of Jesus—in their extravagant critiques of Chinese politics and culture), and dissident novelist Yu Jie 余杰.4 The “Cultural Christian” controversy highlighted some of the differences in approaches to the study and reception of Christian theology between Hong Kong and Taiwanese theologians and mainland Chinese university scholars, specifically in the 1990s. Since then, these approaches have become more diversified and mixed, and some in subsequent generations of confessing scholars in mainland China have moved toward more socially engaged, as well as openly evangelical or Reformed, Christian intellectual positions, while others of the younger generation of Christianity scholars have become more focused on their scholarship and seem less concerned with its social impact or wider theological implications beyond the academy. What connects all of them is the important position of culture, whether it be a Christian cultural heritage or Christianity’s dialogue with Chinese cultures. This dialogue and the mediating role of culture has dominated Chinese-­ Christian encounters from their earliest recorded occurrences: we know of the Church of the East’s mission in Tang-dynasty China through cultural relics, a few early Chinese Christian texts (whose dating is uncertain), and the famous eighth-century Christian stele engraved with a fusion of Christian and Chinese religious-cultural symbolism.5 Among late-Ming and Qing literati, European Jesuits were known for introducing European science and culture into China, as well as offering Europeans perhaps the earliest comprehensive images of

3 Cf. Fredrik Fällman, “Public Faith? Five Voices of Chinese Christian Thought,” Contemporary

Chinese Thought, 47:4 (2016), 223–34, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10971467.2015.12 62610; Chloë Starr, “A New Stream of Spiritual Literature: Bei Cun’s The Baptizing River,” Religions 10:7 (2019): 413, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10070413. 4 The “Cultural Christian debate” is described in Shun-hing Chan, “Conceptual Differences between Hong Kong and Chinese Theologians: A Study of the “Cultural Christians” Controversy,” in Sino-Christian Theology: A Theological Qua Cultural Movement in Contemporary China, eds. Lai Pan-Chiu and Jason (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010). 5 Cf. Sun Jianqiang, “The Earliest Statements of Christian Faith in China? A Critique of the Conventional Chronology of The Messiah Sutra and On One God,” Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies Vol.18, no.2 (2018): 133–52.

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China,6 which led Western Sinophiles to call for “missionaries from the Chinese” to instruct Europeans in “natural religion.”7 One need not even mention the seventeenth- to eighteenth-century theologically imaginative Jesuit Figurists, who became deeply enamoured with traditional Chinese culture, especially the Yijing 易經 (The Book of Changes), to stress the point that the meeting of Christian theology and China, aside from often contentious political negotiation, has always involved complex cross-cultural negotiation and required some degree of cultural adaptation.8 This essay considers the contemporary phenomenon of Chinese Christians critiquing their society and culture from the perspectives of Christian faith and theology, with a focus on one particular Chinese thinker, art critic, and writer, Zha Changping (查常平 1966–), who has been active in the spheres of scholarship, art criticism, and Christian life since the 1990s.

Cultural Evangelists and Sino-Christian Thinkers In what has been termed, not without controversy, the “post-Tiananmen intellectual field,”9 Christianity and Chinese culture have encountered each other in new ways: for some, Christ became a tool to criticize their society, hedonistic culture, or repressive policies of the state—but also a means to express the presence or possibility of transcendent hope. Artists who introduced a religious 6 While European writings on imperial China predated those of the Jesuits, the Jesuits were

the ones who began systematizing existing European knowledge on China in the form of travelogues, general introductions on geography, history, religious culture, and numerous other topics in Latin and other European languages. 7 Leibnitz, quoted in: Zhang Chunjie, “From Sinophilia to Sinophobia: China, History, and Recognition,” Colloquia Germanica 41.2 (2008): 97–110. 8 The term “figurists” was applied to a group of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Jesuits who claimed to have discovered correspondences between Judeo-Christian texts and the Chinese classics, imagining that both traditions conveyed revelations of the one true God. Rowbotham references the origin of the designation “figurism” as follows: “According to the Dictionnaire de theologie catholique (V: 2, Paris, 1924; art.: “Figurisme”) Figurism is a system of interpretation of the Scriptures based on the multiplicity of meanings presented by the Biblical texts.” See Arnold H. Rowbotham, “The Jesuit Figurists and Eighteenth-Century Religious Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 17:4 (Oct. 1956): 471–85, 473. 9 I use the term here to indicate the historical rupture of June Fourth (liu si 六四), as Chinese intellectuals of subsequent generations have confronted this “ongoing shock to the national experience.” Zhang Xudong, “The Making of the Post-Tiananmen Intellectual Field: A Critical Overview,” in Whither China? Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 1–76, 9.

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transcendent dimension into their works, although belonging to the same generation as critical intellectuals who were similarly reacting to state-sanctioned violence or apathetic consumer culture chose a religiously inspired approach for their critical art.10 This was different from that of pioneering performance artists such as He Yunchang 何雲昌 (1967–) and others of his generation who have used their bodies as art media and rely on shock value for artistic suggestiveness or effective communication. In his One-meter Democracy (一米民主, 2010), He undergoes excruciating surgery without anaesthesia; in One Rib (一根肋骨, 2008), he had part of his eighth rib surgically removed; in Keeping a Promise (抱柱之信, 2003), in which his left hand was cemented into a stone slab, where it remained for twenty-four hours.11 Zha Changping’s interpretation of these works focuses on the artist’s relationship to time, as expressed in extreme physical acts that test the limits of human endurance. The artist himself stresses the freedom to mutilate his own body to protest all forms of systemic restrictions and cruelty. In contrast, Christian artists like Dao Zi or Duo Fu produce artworks not primarily out of a sense of hopelessness and despair in the face of the violence of present-day reality (as seen in He’s works12) but, drawing on their own devotional lives and the history of spiritual art and philosophical inspiration, unfold a dimension of hope, spiritual longing, or the possibility of transcendence.13 Duo Fu (Zhang Feng 张峰), for example, in his Cross 10 Many of these artists were college students in 1989. Zhu Jiuyang 朱久洋 (1969-), for exam-

ple, thinks that “[a]rtists should actually return to the priesthood. And a priest is the one who stands between man and God, and between man and man. With this view in mind, I began to turn my eyes toward society, and use my art to reveal the different relationships between God and man, man and God, man and man, and man and nature, so as to contextualize the Christian faith within the reality in China and the traditional Chinese culture in my artistic creation.” Quoted from Westmont College’s website, “Gallery: Zhu Jiuyang,” Matter+Spirit: A Chinese/American Exhibition, curated by Rachel Hostetter Smith, accessed June 11, 2023, westmont.edu/jiuyang-zhu. 11 See Wang Meiqin, “The Primitive and Unproductive Body: He Yunchang and His Performance Art,” Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 13. 4 (2014): 6–25, accessed June 10, 2023, csun.edu/~mwang/_documents/published%20work/Yishu-July-August-2014Meiqin%20Wang.pdf. 12 According to Wang Meiqin, “The Primitive and Unproductive Body.” 13 See Pan Leilei 潘蕾蕾, “10-對話藝術家中的神思者 島子” [Episode 10. A Divine Thinker of Artists (sic.): A Conversation with Prof. Daozi], 十二 [The Twelve], E2Studios, Jun2 6, 2021, accessed June 10, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO5fez K0VkQ&t=537s. 52

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series (十字架系列, 2013) wants to stress that the cross is a shape that is lacking in Chinese culture.14 The cross confronts people with death and life, challenging both the escapist or hedonistic avoidance of death, as well as the nihilistic negation of life: What our culture lacks is this: [十] a horizontal line and a vertical line. There’s no lack of the spherical or the square. . . . What is missing is this: the horizontal and the vertical.  .  .  . Round shapes abound, synthesis, harmony, and anything non-confrontational we have in excess .  .  . this horizontal line crossing a vertical line . . . represents death and life..15 The shape of the cross representing the cultural idea of transcendence visualizes what Chengdu-based Christian author, scholar, and art critic Zha Changping has called the “human-divine” (ren-shen guanxi 人身關係) or “divine-human” (shen-ren guanxi 神人關係) relational dimension engaged by artists whose faith informs their artistic language and output. Zha’s understanding of Christianity and its envisioned influence in China relates to a wider discourse among post-Tiananmen Christian elites who hope to contribute to the evangelization of Chinese culture, whether as Christian ministers, scholars, writers or in other positions of cultural influence. Sinologist Fredrik Fällman has explained the notion of “evangelizing culture,” quoting from the articulations of house church intellectuals promoting such efforts: “Christian faith and Christian values have still not become important elements among the multiple faiths and values of Chinese society,” with one reason for this being that “Chinese Christians, evangelists and the Church have seriously neglected the merits of writing, and the creation of Christian literature, music and art, as well as academic research, have long been stagnant.”16

14 See Zha Changping 查常平, 中國先鋒藝術思想史第一卷世界關係美學 [A History of

Ideas in Pioneering Contemporary Chinese Art, Volume 1: World Relational Aesthetics] (Shanghai: Shanghai Joint Publishing, 2017], 101; Zha Changping, “朵夫作品的語言與靈 性” [Language and Devotion in Duo Fu’s Artworks], 人文藝術 [Humanities and Art], 16 (2017): 2–5; English version: 6–12. 15 Duo Fu 朵夫, 2014 朵夫的十字紀錄片 [Duofu’s 2014 Cross Documentary], accessed 10 June, 2023, youtube.com/watch?v=QlnLOEocnbk. 16 “发刊词” [Foreword to First Issue] (no author), 方舟 [Fangzhou] no. 1 (2005), inside cover, in Fredrik Fällman, “Public Faith? Five Voices of Chinese Christian Thought.” 53

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Zha Changping’s journal, Humanities and Art (人文藝術), while focused on art research and metaphysical inquiry, similarly pursues a kind of cultural mission to explore art “through its humanistic and sacred dimensions” and to “contribute to the cultivation of our individuality and humanity in contemporary art.”17 Each issue of this journal contains these five sections: “Art Studies,” “Notes on Art Experience,” “Cultural Review,” “Metaphysical Argument,” and “Translation of Classics.”18 These five areas echo Zha’s various intellectual roles and contributions as an advocate of Christian ideas in the world of “contemporary Sinophone culture and thought.”19 A number of outspoken Christian elites share their dire diagnosis of the spiritual state of contemporary Chinese culture with the pronouncements of high-profile secular critics.20 Thus, when Ai Weiwei was criticizing a contemporary Chinese art exhibit for failing to “address a single one of the country’s most pressing contemporary issues,” Christian art critics in China took a similarly dim view of China’s contemporary art, which since the 1989 Paris Magiciens de la Terre exhibition has been regularly exhibited on a global stage. Zha Changping has been outspoken in his views on China’s contemporary art scene: [S]ince 1992 the logic of power politics appears cloaked in the logic of capital-based economics, resulting in biennial and triennial art festivals all over mainland China in which many of the works exhibited contain not a trace of social criticism. These works are void of any presentation of human nature, and make no attempts to keep traditions alive. Such exhibitions and artworks are hollow and meaningless.21

17 人文艺术论丛学术委员会 [Humanities and Art Academic Committee], “Preface,”

人文艺术 [Humanities and Art], 16 (2017), front matter. 18 Humanities and Art Academic Committee, “Preface,” 19 “當代漢語思想文化,” Cf. Zha Changping, “邊緣藝術的主流精神” [The Mainstream

Spirit of Marginal Art], 中央美术学院 [Central Academy of Fine Arts], February 22, 2011, accessed June 11, 2023, https://www.cafa.com.cn/cn/opinions/article/details/812403. 20 E.g., Pastor Wang Yi’s idea that Christianity fundamentally challenges Chinese culture, or Liu Xiaofeng’s early writing on Christianity and Daoism. Similarly, Zha Changping has expressed his negative views on the inherent “hedonism” of Chinese culture as originating in its Daoist tradition: interview with the author, Chengdu, September 2, 2018. 21 Zha Changping, “A History of Ideas in Pioneering Contemporary Chinese Art as a History of Culture,” Contemporary Chinese Thought (2020) 51:1, 24–33, 27. DOI: https://doi.org/­ 10.1080/10971467.2020.1767441. 54

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In promoting the development of a spiritual dimension within Chinese artistic expression, Zha participates in the mission of evangelizing culture, albeit in his own scholarly and theory-driven way. Zha’s writings encompass a wider scope than art criticism, extending to biblical studies—which he teaches at Sichuan University—as well as the logic of history, which forms a key focus in his published works. His interpretation of history rests on certain Christian metaphysical assumptions that inform his contributions across different fields, from professional academic scholarship and higher education, to church ministry, academic and biblical translation, and art criticism. Zha develops his Christian philosophical ideas in several full-length works, in which he presents a Chinese Christian understanding of history and the logic of the world as we encounter it. Shi Chenggang has written a helpful exposé on the evolution of Zha’s thought, which traces the origins of his aesthetic theory (his “world relational aesthetics” discussed below) to Zha’s earlier works on history and logic, specifically those in which the trained Japanologist and aesthetics scholar began to build the framework for his “world-picture logic” (世 界圖景邏輯). Shi writes how Zha in his early writing, [concluded] after deep reflection that history is interpreted as the unfolding of the presence of ultimate belief, logic is interpreted as the presentation of the presence of ultimate difference, and the encounter of history and logic in the ultimate sense—that is the world. Language is the method in which this encounter is presented.22 As Shi goes on to explain, these were the world-constituting factors that Zha planned to write about in a consequent book before realizing that a world thus reduced to history and logic, along with its representation through language, was “not a world in the complete sense but only a historical world.” Shi quotes Zha’s rationale that led to the working out of his world-relational aesthetic with its underlying understanding of a seven-dimensional world in which each dimension allows for a relationship described from the human perspective: human-language; human-time; human-self; human-nature; human-society; human-culture; and human-divine, or the relationship to ultimate concern 22 Shi Chenggang, “The Origins of Zha Changping’s World Relational Aesthetics,” Contempo-

rary Chinese Thought, 51:1 (2020): 34–44, 41. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10971467.20 20.1768753. 55

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(終極關懷).23 Through each of these relationships the individual gains access to one of the dimensions that forms the world; together these seven dimensions form the world as we know it. As Shi notes, Zha changed his hermeneutic approach from writing about the world to one that included a more comprehensive account of “world-forming factors”: I gradually became aware that ‘history-logic’ is only one dimension therein, and history is only one dimension in the world picture and not the complete home for psychological and social logical development. [. . .] Apart from this, the world-picture logic also includes linguistic logic, temporal logic, societal logic, and the logic of faith . . . and also includes a logic of self and natural logic.”24 In his aesthetic theory, Zha preferences the human-divine/divine-human relational dimension over other relational dimensions in the world-picture logic.25 His concern for works that he judges as expressing the devotional relational dimension of the artist’s world-picture, and his theologically informed criticisms of other artworks, would seem to place Zha among the cultural evangelists of contemporary house church Christianity, among whose early promoters in reform-era China was Jonathan Chao 趙天恩 (Zhao Tian’en 1938–2004), an overseas Chinese pastor and educator who became an influential voice in the Reformed wing of Chinese Protestantism. Many who have followed Chao’s call to “Christianize Chinese culture” have also shared his Reformed, or Calvinist, leanings, while a few among these have been outspoken in their missional convictions, to the point of political dissent.26 23 Zha Changping, “导论: 艺术思想史的七个维度” [Introduction: Seven Dimensions of the

History of Ideas in Art], in A History of Ideas in Pioneering Contemporary Chinese Art, Volume 1, 3–37. 24 Zha Changping, 新約的世界圖景邏輯（第一卷）引論：新約的歷史邏輯 [Introduction to the logic of the world-picture of the New Testament: The history-logic of the New Testament, volume 1] (Shanghai: Shanghai Joint Publishing Co., 2011), 5. 25 See Naomi Thurston, “Zha Changping’s History of Ideas in Pioneering Contemporary Chinese Art: An Introduction,” Contemporary Chinese Thought, 51:1 (2020): 1–10, DOI: https://doi. org/10.1080/10971467.2020.1765547. 26 Calvinists describe themselves as having a “high view” of both church and culture, unlike other evangelical Protestants—this is true for Chinese Calvinists, too. In China exerting Christian influence in public spaces can, of course, be dangerous.

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It is clear that Zha does not pursue his careers as scholar and art critic simply as a means of proselytizing; rather, his work is characterized by a consistent concern for truth and justice, whether in his philosophical writings or engagement in the Chinese contemporary artworld: he is outspoken in his criticism of the artistic quality of the works he judges, while his tireless scholarship and time spent on difficult translation work have gained him the reputation of being bookish and “cerebral.”27 But he is also passionate about the direction of contemporary Chinese art, convinced that the opulent but often “still-born” art, as he sees it, of even famous Chinese artists, should be counterbalanced by works that originate in Chinese artists’ genuine spiritual experience of the transcendent, what Zha calls their “devotional life,” so as to create spaces for such works in China’s contemporary artworld.28 The theological significance of Zha’s work might be understood in part as making room for God in a nominally atheistic society by looking for God in the way that people, in this case artists, relate to the divine. It is for this reason that I consider Zha Changping not just to belong to those Reformed intellectuals concerned with Christianizing Chinese culture, but also as a Christian intellectual writing in the academic-theological genre of “Sino-Christian theology.” I was initially hesitant to apply the label of “Sino-Christian” to Zha’s work since few scholars in mainland China identify with it, at least not without significant qualification.29 However, when I asked Professor Zha directly whether he accepted “Sino-Christian” as a description of himself, he quickly replied that he did—although he rejected that of “Sino-­ theology” (Hanyu shenxue 漢語神學) as this rendering had “dropped” Christ from its label.30 The Hong Kong Institute of Sino-Christian Studies, which eventually settled on “Sino-theology” in Chinese and “Sino-Christian theology” in English to describe the Chinese theology it has promoted since the 1990s, sees the English and Chinese terms as synonymous. Zha, identifying with one while rejecting the other, does not. To describe Zha as Sino-Christian on one hand acknowledges 27 Ian Johnson, “Visit to Zha’s Church, Nov. 29, 2012,” in The Souls of China: The Return of

Religion after Mao (New York: Pantheon, 2017, Kindle), 281–92.

28 Zha of Xu Bing’s 2015 Phoenix exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale. Zha Changping, 中國

先鋒藝術思想史第二卷混現代 [A History of Ideas in Pioneering Contemporary Chinese Art, Volume 2: Mixed Modern] (Shanghai: Shanghai Joint Publishing, 2017), 39. 29 Naomi Thurston, Studying Christianity in China: Constructions of an Emerging Discourse (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2018). 30 Zha Changping, “Electronic message to the author,” WeChat Messenger, May 28, 2023.

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his concern for Chinese culture and society. He often mentions the Chinesespeaking world for whom his works are written, either at the beginning or end of his writings; he publishes mostly in Chinese; and he has never taken advantage of an opportunity to emigrate. On the other hand, “Sino-Christian” recalls a particular group of intellectuals, mostly scholars, in the Reform Era who have looked to Christian culture and theology as intellectual resources in debates on China’s modernization. To a certain extent, Zha belongs here, too. While his interpretation of history is informed by a logic of history that differs significantly from that of earlier Sino-Christian theologians who found new ways to problematize China’s crisis of modernity, what they have in common is their recourse to theology and Christian philosophy as cultural resources in Chinese discourse. In comparison to many Sino-Christian scholars, Zha has broadened his cultural engagement by extending his professional roles from scholar to critic (attending and writing about pioneering art events across China has been his main occupation in recent years) and, in a further step, to that of intellectual historian (a role summarized as “scribe” in the title of this essay). Regarding the latter, Zha has described a transition of historical ages as moving from an age of power politics (pre-modernity) to that of the capital-based economy (modern), and finally to what Zha calls the age of jingshen wenhua (精神文化), “interpersonal culture,” or as he has more recently translated the term, “psychic culture.”31 This transition, according to Zha, has not been completed in China, where the premodern, modern, and postmodern logics of history exist side by side in the so-called “mixed-modern.”32 By thus recasting the problem of modernity as one of a (yet) uncompleted transition, rather than an arbitrary and ultimately inexplicable paradigm shift, Zha highlights the significance of works of culture that challenge power politics and market logic and move society towards an alternate modernity in which the real needs of humanity, rather than the interests of a corrupt few, are met. As Zha summarizes, “the value of art ultimately lies in meeting the psychological needs of people’s psychic culture.”33 The following sections highlight Zha’s professional roles as scholar, critic, and scribe, beginning with the extension of his work from academia to the art world. Zha’s contributions to diverse cultural fields matter for Sino-Christian 31 Zha Changping, “A History of Ideas in Pioneering Contemporary Chinese Art as a History

of Culture,” Contemporary Chinese Thought, 2020, 51:1, 24–33, 33. DOI: https://doi.org/­ 10.1080/10971467.2020.1767441. 32 Zha, Mixed Modern. 33 Zha, “History of Culture,” 25. 58

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theology because they tangibly link these spheres of cultural engagement in ways that are not merely abstract or speculative but that allow for authentic theological dialogue and intelligibility.

From Scholar to Critic: Zha Changping’s World Relational Aesthetics Zha’s system of world relational aesthetics (世界關係美學) forms an extension of his research on the history of ideas, particularly in China, but with strong reference to the Christian tradition, including biblical texts. World-relational aesthetics as an approach provides him with interpretive tools to critique art from the perspective of a Christian critic. Zha Changping—New Testament scholar, art critic, translator, Japanologist, and professor for Christian studies at the Institute of Daoism and Religious Culture of Sichuan University—was born in Chongqing in 1966, when that city was still part of Sichuan Province. His works cover a spectrum of humanist concerns in aesthetics, the history of ideas in contemporary Chinese art, Japanology, and biblical scholarship. In addition, he has authored several articles on New Testament passages—such as the Lord’s Prayer and other central gospel texts—and related these to ongoing debates in the global and Chinese church: problems of translation, contextual readings, and the perennial concern with universal applicability in Zha’s work are all important features of his thought.34 In his richly illustrated two-volume work on contemporary Chinese art, Zha distinguishes between art that is “pioneering,” that is, art that critically addresses subject matters of relevance to contemporary society and expresses its ideas in innovative artistic registers, and the so-called “experimental” art that nonetheless fails to develop an original method for conveying its concerns.35 Pioneering art might appear as installation, performance, or photography; it is always concerned with portraying unique concepts to enrich human life. Like many of his contemporaries, Zha laments the commodification of Chinese art, the rapid infringement of market forces on all forms of Chinese cultural production, and the lack of independence afforded to artists working in China. Too often, he writes acerbically, artists are driven to “whor[e] themselves 34 See a recent English translation of one of these: Zha Changping 查常平, “Translation and

Theology: The Lord’s Prayer in Three Chinese Versions,” trans. Wang Wenqian and Naomi Thurston, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 47:1 ( Jan. 2023): 107–20. 35 Zha Changping, “中國先鋒藝術思想史—先鋒藝術的定義.” Dongfang Yishu 东方艺术 3 (2013): 74–83. 59

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out to those with money, [while] some curators end up resembling the pimps of such artists, frequently getting gang raped by all kinds of property developers.”36 Zha’s history-of-ideas approach to writing the history of contemporary Chinese art considers the cultural trajectories of the world-forming relationships (see above) that are expressed in all works of art and that are experienced and pondered by the artist as human subject: relationships with language, time, the self, nature, society, history, and the divine. Central to this theory is the assumption that the artist as the individual subject creating an expression of her individual life in an objectified form is always expressing one or several instances of the unique way that she relates to the world, be it in her relationship to nature, herself, time, language, others (society), history and culture, or the divine. Her artworks offer a representation of one or more of these relationships and reflect the corresponding relational dimension (human-linguistic, human-time, humanself, human-human, human-nature/thing, human-cultural, or human-­ devotional) that form the artist’s world. When Zha interprets Duo Fu’s works, for example, he sees two dimensions simultaneously at work: the human-­devotional relational dimension within the human-linguistic. What Zha focuses on when he describes a work of art as displaying the human-linguistic dimension is an original use of artistic language, artists developing a particular language through art in which to communicate their ideas.37 Through art, humans lend expression to their reflections on and experiences of the various relational dimensions, each of which is assessed and mediated by human understanding; the human perspective is the fulcrum of Zha’s art history and the recurring theme in his relevant writings. This is perhaps why Zha’s criticism often takes a stern or mournful tone: “Artists who should have been the intelligentsia and shown a strong sense of criticism have degenerated into pop stars. Many are willing to indulge in [a cult of celebrity], making money, refusing to adopt a critical attitude towards the secular mass culture,” he writes.38 What Zha thinks is that many contemporary Chinese artworks in fact fail to transcend the logic of the society they seek to criticize. For this reason, Zha looks to the works of artists such as Dao Zi or the Christian poet, painter and novelist Shi Wei 施玮, whose art also explores the seventh relational dimension and draws on spiritual inspiration from her own 36 Zha, World Relational Aesthetics, 26. 37 See Zha Changping, “Language and Devotion in Duo Fu’s Artworks,” 人文藝術 [Human-

ities and Art], 16 (2017): 6–12, 7. 38 Zha Changping, “The Dimension of the Human-God Relation in the Thought-picture of

Chinese Contemporary Art,” Yearbook of Chinese Theology 2015 Vol. 1. 2015, 53–69, 68. 60

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devotional life. Zha sees Shi Wei’s paintings, which rely less on classic Christian symbolism, as expressing the core of Christian theology, hope in the midst of suffering. Zha ascribes a mournful quality to her works, which is also evident in her poetry, and he relates these to each other (as she herself does). “Whether in her paintings or poetry,” Zha writes, “Shi Wei is constantly probing into the spiritual roots of relationships . . . the spiritual logic behind reality.” In this sense, Zha considers her a spiritual artist.39

An Aesthetic of Relating to God Other Chinese religious artists of recent years have developed a unique artistic language to render their experiences of God, transcendence, or ultimate concern. In discussing the elaborate performance and installation art and oil paintings on themes of lostness,40 redemption, and Christian sacrifice by Zhu Jiuyang 朱久洋, Zha discovers “a transcendent tendency . . . a desire to lead people into a meaningful life within [existing secular] cultural realities.”41 Qian Zhusheng’s striking prints retell biblical stories such as the allegory of the human fall from grace. His works follow the life and ministry of Jesus from birth to the cross, while the cross looms large in Qian’s and other Chinese Christian artists’ imagination, expressing both individual and collective suffering. The Bitter Bamboo 苦竹 series by Daozi (Wang Min 王敏, 1956–) is a wellknown example of the contemporary reworking of traditional Chinese material and symbolism with Christian iconography. Daozi’s crosses appear in different shapes and textures: even Peter’s upside-down cross with its eschatological overtones is represented.42 Daozi’s more recent works dealing with martyrdom (2017–2018), while sharing in a dissident’s (here, Liu Xiaobo 劉曉波’s) pain 39 Zha, Mixed Modern, 406. 40 Cf. Zhu’s Lost Lamb, (which recalls the Spanish Baroque painter Francisco de Zurbarán’s

Agnus Dei). Several contemporary Chinese painters, not only confessional Christians, have been experimenting with iconic themes in Christian art, including Su Xinping 蘇新平 (see 乾杯II號—最後的晚餐 (Cheers! II The Last Supper) of 2009); Zeng Fanzhi 曾梵志 (see 祈禱 [Prayer] of 2012); Wang Wangwang 旺忘望 (拾錢 of 2005; which recasts JeanFrançois Millet’s 1857 The Gleaners); Meng Yan 孟岩 (最後晚餐 of 2013); as well as Daozi, and the Gao Brothers. (See also Zha’s World Relational Aesthetics, 377–405). 41 Zha, “Human-God Relation,” 68. Works by Qian that Zha lists include: Good News of 1989, Christmas of 1996 and 1999, The Holy Mother and Child of 2000, Preaching of 2002, The Wedding at Cana, The One Who Believes Will Not Sink, Jesus Washes the Disciples’ Feet of 2005. See Zha, “Human-God Relation,” 62. 42 See Zha, World Relational Aesthetics, 394, 390–98. 61

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and visualizing his silencing, also engages the viewer’s own fundamental relationship with human dignity, responsibility, and suffering. His Empty Chair paintings point not only to the injustices and repressions of a regime; the empty chair, in addition to its theological allusions, stares back at us all. Daozi’s paintings, with light always streaming in from an angle or reflecting a source of light beyond the frame—even Dantean hell isn’t completely dark in Daozi’s depiction—invite us to lay down our self-pity and embrace a hope whose origin is found outside our immediate frames of reference. Early in his career, Qian Zhusheng wrote something of the hope and comfort that faith and his art offered him: “the most valuable quality a person can have is the ability to [retain] faith and hope in setbacks and keep a strong heart in the midst of darkness; then he will understand the spiritual secret. The wonderful thing about art is that it can fill people with the courage of life in the midst of decay and fear, changing their dead and dull state.”43 This courage, and the relationship between art and inspiration are brought out in the artist in the act of creating, as well as in the viewer, “If people have an ultimate concern, then this concern can be seen in their works, whatever the content and form. A human being cannot find spirit; rather, spirit must find the human.”44 While producing works that demonstrate how they relate to an ultimate concern, Chinese Christian artists also see themselves and their work as part of a Chinese intellectual tradition. In a recent interview with independent filmmaker Pan Leilei,45 Daozi emphasizes his identification with the Chinese literati (文人) tradition that takes seriously its cultural mission; for Daozi and others who see the Christian artist as a lone torchbearer or prophet in a spiritual ­wasteland—or, as a spiritualist, a shaman-type, like Joseph Beuys (1921–1986), an influence on Daozi—this mission has taken on a Christian theological significance. Describing the marginality of Christians in the Chinese artworld today as a “predicament” rather than a “privilege,”46 a group “fighting for survival” and preaching “like John in the wilderness,” Daozi compares his cultural mission to that of Jonah; there is no escape, and: “one must have courage” to speak out, “especially in China.” For Zha’s interpretations of Chinese artists who work with Christian ideas, how their individual Christian lives and understanding have shaped their 43 44 45 46

Qian Zhusheng, “Notes of 16 April 1988,” quoted in Zha, “Human-God Relation,” 62. Qian Zhusheng, “Notes of 23 April 1988,” quoted in Zha, “Human-God Relation,” 65. Qian Zhusheng, “Notes,” 65. Qian Zhusheng, “Notes,” 65. 62

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artworks is decisive. Zha, in his History (A History of Ideas in Pioneering Contemporary Chinese Art, volumes I and II) and other works, considers not only the materials, production processes, and the social contexts a work addresses; he also often comments on the artists and their lives, histories, motivations, and spiritual journeys. For instance, he interprets Beijing Christian artist Ding Fang’s turn from explicitly religious motifs to mountain ranges as the artist’s reorientation from “the comprehension of divinity to the search for divinity.”47 Ding Fang, Zha thinks, has retained his profound and insistent fascination with the mystical, which, according to Zha, has a kind of hold on the artist beyond the phase of his more explicit treatment of Christian themes.

Critic, Scholar, and Scribe: A Sino-Christian Intellectual Historian Zha’s many roles include work in Christian ministry, higher education, and the many tasks of a busy academic life. He has also thought about his different roles in terms of his life’s purpose and early on in his career as a Christian scholar wrote out five tasks for himself that would define his personal and professional routines for the following decades: (1) a minister in the body of Christ, a role shaped by his faith; (2) an academic researcher in the field of Christian studies, a task similarly related to his convictions and his own hope to use his talents and skills toward meaningful contributions to this field; (3) a social critic, a role he has exercised through his art criticism and which, in 2018 he noted took up most of his time relative to other tasks; (4) the profession of teaching in higher education, which Zha thinks needs reforming toward greater fairness and equality in China; and, finally, (5) as a service to others, the work of translation, at which he said he does not himself excel but which is a skill he is currently honing.48 In his writings, Zha frequently returns to his theory of the seven world-forming factors. “We, as individual beings,” Zha writes, “form a sevenfold relationship with them in our identities within it. As a result of our examination of these relationships, we have the so-called world-picture logic (or ‘world-picture theory’). The real interdisciplinary criticism in contemporary art essentially unfolds a logic of world vision through artworks. Because in a 47 Zha, “Human-God Relation,” 62. 48 Zha Changping, “Interview with the author,” Chengdu, September 2, 2018. Audio recording

and notes. 63

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-04-07 01:50 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

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broad sense, the objects studied by each discipline all belong to any one of these seven relations.”49 Zha Changping should not be read as a religious “fundamentalist,” with regard to his art criticism or his works on intellectual history.50 Thinking of his position in terms of a culturally engaged, though perhaps not “public” intellectual, I would describe Zha as a “Sino-Christian cultural critic.”51 While his major works, articles, and the journal he edits deal with art in one way or another, the broader theme underpinning these contributions, including his works on history and logic, is the prominent place he ascribes to a humanist criticism, informed by Christian values and perspectives, that embraces the spiritual lives and inspirations of contemporary cultural creators. The perspectives of theologically informed art critics such as Zha Changping or the poet, visual artist, and critic Daozi, share a common Christian reasoning with a broadly defined Sino-­ Christian theology in its soteriological concerns, which represent the universal pursuit of a spiritual “way out,” one beyond national salvation. Bourriaud defines relational aesthetics as an “aesthetic theory consisting in judging artworks on the basis of the inter-human relations which they represent, produce or prompt.”52 Problematizing this approach, Zha’s world relational aesthetics extends the relational orientations of artists as interpreted from their works and lives (by referencing their biographies or writings) to other relational dimensions, whether nature, self, or God. The artist expresses a relationship with one of several dimensions based on original experiences and ideas, through artistic media containing allusions to those relational dimensions. For example, the artist who paints himself may be exploring the human-self relationship. If we picture the artist as the individual human observer at the center of different relationships that are being aesthetically represented, then each artwork conveys 49 Zha, Mixed Modern, 311. 50 For more on Zha, see Ian Johnson, “Visit to Zha’s Church, Nov. 29, 2012,” in The Souls of

China: The Return of Religion after Mao (New York: Pantheon, 2017, Kindle), 282–92.

51 While still widely applied, the notion of the “public intellectual” (公共知識份子) has been

scrutinized and heavily criticized in contemporary China. This is not surprising since the notion of the public sphere itself is contested and “public” intellectual positions can be taken to be synonymous with official dogma. Increasingly, critical voices are carving out space(s) for themselves in niche discourses and marginal subcultures, but also among the cast of advocates in citizens’ rights debates and legal cases, at the “grassroots” (民間) often ignored by elite public intellectuals. On the latter, see Sebastian Veg, “Introduction,” in: Minjian: The Rise of China’s Grassroots Intellectuals (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 1–25. 52 Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, 112. 64

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a particular way of seeing from the relational dimensions forming the artist’s world. In this sense, Zha’s world relational aesthetics highlights the universality of art as human cultural communication. Zha’s project does not merely use art criticism as a means of critiquing contemporary Chinese society. Beyond this, Zha’s approach to the significance of human creativity (as seen in works of contemporary pioneering Chinese art) defends the philosophical question of what is human against the conceptual onslaught of postmodern contingency. He does this in his world relational aesthetic through a sophisticated descriptive approach that offers a connected set of answers, all pointing to the relational and only making sense in connection with each other. Humans are social and political animals, but they are also linguistic, self-referential, cultural, material creatures, and beings that relate to time and to the divine. All these characteristics assume a relationship that exists and is part of a person’s humanity, whether they have the cognitive ability to produce language, whether all parts of their sensory existence, which are needed to fully perceive the material world, function or not, no matter what the degree of self-awareness a person possesses. The relation to oneself, one’s language, or one’s material world is a given orientation that can improve or deteriorate but is always present in any individual life. The relation to the divine, which in a biblical worldview might be described as broken by human failing, still exists— broken, skewed, unacknowledged, or otherwise. Zha has repeatedly articulated this conception of human life in his writings.53 The work of cultural criticism and of displaying a deep concern for Chinese society and culture—or “worrying,” as Gloria Davies has labeled the task of Chinese intellectuals,54—also identifies what Zha does: he worries about the future of Chinese society and culture. His theological anthropology is surprisingly hopeful in terms of what he sees as the potential of contemporary art to articulate and effectively communicate a dimension of ultimate concern. He is pessimistic, on the other hand, about the current state of his society, where the vision of Zha’s “jingshen wenhua,” a “psychic culture” to nurture all people, remains an aspiration.55 53 Moreover, the character “人” (human etc.) appears in one collocation or another, generally as

人文 renwen (humanities, humanist, etc.), in the titles of Zha Changping’s books, articles, as well as in the title of the journal he founded and edits, 人文藝術 (Humanities and Art). 54 Gloria Davies, Worrying about China: The Language of Chinese Critical Inquiry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). 55 Zha, “History of Culture,” 33. 65

Chapter 4

SHI HENGTAN’S COMPARATIVE CULTURAL READINGS OF THE CONFUCIAN ANALECTS AND THE CHINESE UNION BIBLE Lauren F. Pfister 費樂仁, Hephzibah Mountain Aster Academy / Hong Kong Baptist University What I intend to present here will start with a rather detailed descriptive summary of the structure and content of the first volume of a large masterpiece published in 2018 by Dr. Shi Hengtan 石衡潭 (ca. 1960–), entitled Zhong Xi Yuandian Duidu 中西元典對讀 [Antiphonal Comparative Cultural Readings of The Confucian Analects 論語 and the Chinese Union Bible 和合本聖 經].1 Subsequently, I reflect on the importance of the fact that Dr. Shi’s presentation of Ruist (“Confucian”)2 commentarial and literary traditions does not 1 Shi Hengtan 石衡潭, Zhong-Xi yuandian duidu 中西元典對讀 (Beijing: China Academy

of Social Sciences Press, 2018), 583 + lvii. In subsequent notes, “Shi, Antiphonal Readings.” The literal rendering of the Chinese title would be Antiphonal Comparative Cultural Readings of Original Classics of China and the West, and so was made purposefully vague, apparently because of concerns raised by book censors in China. The cover of the book offers an alternative title: A Comparative Study of the Analects of Confucius and the Holy Bible. The Chinese neologism found in the title, Duidu, is not merely a “comparative study,” but an interactive engagement between the texts that is applied to a variety of cultural situations. The Bible used by the author is always the Chinese Protestant rendering completed in 1919, the Chinese Union Bible, with very few references to the standard Hebrew and Greek texts or other translations. 2 The so-called “Confucian” tradition is actually a very extensive and complicated cultural tradition that is referred to as ru 儒 or ruxue 儒學 in Chinese. I have consequently employed the neologism “Ruism” (adjective, “Ruist”) to avoid any confusion by readers about the nature or content of the tradition being only about the ancient Chinese sage Master Kong or Kongzi 孔子 (“Confucius” or Kongfuzi 孔夫子).

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hide the diversity of its interpretive options, but explores them antiphonally and responsively in relation to biblical interpretive traditions that are now available in Chinese. In this regard, I will argue that his work is a thoroughly sinicized expression of a culturally informed Chinese Protestant Evangelical worldview. Following these claims, I will indicate why I take his work to be primarily inspired by Protestant Evangelical hermeneutics, even though it refers to sources that included many Roman Catholic and some Russian Orthodox and Oriental Christian texts. I will note how he explores the biblical texts in light of passages from the Confucian Analects, and then goes on to apply his research to address certain situations and problems within contemporary mainland Chinese cultural contexts. Finally, I will argue that his unusual work is made possible because of the post-secular academic study of philosophical and religious traditions in contemporary China that continues to be articulated, even in spite of the current restrictiveness of the present regime. In my concluding reflections I will summarize the extraordinary value of this major work, indicating both the plans and the challenges Dr. Shi faces in completing this project within the current cultural and political climate.

An Analytical and Qualitative Description of Zhong Xi Yuandian Duidu Before publishing this particular volume, which is a systematic and rigorous set of comparative readings based on the order of an initial portion of the Confucian Analects, Dr. Shi had published several other more popular texts comparing the Confucian Analects and the Chinese Protestant Bible.3 The two previous works were based only on selected themes rather than a systematic study moving passage by passage through the Confucian Analects, as in this latest volume published in 2018. After lecturing to many groups of Roman Catholic and Protestant leaders, Dr. Shi became convinced that not only should there be a much more thorough methodology applied to these “antiphonal readings” reflecting interpretive traditions of both classical texts, but also he added 3 The more substantial of these two works is entitled Lunyu yushang Shengjing: Zhongguo wen-

hua yu Jidujiao de Zhengmian Jiaohui 論語遇上聖經：中國文化與基督教的正面交會 [The Confucian Analects Engages the Bible: Positive Convergences between Chinese Culture and Christianity] (Beijing: Shijie Tushu Chubanshe, 2014). Within this volume Dr. Shi addressed sixteen themes (“lessons”) by means of twenty-five specific converging encounters between passages from the Confucian Analects and the Bible. 68

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discussion questions to most of the 105 lessons that constitute the main body of this volume. In this light, then, I consider this volume to be much more than a university textbook. It serves as a systematic effort to bring cultural and religious reflections to bear not only on the classical texts and selected commentaries on those texts, but also on their application to contemporary Chinese lifestyles. Dr. Shi, therefore, has been preparing this text for cross-cultural Ruist-Christian discussions to be read and considered by those who are self-conscious adherents of either Ruist or Christian traditions, and in some cases those who would identify with particular expressions of both of those major traditions. As a trained philosopher and a self-conscious Protestant intellectual, Dr. Shi has produced the most thorough and systematic study of this sort available, and so has made an immense contribution to Sino-Christian scholarship in a Chinese medium. Because this work is prepared for a contemporary PRC reading audience, Dr. Shi arranged to have the Chinese content printed in simplified characters, including the ancient Chinese text of the Confucian Analects. He systematically uses the order and content of the passages in the chapters of the standard version of the Confucian Analects to guide the thematic discussions that arise in each lesson.4 The volume does not include passages from all twenty chapters of that Ruist canonical work, but only those from the beginning to the middle of chapter five.5 Though each of the 105 lessons varies in length from eleven pages to one page, the average length of the lessons is five and a half pages of printed Chinese. The general content of each lesson is normally constituted by the following eight elements: 4 The Confucian Analects continues to be the Ruist canonical work most often translated into

English in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, far beyond any other Ruist canonical text. There have also been new versions in French, German, Polish, and other European languages during the past three decades. The classical rendering of the Confucian Analects in English that has been republished in a wide multitude of editions is that of James Legge (1815– 1897), initially completed in 1861 and produced in a carefully revised edition in 1893. Some notable translations published after Legge’s by non-Chinese persons have included those by William Jennings (1895), Paul Kranz (1900), Lionel Giles (1907 and later versions), Ezra Pound (1933), Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont (1999), Edward Slingerland (2003 and 2006), Burton Watson (2007), Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans, 2014), and Moss Roberts (2021). There are a good number also produced by overseas Chinese persons in English versions, among the most notable being those by Gu Hongming (Ku Hung-ming, 1898), D. C. Lau (1979), Shih-chuan Chen (1986), Andrew Chichung Huang (1997), and Wusun Lin (2012). 5 Specifically, from Analects 1:1 to 5:11, constituting 105 “lessons”; this volume should be seen as the first tome within a series of four to five volumes. 69

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1. A comparative theme drawn from and uniting themes in the two classical sources. 2. A quotation in contemporary Chinese script of the key text from the Confucian Analects. 3. A relatively lengthy set of representative Ruist commentaries (zhushi 注釋)6 on the passage at hand, sometimes accompanied by quotations from other Ruist sources (yinzheng 引證) that mirror the theme of the key text. 4. A quotation in English of the 1910 translation of The Analects of Confucius by William Edward Soothill 蘇慧廉 (1861–1935), a Methodist missionary for nearly forty years (1882–1920) in the municipality of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, and subsequently the second person to hold the Chair of Chinese language and literature at Oxford University (1920–1935). 5. A summary paraphrase in contemporary Chinese of the key text from the Confucian Analects, written by Dr. Shi himself. 6. The antiphonal reading(s) (duidu 對讀) from the Chinese Union Bible7 related to the key passage being discussed in the Confucian Analects. Normally involving one biblical passage, though sometimes a fairly long one, but at other times including up to four small passages. 7. An interpretive section (jiexi 解析, literally “interpret and analyze”) often including contemporary applications to mainland Chinese society, and regularly being the longest or next to longest section in each lesson. 8. A list of Study Questions (sikao taolun ti 思考討論題) related to issues raised in the interpretive section.8 As can be observed from this summary of the lessons, this is a systematic and complicated monograph. Though the Chinese text is presented in the 6 All English translations of Chinese are my own unless otherwise indicated. 7 The Chinese Union Bible (Héhéběn 合和本) of 1919 is by far the most widely dissemi-

nated version of the Bible in Chinese contexts. A Roman Catholic version was produced in 1968 under the title Sigao Shengjing 思高聖經, or in its Latin-English title, Studium Biblica Version. Other notable translations of the whole Bible by Chinese Protestants include the version by Lü Chen-Chung 呂振中 (1898–1988), of 1970, Today’s Chinese Version (Xiandai Zhongwen Yiben 現代中文譯本) published in 1979, rev. ed. 1995, and the New Translation Version (Xinyiben 新譯本) of 1992. For a comprehensive historical coverage of Chinese versions of the Bible, consult Daniel Kam-To Choi, “A History of the Chinese Bible,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Chinese, ed. K. K. Yeo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 21–46. 8 Most lessons (69) have three questions; some (29) have only two questions, and a few (4) have more than three, with two lessons without any study questions at all. 70

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contemporary simplified script, all of the Chinese quotations and texts found in the commentary section are passages using older Chinese grammatical styles, and so require a relatively high level of Chinese linguistic and literary background to understand them precisely and thoroughly. What is astounding to any careful reader is the number of cross-references to other passages within the Confucian Analects and the Chinese Bible that they will confront within the lessons, a facet of the content of the interpretive sections that needs more elaboration. Added to these are a wide range of literary, religious, philosophical, and contemporary cultural texts that are found within the interpretive section, all of which greatly enrich both the interpretive discussion and the application of the principles learned to issues in contemporary PRC society. Within the whole volume, beyond the leading citation from the Confucian Analects that normally appears at the beginning of each lesson, Dr. Shi has made more than 250 direct and indirect quotations from the twenty chapters of the Analects throughout the whole book.9 Statistics related to direct and indirect citations of the Chinese Union Bible are also revealing. Within the whole volume twenty-five of the thirty-nine books in the Tenakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, are cited, as well as passages from twenty-three of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. As might be expected from an author who is a self-proclaimed Chinese Christian, the New Testament citations are more than those from the Hebrew Scriptures (448 citations to 295). Nevertheless, what might be unexpected by those who do not know either the content of the Lunyu (The Confucian Analects) or the Bible is that the most cited portion of the Chinese Union Bible is the Book of Proverbs (102 times), because the two works share a major commitment to practical wisdom in mundane affairs. There are in fact six books from the Hebrew Scriptures that are quoted most often, amounting to a total of 223 of the 295 citations in the whole volume. Most often are the citations from the Proverbs; then come citations from the Psalms (56 times), and then Genesis (18 times), Deuteronomy (16 times), Ecclesiastes (13 times) and Isaiah (18 times). References to the New Testament are dominated by 16 of its books, amounting to a total of 419 of the 448 citations, or just above 93% of all those citations. Most often cited are the Gospels of Matthew (69 times) and John (54 times); next are two Pauline letters 9 As might be expected, many of those quotations came from the first five chapters, each of

which were cited at least 20 times, with 31 citations from the third chapter and 58 from the fourth chapter. Of all the direct and indirect quotations of the Analects, 208 came from nine chapters (chs. 1–7, 12, and 14) or more than 80 percent of all those I identified. 71

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(Romans 43 times, Ephesians 34 times) and 1 John (34 times).10 These statistics suggest that Dr. Shi was particularly attracted to Jewish accounts of the life of the Christian Redeemer, and was profoundly impressed by two of the most systematic and spiritually revealing epistles from the Pauline corpus.11 What other features add to this Sino-Christian intra-cultural and crosscultural cornucopia? With regard to Ruist commentarial traditions, there would initially appear to be a strong emphasis made by regular reference to the ten most cited commentarial works among the forty-eight major and minor commentaries that are cited within this massive volume. Eight of the most cited commentarial works were produced after the influential interpretations of the Song dynasty scholar Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) were dominant; those texts include some by commentators who followed and supported Zhu’s interpretive approaches in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but cited along with them is a significant set of alternative Ruist commentators representing alternative traditions existing among Ming and Qing dynasty Ruist intellectuals. This includes Ruist scholars writing between the beginning of the fifteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century and extending up to the first major Chinese revolution in 1911. Within those later commentaries there are citations and references to another set of much earlier Ruist commentators on the Confucian Analects, including four from the Han period (206 BCE to 220 CE); they include commentaries by the twelfth generation descendent of Master Kong, Kong Anguo 孔安國 (active ca. 100 BCE, cited twenty-two times), and the exemplary Ruist intellectual and discerning commentator, Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200 CE, cited thirty-three times). In fact, this represents an interpretive trend opposing the Lixue 理學, that is, a sub-tradition founded by Zhu Xi that is referred to as the School of Principle (but may also be called Patterned-Principle Learning).12 That sub-­tradition based many of its arguments upon linguistic and philological claims about the 10 Notably, the citations of these five books of the New Testament account for 52 percent of all

the citations from the New Testament made in this volume. 11 In addition to these five important books in the New Testament, there are eleven others cited

more than ten times. Those cited more than twenty times are the Gospel of Luke (29 times), Philippians (24 times), and 1 Corinthians (21 times); three books are cited fifteen or more times, including James (17 times), Colossians (16 times), and 2 Timothy (15 times); and the others cited at least ten times include 1 Peter (14 times), while 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, and Hebrews are all cited 13 times, while Galatians is cited ten times. 12 As seen in the article on “Li-hsüeh (School of Principle or Learning of Principle)” in Robert L. Taylor and Howard Y. F. Choi, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Confucianism: Volume One, A-M (New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 2005), 379–82. 72

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ancient Chinese language learned from the earlier Han dynasty sources to challenge the interpretive assertions made in the Southern Song period alternative (1127–1279). This interpretive trend was particularly influential during the Qing dynastic period, when Zhu Xi’s commentaries to the Four Books (Sishu 四書) were given the imperial imprimatur, and yet there were Ruist scholars who felt they had strong textual and linguistic justifications to oppose his interpretations.13 That Ruist sub-tradition was known generally as the Hanxue (漢學) or Han Dynasty Learning, and so they often referred to their opponents who supported Zhu Xi as the Songxue (宋學) or Song Dynasty Learning. What this suggests, then, is that Dr. Shi has presented quite an evenly spread-out vision of the diversity of interpretive positions within the long history of Ruist commentarial debates. In addition to these notable commentaries, Shi Hengtan has cited claims from over 130 other works produced by Ruist scholars, as well as over ninety Chinese literary sources from a wider variety of cultural and interpretive perspectives. In other words, from the angle of “representing Ruist traditions,” Dr. Shi has self-consciously chosen texts that reveal the diversity of interpretive traditions within the long history of nearly two millennia of Ruist commentaries on the Confucian Analects. Complementary to these intellectual resources in Ruist commentarial traditions, Dr. Shi has studied and made reference to a good number of Christian works and resources within the 105 lessons. For example, he cited texts from eighteen works produced by and about foreign Jesuit missionary-scholars from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and in addition cited Chinese works by thirteen Chinese Roman Catholic authors, something that might not be expected in a work produced by a Chinese Protestant intellectual. Following this trend of ecumenical engagement, he also cited twelve works produced by ancient Christian Greek or Latin Church fathers, either available in Chinese versions or from online websites, and two contemporary Chinese sources related to the Russian Orthodox tradition as well as two from the older Syriac Christian tradition.14 Dr. Shi also cites nearly fifty works from nineteenth and 13 The Four Books include the Daxue 大學 (usually known in English as The Great Learn-

ing, the Lunyu 論語 or The Confucian Analects, the Mengzi 孟子 or The Mencius, and the Zhongyong 中庸, which has been known by a variety of titles starting with James Legge’s The Doctrine of the Mean (1861). 14 The Oriental Christian sources include a few citations from Chinese versions of early Syriac Christian intellectuals and theologians, whose representatives arrived in what we now call mainland China during the first decades of the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). 73

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twentieth century indigenous Christian writers, foreign Protestant missionary-­ scholars, and Anglophone theologians, as well as eleven modern European Christian and sinological figures. For example, he cites Fox’s Book of Martyrs in various contexts,15 but also includes a few references to some of the works of the Scottish missionary-scholar and later Professor of Chinese at Oxford, James Legge 理雅各 (1815–1897),16 as well as one reference to a Chinese tract written by the Chinese Protestant pastor who worked with Legge, the Rev. Ho Tsun-sheen 何進善 (He Jinshan 1817–1871).17 Perhaps the most contemporary Protestant pastor-theologian he cites is the American Presbyterian Timothy Keller (1950–2023), doing so from Chinese translations of two of his works.18 Beyond this, reference is made to nine ancient Greek and Roman writers, six foreign political figures primarily from the United Kingdom and the United States,19 and five works of Shakespeare.20 What surprised me even more was a reference to the life of the American Seventh-Day Adventist who was a recipient of the medal of honor in WWII, Desmond Doss 道斯 (1919–2006), who was portrayed in the American movie Hacksaw Ridge (a movie produced in 2016, and rendered into Chinese).21 Notably, the two Christian works in Chinese that Dr. Shi has cited more than ten times among all the Chinese Christian sources he has referred to are, first of all, the famous text produced by the Italian Jesuit, Matteo Ricci 利瑪竇 (1552–1610), in the form of a dialogue, Tianzhu shiyi 天主實義 (The True 15 Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 337–38, 407, and 455. 16 Shi cites not only from Legge’s English rendering of the Analects produced in 1861 but also

17

18 19

20

21

his essay entitled Confucianism in Relation to Christianity (1877), and his larger book on The Religions of China (1880) (see Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 363, 17). Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 229–30. Dr. Shi had access to this text by means of a collection of Protestant Chinese works produced by the contemporary Chinese Christian scholar, John T. P. Lai. Cited three times in Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 9 and 224. The single United Kingdom political figure is the nineteenth-century Protestant MP, Wilberforce, and the American political figures are George Washington, General MacArthur, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy. The one unusual and early Roman emperor that is cited due to his submission to a Christian bishop is King Theodosius II. Citations from the Chinese version of The Collected Works of Shakespeare appear in three footnotes within the work (Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 101, 462, 503), but also specific individual references are made to four of Shakespeare’s plays: The Merchant of Venice (97), Henry the Sixth (100–101), Hamlet (401–402) and Macbeth (503). Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 538.

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Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), and secondly, from works produced by a lesser-­ known Chinese Roman Catholic and Ruist intellectual of the seventeenth century, Zhang Xingyao 張星曜. The fact that he came to know both of these relatively older sources suggests that he took some effort to locate relevant materials and to digest them conscientiously. What all of this means for any reader of Zhong Xi Yuandian Duidu is that in each lesson within that work there will be two to three citations of other texts in the Confucian Analects, as well as seven or more citations from biblical books, all of which are garnished by references to other Ruist canonical sources as well as more recent Ruist, Christian, literary, and popular works. This is all done in the midst of reflections and analyses of one or more particular themes or questions being addressed within any specific lesson.

An Expression of Sinicized Christianity within Zhong Xi Yuandian Duidu My use of the term “Sinicization” is not meant to indicate my assessment of how well Dr. Shi’s book fits into that contemporary political and ideological framework, but rather to refer to it as an authentically engaged, culturally informed, and serious set of Chinese Christian reflections on themes generated from studies of the Confucian Analects and the Chinese Union Bible. As an expression of Christianity, Dr. Shi reveals a number of emphases that highlight the broader expression of his Christian self-consciousness. First of all, he is firmly reliant on the Bible and many of its claims, offering an explicit Christian interpretation of its contents, and seldom referring to Jewish interpretive sources, though many passages from the Hebrew Scriptures are cited and interpreted often from a perspective of Ruist-Christian shared wisdom.22 Secondly, being concerned about proper scriptural interpretation, especially in the light of the misuses and manipulative strategies of certain heterodox cults active in the contemporary People’s Republic of China (PRC), it is notable that Dr. Shi takes a very traditional European medieval interpretive account of the Hebrew text of the Song of Songs.23 For him it still remains an

22 I have found only one reference to a work by Rabbi Akiba (Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 342). 23 As voiced in lesson #99, but particularly at Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 544.

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allegory of Christ’s love for the Christian church.24 He is apparently unaware of the evangelical Protestant interpretation in Anglophone worlds that takes it as a straightforward love song.25 The study is dependent on the 1919 translation of the Chinese Union Bible,26 so that those who read biblical texts in other languages, and who have access to the standard biblical texts in the Masoretic Hebrew and Koiné Greek, will notice at times certain interpretive directions that differ from what they have known. For example, Dr. Shi presents a negative reading of Romans 12:17, “Be careful to do what is noble in the eyes of everyone,” which reads in the Koiné Greek as a positive command and not as a warning to avoid such actions (as presented in his reading). This comes about because of the Chinese translation of the 1919 text, and so can be understood as an interpretive misunderstanding based upon that particular Chinese rendering.27 Nevertheless, such problems are rarely found within the text as a whole. Though Dr. Shi refers to biblical Hebrew terms in Hebrew in one lesson,28 and to Koiné Greek terms in several lessons within the book,29 he is not a trained scholar in those languages, but is relying on secondary resources to underscore certain cross-cultural emphases. The tome is an authentically engaged expression of Christianity. It includes a wide range of readings cited that indicate his explicit understanding of the two-thousand-year history of Christian interpretations and cultural expressions, with an emphasis on sources engaged in Chinese contexts (such as the Oriental, the Russian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Protestant traditions). It is also a culturally informed account of Christianity, not only regarding its doctrines and its biblical resources from many international sources, but also in its reflections on Chinese expressions of Christianity. Being 24 As presented in lesson #62, Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 341–44. 25 An illustration of this new trend of interpretation is Barry G. Webb, Five Festal Garments:

26 27 28

29

Christian Reflections on The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 17–35. The Chinese Union Bible is “the authorized, canonical version” for Chinese Protestants in contemporary Chinese societies. See Choi, “History of the Chinese Bible,” 35. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 376. As found in lesson #18, Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 115. Here one finds the name Yahweh and the concept El presented in Hebrew, but unfortunately, the Hebrew presentation of the term El is printed backwards. Appearing only in the last two lessons, with the term kairos (in the accusative case, as kairon) presented without proper tonal markings (Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 572), and then the term kosmos printed on p. 576 (and elaborated in several of its meanings based on an account from a theological text), with the proper tonal markings. 76

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concerned for the cultural transformation of Chinese societies by engaged Chinese Christian witnesses, Dr. Shi is not afraid to challenge Chinese Christian communities within the PRC to take up their responsibilities to uphold righteousness and the general welfare as citizens, and to balance love and faith within their social relationships, all as a matter of their authentic witness within those settings.30 Precisely in this sense of Dr. Shi’s broadly conceived and carefully documented expression of Christianity, one can identify the Chinese aspects of the work that make it a representative sinicized expression of Christian reflection. It constitutes an authentic engagement with the themes of the Confucian Analects. Dr. Shi confirms that some matters are shared in common between Master Kong (“Confucius”) and various aspects of both specifically Christian and broader biblical values, traditions, and concerns. The book also indicates and articulates differences between the teachings of Master Kong and Jesus, or a particular Ruist tradition and later Christian biblical interpretations. In these contexts Dr. Shi regularly argues for a corrective or fulfilling function of Christian teachings within the context of Ruist cultural interests and claims. Of course, in pursuing these approaches during the second decade of the twenty-first century within the People’s Republic of China, Dr. Shi is following precedents set by some earlier Chinese Christian intellectuals who approached Ruist works and traditions in similar ways.31 While these precedents among Chinese Christian intellectuals can be identified, it should also be underscored that in the recent context of mainland China, the majority of Chinese Christians have found it unnecessary and even awkward to pursue a “cross-cultural dialogue” with ancient Ruist works, their traditions, or with those who were living Ruist scholars. In most of their minds, Ruist teachings and traditions were associated with oppressive Chinese dynastic regimes that had already been severely critiqued by post-traditional

30 As a consequence, he explores ways in which various holidays and events in contemporary

Chinese culture can be made into Chinese Christian holidays and events as well (lesson #60, Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 329–31). 31 For example, see the volume produced by the Chinese Baptist pastor and intellectual, Princeton S. Hsu 徐松石, Jidujiao yu Zhongguo Wenhua 基督教與中國文化 [Christianity and Chinese Culture] (Hong Kong: Baptist Press, 1976), which identified most mainline Chinese cultural themes as coming from Ruist classical works and some of their subsequent traditions. Produced during the period when Hong Kong was under British rule, Hsu did not feel obliged to identify “Chinese culture” with anything related to the history and policies of the Chinese Communist Party as worked out in mainland Chinese since 1949. 77

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Chinese intellectuals32 as well as later Chinese Communist intellectuals.33 In addition, a good number of living Ruist scholars would portray their cultural tradition as one that is either “secular humanist”34 or perhaps “religious humanist.”35 Consequently, many Chinese Christians would simply reject the values and worldview claims of those Ruist scholars as, at the very least, anachronous, and at worse, antagonistic to Christian faith. It is also true that there are some contemporary Ruist scholars who, like Dr. Shi, find many shared values between Christianity and Ruism, and so they are open to such a comparative study as Dr. Shi presents. Nevertheless, there are also many among them who are skeptical or even critical of Christian claims. Religiously speaking, Ruist traditions represent diverse worldviews across more than three millennia, including some who claim that there was an ancient monotheistic belief accompanied by religious sacrifices institutionalized by ancient sage kings.36 Nevertheless, contemporary Ruist scholars generally do not ­identify 32 See e.g., Chen Lai 陳來, Renwenzhuyi de Shijie 人文主義的視界 [The Horizon of Human-

33

34

35

36

ism] (Nanning: Guangxi Educational Press, 1997), 25, where Chen states matter-of-factly that “Within the May Fourth Movement’s (1919) cultural critiques, Ruist scholars (Rujia 儒家) suffered from extremely severe criticisms, because they were identified as ideologized and serving the old imperial political system.” During his Maoist-Marxist phase, the Chinese philosopher Feng Youlan 馮友蘭 (1895– 1990) published in 1975 a scathing critique of “Hillock Kong” (a pejorative name for “Confucius”) that became the exemplary critique not only of Master Kong (“Confucius”), but also more generally of Ruist traditions. See Lauren F. Pfister, “Three Dialectical Phases in Feng Youlan’s Philosphical Journey,” in Dao Companion to Contemporary Confucian Philosophy, ed. David Elstein (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2021), 141–44, and Lauren F. Pfister, Vital Post Secular Perspectives on Chinese Philosophical Issues (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2020), 34–41. This is the specific perspective adopted by Chen Lai in The Horizon of Humanism, adopting the descriptive phrase shisu Rujia 世俗儒家 (“secular Ruists”) to refer to the Ruist scholars and traditions he supports, see 159–69. As elaborated by the notable intellectual historian, Peng Guoxiang 彭國翔, in his book, Rujia Chuantong: Zongjiao yu Renwenzhuyi zhi Jian 儒家傳統：宗教與人文主義之間 [Ruist Traditon(s): Between Religion and Humanism] (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2007). Debates regarding whether or not Ruism is a religion or has a religious nature have continued since the 1980s, and involve a large range of materials in Chinese, English, and other languages. Among the foreign Christian missionary-scholars who argued for the existence and value of the ancient Ruist monotheistic beliefs and their institutions were the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci and the Scottish Congregationalist James Legge. The diversity of interpretive positions among Ruist scholars can be examined in some detail from the essays involved in the two-volume work edited by Tu Weiming and Mary Evelyn Tucker, entitled Confucian Spirituality (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003–2004). 78

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their lifestyles with those ancient traditions, and many even question if there is any form of “real transcendence” that was part of their history. Among the more harsh of Ruist critics against Christian traditions in China and elsewhere, there are criticisms of a God-centered lifestyle that becomes exclusive of other religious traditions, to the point that these critics fear that Chinese Christian institutions will replace Ruist traditions as an expression of a Christian “cultural colonialism.”37 Dr. Shi employs ancient Ruist traditions as a cultural framework within which Christian claims can be enriched and extended; this is as controversial as it is compelling. In some ways Dr. Shi is mirroring approaches adopted by early Church Fathers in Greek and Latin settings, as well as later Christian intellectuals in European settings, where Platonic, Stoic, Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical traditions were used as frameworks to interpret and elaborate Christian worldview claims. Secondly, Dr. Shi’s book is not only a culturally informed volume that addresses themes drawn from ancient texts, he also applies those themes to a good number of contemporary problems within mainland Chinese society. Those problems and issues included concerns about marriage or divorce,38 the lavish inappropriateness of funerals,39 overbearing parents,40 pressures on single children within extended families leading to some profound tragedies,41 depression and suicide rates,42 concerns about corruption and injustice promoted by leaders in the church and state43 as well as concerns for compassionate responses to felt

37 See Yan Binggang 顏炳罡, Xin gui he chu: Rujia yu Jidujiao zai jindai Zhongguo 心歸何

38 39 40 41

42

43

處：儒家與基督教在近代中國 [Where may the Heart-Mind Rest?—Ruist Scholars and Christianity in Modern China] ( Jinan: Shandong People’s Press, 2005). There are ironies that some would see in the use of the phrase “cultural colonialism” (wenhua zhiminzhuyi 文化 殖民主義), a Marxist criticism that could also be justifiably used against Ruist figures and institutions during various Chinese dynastic historical periods. Specifically, that the rate of divorce as noted in 2012 statistics is higher than the rate of marriages (Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 59). Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 74–75 and 256. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 475. Illustrated by both the problems of children remonstrating against their parents’ improper behavior, and how in one sad case in 2007 a teenager became so incensed that he murdered his parents (Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 477 and 480 respectively). Cited from a source produced by Russian Orthodox Christians. Produced in 2017, it claimed that around 90 million Chinese citizens suffer from depression (yiyuzheng 抑鬱症), and of the 280,000 who commit suicide each year, half of them are from this group of depressed persons (Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 487). Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 214, 354, and 374. 79

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needs,44 and overcoming self-centered lifestyles—including those expressed in the new social media such as Weixin 微信, the Chinese instant messaging and social media service.45 There is a notable lack of reference to Chinese Marxist works or issues, and only a few specific references to contemporary Chinese Communist Party figures and documents.46 This certainly reflects Dr. Shi’s own concern to avoid a harsh reaction from publishing censors, but it should be underscored here that there is much that is still relevant and can be inferred indirectly from his interpretive comments. Alhough it addresses matters related to the diversity of interpretive traditions linked to the Confucian Analects, Dr. Shi regularly indicates his justification and preferences for specific interpretations, and so aligns himself with a more critically received set of Ruist traditions that tends to oppose developments within the Song dynasty Lixue tradition. Finally, in the epilogue, Dr. Shi refers to more than eighty Chinese intellectuals, pastors, and Catholic priests whom he has engaged by presenting many of these lessons to them and interacting with them.47 Along with a good number of other Christian intellectuals in contemporary China, Dr. Shi has sought to readdress what some consider to be a moral vacuum created in the “New China” that would be therapeutically overcome by means of enduring wisdom culled from these two seminal classical works representing Ruist and Christian traditions. Here we can see, then, how Dr. Shi has carefully and thoroughly conceived of a sinicized expression of Christianity that he believes can be a source of immense benefit to contemporary PRC society. It is not necessarily a popular form of sinicized Christianity that Dr. Shi has promoted, for it is one that calls all Chinese citizens to repentance and to receive the forgiveness offered by the Living God by means of trust in Jesus Christ. At times he also warns Chinese Christians about their responsibilities as good citizens not only of the PRC, but also as members of the kingdom of God. Dr. Shi’s concern for the renewal of contemporary Chinese culture through the impact of godly Chinese Christians is explicit, but it is a form of Chinese culture that shares a strong root in what the Taiwanese theologian, Hwang Tsung-I, has called “gracious moral cultivation,” one that often shares connections 44 Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 412. 45 Discussed in Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 434. 46 He mentions Wen Jiabao, because the latter cited a particular text from the Confucian Ana-

lects (Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 121), and once referred to the PRC constitution.

47 Listed in Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 582–83.

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with ethical values also promoted in some Ruist traditions.48 Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, a good number of contemporary Chinese Christians have no interest whatsoever in reengaging past Ruist traditions, since the cultural roles of Ruist intellectuals who do not align themselves with the new regimes of the CCP are considered to be at least unsuitable, and at most, traditionalists without any real regard for or active engagement with the pressing issues facing contemporary PRC societies. So, in light of all these questions and concerns, how does Dr. Shi’s presentation of Christianity prove itself to be a living cultural option for those in the contemporary PRC context?

Protestant Evangelical Hermeneutics within Zhong Xi Yuandian Duidu In order to assess the relevance and value of Dr. Shi’s work, I need to indicate why the nuanced cross-cultural kaleidoscope he presents within it has a distinctive Protestant style, and even more so, why it promotes a theological orientation that clearly aligns with what would be referred to internationally as Evangelical Protestant traditions. It is manifest that Dr. Shi’s use of the Chinese Union Bible indicates his Protestant orientation. Among all the books of the Bible that are cited, there is not one that belongs to the Apocrypha, books that have been more recently integrated into modern Roman Catholic versions of the Chinese Bible. In addition, in his references to the Christian deity, he most often refers to the term shen 神, and sometimes to shangdi 上帝, but only within the context of passages quoted from Roman Catholic writers does one find their preferred reference term, tianzhu 天主.49 These choices follow traditions of Chinese translation directly related to the Protestant renderings found in the Chinese Union Bible.50 48 Cf. Hwang Tsung-I, “What [can] Christian Gracious Moral Cultivation Contribute Distinc-

tively to Character and Moral Education in the Teaching of Whole Person Education in Taiwan?” in Whole Person Education in East Asian Universities: Perspectives from Philosophy and Beyond eds. Benedict S. B. Chan and Victor C. M. Chan (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2022), 199–222. 49 He does not refer to tian 天 as the Christian deity per se, but as a Ruist concept that is theistic and found most often as the preferred term for that deity in the Confucian Analects. Dr. Shi argues that this theistic conception aligns itself positively but incompletely with later Christian traditions, especially in the ways it is described by Master Kong. This will be developed later in this section. The term shangdi occurs relatively seldom within the whole text (Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 271, 524, 533–34). 50 As also confirmed in Choi, “A History of the Chinese Bible.” 81

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Dr. Shi quite early in Zhong Xi Yuandian Duidu specifically underscores the fact that he takes the Bible as the main authority for Christian teaching, and does not agree with those who give the same authority to the creeds of later church councils or various other later Christian written traditions, as in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian traditions.51 As a consequence, Dr. Shi has adopted an approach that underscores that biblical texts have a priority in determining the orientation of Chinese Christians, and so he employs a common Protestant and Evangelical Protestant hermeneutic that assumes that the best way to interpret any biblical passage is to explore its meaning in the light of other biblical passages. Though Dr. Shi does refer to some writings of early Roman Catholic Latin church fathers, such as Augustine, and also even John Chrysostom, whose writings have had an immense impact in Eastern Orthodox traditions, he never explicitly refers to any church creed, or papal bull, or even any of the later Protestant creeds or confessions. His focus remains on studying and interpreting texts from the Confucian Analects and the Bible, with the Chinese Union Bible serving as the representative Chinese version of the Bible that he regularly employs. Within the antiphonal readings one comes across many affirmations about the nature of the Christian Deity that mirror the biblical focus Dr. Shi regularly emphasizes, but that also indicate his theological awareness of broader issues. For example, I have only once found the term “Trinity” in Chinese (sanwei yiti 三位一體) within the text, and that was done in order to clarify what Master Kong did and did not understand about the deity.52 Nevertheless, the Christian Deity is referred to as “the Father in Heaven” (tianshang de fuqin 天上的 父親)53 and “Father God” (fushen 父神),54 and involves an active “Holy Spirit” (shengling 聖靈).55 The Chinese theological term for incarnation occurs very early in the text56—the Dao that has become flesh (dao cheng roushen 道成肉 身)—but does not appear again. Nevertheless, Jesus Christ is referred to

Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 38–39, lesson #6. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 305. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 491. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 235. It is the Holy Spirit who makes possible the realization of a virtuous life and motivates good deeds (Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 468). The book ends with an encouragement to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and not quench it, in order for the Christian life to be fruitful (580). 56 Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 20. 51 52 53 54 55

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explicitly as being “fully human and fully God”57 and simply “human and God.”58 He is David’s descendent, the King of kings (literally, “the King of myriad kings,” wan wang zhi wang 萬王之王) and the Savior of all humankind.59 Though there is no elaboration of what may be seen as a Lutheran emphasis on the theology of the cross, salvation is presented as “the highest good” for all human beings, and is made possible only by Jesus Christ.60 Precisely in this sense, then, Jesus Christ is described as the “only savior and lord.” It is by the forgiveness he offers that any person may be reconciled with the Heavenly Father.61 Consequently, Dr. Shi does not shy away from urging readers to choose to have Jesus Christ as their personal savior.62 In the light of these hermeneutic and theological commitments, one can easily understand why Dr. Shi urges readers to learn how to interpret the Christian Scriptures properly, and so not be misguided by heterodox cults (yiduan 異 端) and false teachers (jia jiaoshi 假教師) that exist and pursue Christians by means of distorting and twisting biblical claims.63 From this biblically focused and culturally informed Evangelical Protestant point of view, then, how does Dr. Shi address, handle, and interpret the historical roles of Master Kong, his disciples, and the Confucian Analects as a whole? Numerous times he characterizes Master Kong’s reliance on tian (天 Heaven) as theistic64 and argues that his experience and understanding of tian is “strongly anthropomorphic” (qianglie de rengexing de 強烈的人格性的), meaning that tian displays feelings, makes choices, and is aware of things including Master Kong’s own personal life and destiny. This is a position that some contemporary Ruist scholars deny, but Dr. Shi documents these claims by referring to various passages within the Confucian Analects.65 Master Kong is not the Dao itself, or the Dao incarnate, as some contemporary Ruists claim, but he is a forerunner in the divine plan, a prophetic figure like John the Baptist.66 Master Kong and his disciples are all human beings, and only human beings, but he has been called 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 394. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 523. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 449. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 370. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 166. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 194. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 542–44. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 17–20, 200, 205, 305, and 381. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 137. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 361–62. 83

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a sage (shengren 聖人),67 even though he himself denied that he had attained unqualified humane cultivation (ren 仁) or sageliness.68 In character, Master Kong was very humble, trusted in God, and was a creatively open person, even to the point of being willing to criticize himself.69 In Master Kong and his favorite disciple, Yan Yuan 顏淵, Dr. Shi finds exemplary figures who are seekers of truth and divine guidance.70 So, at another point in the book, Dr. Shi ends a lesson with the saying, “Blessed are those who seek!”71 One of the more remarkable claims about Master Kong’s teachings, and one that stands in opposition to some contemporary Ruist scholars who follow the Lixue tradition, is that he does not argue for the nature of human beings as being “originally good” (xing benshan 性本善), in contrast to latter Ruist scholars and their interpretations.72 Dr. Shi argues that Master Kong knew the evils within human character and actions, and though he did believe they could be overcome by moral cultivation, he himself never argued for that stronger positive claim about human nature.73 Though much more could be described and evaluated about Dr. Shi’s handling of certain biblical texts, and how he engaged in a wide range of critically evaluated comparisons of the Confucian Analects and the Bible, including particular figures in both canonical texts, I hope that the discussion in this section has portrayed his general interpretive orientation and some of the specific ways he applied it within this volume.

Post-Secular Foundations About ten years ago I documented a shift in Marxist philosophical circles within the PRC that essentially underscored the cultural fact that claims made by Chinese Marxists were no longer held to be the undeniable truth that had been asserted by Mao Zedong for his own ideas during the initial decades of 67 Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 390. 68 Based on sayings within the Confucian Analects (Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 412). 69 Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 259–60, 412, and 549. He argues that one “complicated polite

70 71 72 73

phrase” actually also underscores his humility (565), and does so against all traditional Ruist interpretations. Master Kong as a seeker whom God helped is described in Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 424; Yan Yuan is portrayed as being like John the Baptist as a seeker (429). Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 225. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 415–16, 557–58, and 576. Shi, Antiphonal Readings, 561.

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the People’s Republic of China (from 1949 to 1976).74 What this meant in part was that the whole realm of religious studies was opened up to reconsideration starting in the 1990s, because the Marxist critique of “religion” was found to be critically wanting, inadequate for explaining religious phenomena and the cultural value of the spiritual contributions of religious communities and spiritual people. In my most recent book, Vital Post-Secular Perspectives on Chinese Philosophical Issues, I have described the post-secular context that has prevailed in the PRC since the mid-1990s as involving “the reality of a diversity of world­ views that [are] in a contested cultural situation in the PRC.”75 This shift in understanding the status of Marxist claims has opened up a new range of interpretive issues for both philosophical and religious exploration. While there are still those who resist these cultural realities among various kinds of secularists, including those in the Chinese Communist Party, the legal and cultural opportunities for those who are intellectually aware of the limits of Marxist and other secularist claims have been able to regain their cultural and intellectual justifications within these new contested settings. For those who are self-conscious religious intellectuals, such as Dr. Shi, this means that they join in the process of reassessing past claims and arguing for the value and relevance of their own religious worldviews within this contested cultural context. What this means even in the cultural and political context of the PRC in the third decade of the twenty-first century is worth explaining further. In spite of the conservative ideological trends that have gripped PRC university institutions and religious communities during the past few years under the Xi Jinping 習近平 (1953–) regime, those representing the regime recognize that they are also involved in a particular expression of “secular beliefs.” So, while they have sought to realign various legal conditions to reflect more of “the party line,” they continue both legally and culturally to allow for and recognize the validity of other world­view claims. This is not to deny that there is a stronger cultural tension that is created by the current ideologically loaded approach to governance, but what this means is that there is no assumption that the prevailing political ideology is taken to be an absolute truth that cannot be challenged. Under these conditions, then, an engaged post-secular Chinese Christian intellectual such as 74 Lauren F. Pfister, “Post-Secularity within Contemporary Chinese Philosophical Contexts,”

Journal of Chinese Philosophy Vol. 39, no. 1 (March 2012): 121–38.

75 Pfister, Vital Post-Secular Perspectives, 6.

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Dr. Shi must learn how to explore ways his Christian worldview can be expressed with suitable justifications. Since the mid-1990s in the PRC there has been an intellectual and cultural openness that has allowed for a variety of new university courses dealing with the study of alternative philosophical and religious traditions, opening doors for less restrictive censorship in publications, and also allowing for a wider range of religious concerns to be articulated and lived out within contemporary PRC societies. In the particular case of the publication of Zhong Xi Yuandian Duidu in 2018, Dr. Shi was consequently able to build his cross-cultural and intra-­ cultural discussions upon a much wider range of available documents related to both Christian and Ruist traditions that had been published, republished, and interpreted by contemporary Chinese intellectuals since the mid-1990s. So, for example, within the footnotes of his work, Dr. Shi has cited fifteen relatively recent Chinese works that have provided much easier access to documents that have previously been hidden in foreign archives or Chinese libraries. These major works related to Chinese Christian resources include compilations and contemporary interpretive assessments of many pre-modern Roman Catholic documents produced by representatives of the Jesuit and other orders, as well as similar complications and interpretations of many documents produced in Chinese by various foreign Protestant missionary-scholars and indigenous Chinese Christian intellectuals. Of the fifteen books of this sort cited within Dr. Shi’s work, only three of the fifteen texts were published before 2010, while the majority of them—twelve out of fifteen—have appeared in the PRC, produced by academic and commercial publishers, and published between 2010 and 2016.76 Put in other words, Dr. Shi’s Sino-Christian cross-cultural and intra-cultural scholarly reflections were made possible in part due to the availability of these new academic works that have revealed an array of Chinese Christian documents previously not known or not available to even the more informed academics and researchers in the PRC. This is why we should consider Dr. Shi’s work to be an exemplary and extraordinarily rich expression of an engaged post-secular Chinese Christian intellectual.

76 Of those I could confirm, three were published in Shanghai, two in Beijing, one in Jinan, and

one in Hong Kong; this means that PRC censorship in these areas of publication was relatively limited from 2010 to 2016. 86

Chapter 5

WHAT SHOULD THEOLOGY DO WHILE LIVES ARE ENGULFED IN MUD AND FIRE? He Guanghu 何光滬, Renmin University of China Introduction In January 2020, as the Covid-19 virus became virulent in the city of Wuhan but had not yet spread abroad, I responded to an invitation to give a presentation at a conference on Christian scholarship in Los Angeles, and wrote a paper entitled “‘Becoming All Things to All People’ and Resisting Dehumanization— Sino-Christian Theological Studies in the Context of Contemporary China.”1 That essay emphasized that a Christian spirit, namely the love of neighbor, the love of all, should be included in the basic principles of any Sino-Christian theology. This would also demand that we leave the ivory towers of scholarship and face directly the important issues of today, including religious and cultural questions linked to social life, political and economic problems, and issues of morality in society. Addressing these three clusters of questions, contemporary Sino-Christian theology should endeavor to research in the areas of “cultural theology,” “political theology,” and “moral theology.” On March 6, 2022, ten days after the beginning of the war in Ukraine, I wrote a public letter entitled “What Should China Do While Lives Are in Mud and on Fire?,” exhorting Chinese leaders to fulfill their promise to guarantee the safety of Ukraine and to use their influence on Russia to act as mediator between the two sides and so try to promote peace. On July 1, 2022, several weeks after the city of Shanghai had been locked down due to Chinese covid policies, I again Translated by Prof. Leopold Leeb. 1 This conference was later held online in June 2020. My essay was translated into English by

Leo Leeb and included in He Guanghu, Sino-Christian Theology: Born in Sorrow, Grown in Grief (Projekt Verlag, Bochum/Freiburg, Germany, 2020).

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faced the question of a contemporary Chinese theology at the conference in Yale that led to this volume. I thought we must consider this question: “What should theology do while lives are engulfed in mud and on fire?” The proverb “lives in mud and on fire” (生靈塗炭) indicates that the people are in a great peril—“mud and fire” (or “mire and coals”) means to be caught in a quagmire or placed on burning embers, which implies that one is unable to escape. The metaphor aptly describes the situation in war. Ukraine has been independent for thirty years, it has an established system for elections, and although there were political quarrels and conflicts, the social life was generally peaceful. Today the seventh largest nation in Europe with forty million inhabitants has suddenly become a field of “mud and fire,” the nation attacked by bombs and missiles, countless families separated, and a quarter of the population has been displaced. All of these disasters have been caused by the thinking, wishing, judging, and deciding of one man living a thousand miles away from Kiev. In the late Qing Dynasty, Shanghai was an internationalized metropolis, a center of economic prosperity, orderliness, and civilization, and its living standards for a long time were among the foremost in the world. Even during the Covid pandemic, which caused a worldwide recession, it was like this. However, in this city known as “Pearl of the East,” 24 million people found themselves trapped overnight in a horrible “quagmire”—suddenly none of the inhabitants were able to take a car, buy goods, leave their homes or see a doctor! This situation produced hunger, depression, death due to lack of medication, and even suicide, and became a tragedy beyond description. Parents and children were forcibly separated, and countless homes of Shanghai inhabitants were invaded by force in order to “sterilize” them. All of these things were caused by a certain thinking, wishing, judging, and deciding from a thousand miles away from Shanghai. Just a few months earlier, nobody in the world, except perhaps a few ­decision-makers, would have been able to imagine the cruelty and absurdity of these two events, but both of them transpired. Of course, in the long history of humanity innumerable wars have taken place, and countless diseases have taken human lives prematurely. The thoughts and ideas in the head of one individual have often led to a tragic turn in the lives of millions. After the Europeans experienced the disasters of two world wars, they reflected on the lessons to be learned from this suffering, and they gave up their hateful thinking and established peaceful institutions, so people thought 88

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that war was a thing of the past. A peaceful nation that had actively transferred or destroyed its nuclear weapons was suddenly attacked by the largest nation on earth, a nation with the second largest military equipment, and a neighboring state “of the same culture and of the same race” so that many neighboring nations were shocked and had to protect themselves. A month after the first Covid wave in China, another wave approached: in Ruili, Xi’an and other cities in China overly strict epidemic control caused chaos and incited popular disaffection, at a time when the world had generally opened up and begun to normalize with the dominance of the less harmful omicron virus. Shanghai, whose inhabitants had felt proud of the rationality of their city’s “precise prevention policy,” was suddenly and unexpectedly thrown into strict isolation and severe control, accompanied by a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented scale, surpassing even the cases of Wuhan and Xi’an. Writing at a time of such events, we must consider the following: What should a theological conference talk about? What should theologians talk about? We cannot but help recall the question “Can one still write poetry after Auschwitz?” and ask: “Can one still write theology after Ukraine and Shanghai?” We cannot act as if all these things never happened. We cannot remain silent when facing all of these tragedies. We must not continue to live in our ivory towers, as if theology were not related to the sufferings of human beings. Otherwise we betray the “greatest commandment” of Christ, we betray the letter and spirit of texts like the “Our Father” and the “Letter to the Romans,” and we simply confirm that the indifference of people in China and the world toward Christianity is justified; we would be digging a grave for theology, burying the future of theology. In the present situation, theology must continue to be Christian theology. It must serve the Chinese people and people of the world. It must express the encompassing love of God, and thus must explore the origins of “lives in mud and fire.” It must reflect on the causes of this situation and consider the pressing problems of today’s world. For this reason we must earnestly research the three areas of cultural, political, and moral theology, which we can subsume under three urgent, central, and basic concerns: 1. National problems: a comparative theology of nations 2. Systemic problems: a comparative theology of systems 3. Problems of human nature: a comparative theology of human nature

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The main causes leading to the oppression of the Russo-Ukrainian War (and other similar wars in history and today) were and are the different national narratives of the Ukraine and of Russia and their related concepts of the nation. The main causes leading to the situation of the people in Shanghai, mainland China and Taiwan, and other nations, were and are the different political, economic, and social systems of these regions. The great and often intractable problems of the world have emerged from the creation of different narratives and from the design, establishment, and implementation of different systems, all of which have different human support and machination behind them. This requires that theologians undertake comparative research from a Christian perspective on the different ideas of nationality and on political systems, and on human nature, including its demonic nature, analyzing and describing them, and providing some kind of judgment or opinion. This is what I mean by “comparative theology of nations,” “comparative theology of systems,” and “comparative theology of human nature.” In the following paragraphs I attempt to give an outline or rudimentary discussion of the first question, the question of nations, and form an initial judgment or opinion.

Comparative Theology of Nations A theology of culture must naturally also research the question of nationality (or peoples), and a political theology must do the same. As everyone knows, the war in Ukraine is directly connected to the political culture of Ukraine and Russia, and to the relationship between the two nations, to the understanding of this relationship in the minds of the population and their leaders. Beginning with “Kiev Rus” the two nations and two states had a history of unity and separation, of love and hatred, which has lasted for one thousand years, but in the last thirty years the two different tendencies have gradually led to an estrangement. On the one side there was an effort to “escape from control,” whereas on the other side there was the wish to “keep control,” and this can be shown very clearly. At first sight, the lockdown in Shanghai has nothing to do with views of nationality. But as this event is a climactic version of many other similar cases in China, one should consider the general reaction and enduring attitude of the Chinese people towards governmental policy, which will show that it is a matter intrinsically linked to the question of nationality. In the Chinese media there were many slogans with nationalist tendencies and with ideas spreading a conflict between China and the West, such as “The virus originated in the USA,” 90

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or “Some people introduced the virus from abroad.” These slogans were widely circulated, and other slogans claimed that “Western governments did nothing, whereas the Chinese government exhibited great responsibility” and “The American policies failed, whereas China was most successful.” The propagation of these ideas certainly helped to maintain the strict control and lockdowns. Therefore, theology, including Sino-Christian theology, must research in the areas of cultural and political theologies and must describe the questions of nationality or of “different nationalities”; it must research the relationships between nations and the idea of a nation from a theological perspective, and it must produce a judgment and an opinion on the question of nationality from the viewpoint of the Christian faith. Since the characteristics of the different nations are so diverse, their relationships are also manifold, and in particular circumstances various ideas of nations will emerge. Thus we should research the idea of nation as found in different nationalities—a “Theology of nations.” Since this research needs to adopt a comparative method to arrive at general conclusions, it must first make comparisons between different nations, and thus I want to call it a “Comparative theology of nations.” A “nation” in the past connoted a smaller or larger group of people where the individual was bound to the group by blood ties and where the people lived in the same region or inter-connected regions. People of one nation had similar modes of social administration and production or distribution (i.e., political and economic systems), and used the same language; their members observed the same customs and habits, practiced the same religion and culture, and claimed the same nationality. An individual became a member of the nation by way of a number of factors that create close bonds or a kind of unity: blood relations, geographic region, politics, economy, habits, customary rules, religion, culture, language, and state affiliation. Large-scale migration, globalization, the pluralization of religion and culture within a nation and the imposition of state boundaries discontinuous with nations have all made more complex the notion of a nation. A theological viewpoint of the nation must be rooted in Christian faith. According to the Bible, God created all nations from one origin.2 If all nations are equally God’s created children, then their relationships should be like those of siblings. This basic principle is determined by the nature of Christianity itself, 2 “From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth” (Acts 17:26 NRSV). 91

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since Christianity is a universal religion and its aim is close to what we Chinese call “a world of great unity” (大同世界). However, this “great unity” (datong 大 同) is certainly not a “monolithic” unification but a harmony described by the Chinese phrase “peace in diversity” (he er bu tong 和而不同). Using the words of the British theologian John Macquarrie, the vision or aspiration of Christianity in this world would be a “commonwealth of free individuals.”3 Viewed in this way, to decide on a definition of a nation from a theological perspective, then we might say that the nation is the result of free grouping of individual and free human beings (individuals who may choose their habitual language and nation-state affiliation; and they can also choose to join a state or an autonomous nation). The nation should enjoy an equal status with other similar groups; it can form a state, but it is smaller than a commonwealth, and thus it is a human group in a middle position. Just as many threats and dangers in the world originate in one’s own self, so the various threats to national autonomy, national development, and ethnic plurality also come from nationalism, especially the extreme nationalism of a dominating nation (the war in Ukraine is a palpable testimony to this). Therefore, an inquiry into nationalism is an indispensable task for a comparative theology of nations. If we understand nationalism as the natural tendency to care for, maintain, and promote the features and interests of one’s own nation, then it would be as universal and agreeable as other natural human tendencies. However, as the development and transformation of a group phenomenon, it is in fact often very complicated, and sometimes stormy and turbulent—and since it is intimately related to the life of one’s own nation and other nations, its influence is so great that it needs a profound discussion. The nations of earlier ages existed as “clan” and “tribe.” They may not have had all of the elements that define a nation, but nevertheless had some of these, such as common blood ties, geographic region, language, customs, convictions, or rules for economic life, and the main difference to later nations was a matter of size. “Clan thinking” or “tribalism” was later seen as connoting “to have a limited horizon, and to be isolated and backward,” but in its time it was the natural “care, maintenance, and promotion of the characteristics, interests and development” of that tribe; we can say that “clan-tribalism” was nationalism in its nascent form.

3 John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, Section 90 (London: SCM Press, 1968).

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Under prosperous natural and historical conditions, the clan (or tribe) would form a federation of tribes and become a “state.”4 The biggest development of this historical period was the establishment of different political systems (such as aristocratic rule, monarchy, democracy), and breaking through tribal borderlines to different degrees (so that internal struggles between governments and opposition parties within one state would often be more intense than tribal conflicts). The accompanying ideological form would be a literal “state-­ patriotism”—the “state” (bangguo 邦國) in ancient China was the home of the “nation” (guojia), and did not at that stage encompass any modern meaning of “statism,” “centralized totalitarianism” or “state supremacy.” It was, however, already closely connected to the modern meaning of “patriotism” (the wish to protect the special customs or way of life in one’s own state). This was most obvious in the case of the Greek poleis that formed different political systems of neighboring groups, and was also expressed in the poems of Qu Yuan, a poet of the ancient state of Chu. In those times many neighboring peoples had similar origins, and these groups were similar to each other in respect to the elements mentioned above, and their sense of national identity was well defined, so in modern wording they could be called a nation. For example, the peoples living in the central plain of China during the Zhou period were or are called the “Chinese nation” (Huaxia minzu), and the Greeks living in different poleis in the classical age were or are called the “Greek nation.” A related natural and legitimate “nationalism” was then often expressed as cultural identification or political confederation, namely as an association and cooperation under a “state-­ patriotism.” This was clearly expressed by phrases like “the difference between barbarians and China” (yi Xia zhi bie) or “alliances of dukes” (zhuhou jiemeng), as well as by the actions during the “Persian-Greek War.” We can say that “state-­ patriotism” was or is nationalism taking a fixed shape. Under certain historical circumstances, some states will obtain a hegemonic position among the many different states, and may develop into an “empire” (diguo 帝國). Whether the ruler of an empire is called “emperor” (Huangdi 皇 帝) or not, it will always be a powerful government controlling several states 4 In the Chinese language, the more popular term for “state” is “guojia,” but this is made up of

two characters with very different meanings, namely “guo” (國 state) and “jia” (家 household, family). Since the word “guo-jia” confuses the basic principle that the family is the basis of the state, thus also confusing the public and the private sphere, I prefer to use the word “bangguo” (邦國 “nation-state”) here.

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or nations. Examples may be the Persian Empire and the Roman Empire, but also the empires of the Qin and the Han and the Mongols. What we call imperialism are the theories and actions that served to achieve control, to make alliances, unify, conquer, and oppress. Hegemonic domination (baquan zhuyi) and imperialism on the surface exceed nationalism, but in fact they are brought about by the excessive nationalism of one dominant nation. What I call excessive nationalism is the situation when the aims and methods chosen to care for and protect the characteristics of one’s own nation and the promotion of the national interests exceed the “general and agreeable” degree, so that one not only demands the autonomy of one’s own nation and an equal status of one’s nation with other nations, but also claims superiority of one’s nation over other nations, or claims priority of one’s national interests, and in order to achieve the aims of one’s nation or the ruler of one’s nation, one uses force or methods of threats and violence. We may say that this “hegemon-imperialism” was or is nationalism as exaggerated expansion. The Western Roman Empire collapsed due to internal and external conflicts, and the intrusion of barbarian tribes. The Eastern Roman Empire declined and disappeared due to the attacks of powerful enemies and internal weaknesses, and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation never exerted a lasting and effective imperial control, and thus throughout the whole medieval period in European history a hegemonic imperialism was always weak and ineffective. This actually cleared away obstacles to the growth of a new kind of nationalism in Europe. This nationalism demanded that the nation was congruent with the state, namely that the nation should be independent in a unified region and should establish an autonomous political body, that is, a state possessing sovereignty. After the fourteenth century, the social, economic, cultural, and political developments of Europe provided the actual conditions for such a demand, and thus there gradually emerged the political bodies of “nation-states.” After the Westphalian Peace in the seventeenth century, an international system gradually emerged that has been based on sovereign states as the basic unit, and this has lasted until today. Compared to the excessive nationalism of the hegemon-­ imperialist form, this kind of nationalism is more natural and agreeable. We can say that “sovereign-nationalism” is the situation of nationalism in a mature and stable form. In recent centuries, the more dominant among the European nationstates, such as Spain, France, Britain, Turkey, Germany, or Russia attempted to develop different kinds of hegemonies or imperialism in the period when 94

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their state power reached a climax. In Asia, Japan developed a kind of ­imperialism, somewhat similar to European models, possibly because Japan adopted the policy of “leaving Asia, joining Europe” (脫亞入歐). For comparison, we might look at two cases that do not belong at all to European- or Western-style imperialism, namely the rapid expansion of the Mongol Empire, and the Chinese empire (Zhonghua diguo), which advanced gradually and was consolidated at every step and reestablished whenever it disintegrated. A model from which we can learn something about the overarching tendency of history may be the decline and collapse of the Western hegemon-­imperialism after two world wars, and its radical transformation—because this hegemon-­ imperialism was a kind of excessive nationalism, an expansive nationalism, and the excessive imperialisms of different nations were bound to clash, leading to destructive and fatal wars. The most important lesson humankind could learn from two world wars was that any nationalism must break through its own limits, or at least that humankind must radically give up any excessively expanding nationalism. Many European states have accepted this lesson, and with the support of enlightened men and women in different places, and through tireless efforts, they have gradually realized something that would have been a fantasy dream only a few decades earlier, namely to institutionalize a voluntary organization, the “European Union.” Most European nations chose to be members of it. The European Union is a level above the autonomous political bodies of the different nation-states but has not reached the level of a “Global Association.” The system of the European Union is similar to the federalism which was already a political reality in the West. (The classic type of federalism is that of the USA, although the USA is an exceptional case in the world history of nations and in the history of politics.) Since the European Union embraces political bodies which are of greater historical and cultural diversity, European federalism can be seen as a kind of upgraded federalism, which we may call “unionism.” Federalism has been well established in Europe, North America, and in the Atlantic region; it is in the process of being practiced in some regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (such as Japan, South Africa, Brazil and in other autonomous regions and states). One of its important features is that it breaks through the limitations of nationalism—federalism is even practiced in Malaysia with its history of conflicting national groups and in South Africa where tribalism was once rampant. Federalism and unionism have already become a beneficial development in world politics; we may say that “Federal-Unionism” is a 95

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nationalism that has overcome its own isolation and is breaking through its limitations.5 Seen from a Christian perspective, all past forms of nationalism were beset by grave shortcomings. Only the form of “federal-unionism” is an ideal model of the relationships among nations, and thus gives a natural direction for the development of nationalism. First, as we have shown above, the Christian faith claims that all nations on earth are created by God “from one origin.”6 Thus the relationships between the different nations should be like those between brothers and sisters; they should be both free, autonomous, independent of each other, and at the same time close and mutually supportive. Only when the nations of the world are associated with each other according to the pattern of “federal-unionism” will it be in accordance with the common origin of all and with the nature of international relationships. Only in this way we can finally walk toward one global federalism, where the diverse characteristics and the developmental needs of all nations are protected. This is the only direction for further development that is in agreement with a nationalism along Christian principles. Secondly, Christ placed “love of neighbor” and “loving others as oneself ” at the core of God’s commandments, and therefore in essence Christian teachings oppose any kind of clan-tribalism which harms the neighbor, any “collective narcissism” or state-patriotism, any “hegemon-tyranny” or hegemon-­ imperialism, and any “collective egoism” in the form of sovereign-nationalism.7 Although in history the churches at certain times betrayed the faith principles of these relationships, in sum one can say that none of the above forms of nationalism conform with the Christian spirit of “love of neighbor” and “love others like oneself.” In the third place, according to the teachings of Christ, all Christians anticipate that the will of God “is done on earth as it is in Heaven.”8 God sent Christ, the incarnate “logos,” to save humankind from sin, and thus the main principle of 5 Of course, historical developments are often disorderly and not logical. On the surface the

Soviet Union (“The Union of Socialist Soviet Republics”), for example, was a failed federalism that regressed due to its failure. However, its union was never real, because its fifteen “union subjects” never had sovereignty, thus Soviet Russia was in fact an empire with centralized totalitarian rule. 6 Acts 17:26. 7 See Lev 19:18, Matt 22:34–40, Rom 13:9, Gal 5:14, James 2:8, etc. 8 See Matt 6:10.

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Christianity is that it must oppose the increasingly obvious “evil” of a one-sided nationalism. All the earlier forms of nationalism before “federal-unionism” were flawed by the sinful nature of humanity, they led to personal or collective sin, they brought about great disasters, and they are still bringing about yet more disasters (as we see today in the Ukrainian War and in the Covid epidemic), and they may lead to unprecedented disasters that humanity may be unable to bear (such as a hot nuclear war).

A Critique of Nationalism The essence of nationalism is a collective self-interest that ensures the support of the majority of people in a given nation (nationalism is always the nationalism “of a certain nation,” and is in conflict with the nationalism of other nations).9 The populace that this nationalism serves is positioned within other groups or nations and thus it will necessarily entrain restrictions and opposition from other peer nations, and it will also encounter the restrictions and opposition of larger groups, including the principled opposition of all humankind.10 The nature and position of a nation determines several intrinsic contradictions of nationalism, including unification and separation: the care, protection, and promotion of the characteristics and interests of a nation through nationalism will lead that nation on a road to inner oneness and unification, but this will also separate the nation from other nations and create antagonism. These two tendencies mutually reinforce each other: the first tendency is beneficial for that nation and promotes its development, but the latter tendency is harmful for this nation and all humankind, and it impedes its progress. Other contradictions include cohesion and expansion—the nature of nationalism enhances the inner cohesion and solidarity of that nation, and it will lead this nation to expand and develop externally under certain conditions, and thus there will be conflicts with other nations. These two tendencies are also mutually reinforcing; they have both beneficial and harmful effects on the respective nations, and the latter tendency is an obstacle to the development of all humanity. 9 Perhaps the history of the relationship between the nationalisms of India and Pakistan who

once fought for independence together may be the best explanation of this point. 10 The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia was opposed by many nations and by the different

institutions of the United Nations, and may serve as an illustration of this point.

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Likewise with independence and despotism—the nature of nationalism pushes the respective nation to realize independence if the conditions allow it and to shake off the control of other nations; under certain conditions it will also lead this nation to become despotic and to control or rule other nations. The first tendency will naturally be beneficial for that nation, if it succeeds, but the latter tendency will be profitable for that nation while it will trigger conflicts with other nations, and so it will bring harm not only to that nation but to the whole of humanity. All of these intrinsic contradictions show that nationalism can bring harmony or conflict to the social life of humanity; it may bring harmony within one nation but create conflict between the nations, especially today when the distances between the nations are narrowing and when nations come closer and closer together. In our days this little planet has already become a “global village,” and the many small and large nations who rely on each other have become a “community” (共同體), and therefore the positive effects of nationalism are in the process of disappearing, whereas the negative effects are increasing daily. History shows that whether nationalism produces positive or negative effects will depend on whether it can contain itself within agreeable limits and exist as moderate nationalism, or expand and inflate itself to a disagreeable degree and turn into excessive nationalism. Moderate nationalism will only demand an equal position or equal rights with other nations, including the right to autonomy and self-governance, but extreme nationalism will demand positions and privileges superior to other nations, and it will even strive for the power to exploit and control other nations. In modern civilization there is another crucial factor, namely whether the methods that nationalism may use to achieve its aims are acceptable—one should only use agreeable methods to achieve acceptable demands, and this in the first place means peaceful and nonviolent methods, because civilization means to control and limit one’s actions.11 11 The classic Yijing describes this with the phrase wen ming yi zhi, ren wen ye 文明以止,

人文也. In modern times, the judgment whether these demands are civilized and agreeable will often depend on which methods are used to realize them. For example, compared to the violence employed by the Irish Republican Army, the independence party in Scotland was more civilized by resorting to a vote of citizens. In the same year the authorities in Serbia used force, whereas Canada used legal measures to ensure unity, thus fulfilling the criteria of the age of “civilization.”

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A moderate nationalism with agreeable aims and civilized methods will not obstruct peaceful communication between nations, but an excessive nationalism with extraordinary aims (which are often expressed in magnificent terms and presented as a grand narrative) and with unprincipled methods (which are often covered up but finally cannot be concealed) will on the contrary often bring about a tragedy for the nation, for neighboring nations, and for other nations as well. Sometimes this will not only be a “clash of civilizations” (as Huntington’s book warned), but can even transform a “conflict within a civilization” (as the one triggered by Putin in Ukraine) into the destruction of a civilization, resulting in the opposite of civilization, the ruin of civilization. As everyone knows, the emergence of Christianity itself was the result of overcoming the limitations of nationalism. Being a universal religion “for all people,” Christianity is essentially opposed to any nationalism “for some people.” Although Christianity certainly does not oppose moderate nationalism or “patriotism,”12 just as it proclaims human sinfulness beyond national borders, it also announces that salvation by God does not depend on nationality. The doctrine and “spirit” of Christianity, its history, its “birth” and the debates in its first hundred years of existence—as well as through the persecutions, Middle Ages, Christendom, and nation-states—have determined its basic approach to nationalism. In its very nature and existence, Christianity is a critique of nationalism.13

A Critique of China’s “National-Statism” In the history of humanity there has appeared a kind of deformed phenomenon not listed among the examples mentioned above, and that is what I have called “statist-nationalism” or “national-statism.” This kind of nationalism was penetrated, supported, distorted, and manipulated by “statism,” and in fact it has 12 The frank words in the beginning of chapter nine of the Letter to the Romans are Paul’s most

honest and rational approach to patriotism, namely an expression of the profound feelings for “kinsmen according to the flesh.” Wang Weifan, one of the few contemporary theologians in mainland China, wanted to emphasize the convergence of Christianity with “patriotism” and thus wrote many moving essays based on countless passages from the Psalms and the prophets. 13 For a more detailed critique of nationalism from a Christian viewpoint, see He Guanghu “Jiduan minzuzhuyi yu Jiduzongjiao Xinyang” [Excessive Nationalism and the Christian Faith], in Yue ang wan chuan: zongjiao, shehui yu rensheng 月映万川：宗教、社会与人生 (Beijing, 2003).

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already been totally reduced to the ideology or political tool of a despotic political power.14 Before and during the First World War, the nationalism of many people in the West, including the nationalism of many Christians, was sometimes incited through propaganda from their governments, but generally it was spontaneous, and it emerged naturally. However, in the period between the two world wars, modern totalitarian states controlled society and public opinion, and this led to an enormous transformation. The result was that the populations of the Axis states (Italy, Germany, and Japan) developed a deformed nationalism that was penetrated, supported, distorted, and manipulated by state power—a “statist-­ nationalism.” Of course, the degree of the universality, intensiveness, and manipulation of this nationalism was different in these three nations, and it also spread to other states apart from these three. Nationalism in China has a history that is unique and totally different from the nationalism found in the West or in other nations. This special history led to the emergence of these elements or features of “statism” which are more numerous and stronger than those of other nations, and thus China’s nationalism should be called “national-statism.”15 Around the year 1000 BCE the “Yin-Zhou Revolution” took place, the period in which the Zhou tribe conquered the Shang tribe, and the nationalism of the “Chinese civilization” (中國文明) was in a nascent state, but this incipient and vague nationalism was already corrupted by “statism.”16 In those 14 The English expression statism often is translated “guojia zhuyi” in Chinese, but this Chi-

nese term is often confused with “nationalism” (because the Chinese people often confuse the nation with the state, for example they often call people from Singapore and other overseas regions “Zhongguo ren” [“people from China”]), and this translation does not express the meaning that “the state is supreme and the state power controls economy and society.” Therefore I translate statism as “guoquan zhuyi” (國權主義), thus emphasizing that “state power has supremacy over the rights of the citizens,” which is in contradiction to democracy (minzhu zhuyi) and the theory of the “rights of the people” (minquan zhuyi) propagated by Sun Yatsen. 15 See “The Dragon and the Dove: Nation-Statism and Catholic-Protestant Christianity in China,” in Sino-Christian Theology. Born in Sorrow, Grown in Grief by He Guanghu (Bochum: Projektverlag, 2020), 171–84. 16 Here I define Chinese civilization as “originating in the culture of the Huaxia, being realized in the overall system of China’s indigenous political, economic, and social customs.” This can be divided into two major stages, namely from the thirteenth century BCE to the third century BCE (from the time of the first records on oracle bones until the collapse of the Eastern Zhou), and from the year 221 BCE (the establishment of the Qin empire) until the year 1911 CE (the end of the Qing dynasty). This second period was marked by the 100

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days the ­population of the central plains of China thought their rites dignified, their garments beautiful, their culture superior, and thus they called themselves “Huaxia” (“Chinese people”), and at the same time they called the surrounding tribes that were somewhat less developed “barbarians” (manyi), which displayed the earliest national awareness. However, at the same time there appeared several “vassal states,” which in fact ruled over all the Chinese nations, and the vassal states that slowly evaded the control of the king of Zhou became the most powerful entities of the actual world. (The hereditary system of the monarchies also led to the phenomenon that “clan-thinking” was stronger than “tribalism” in China in that period.) The population had much more contact with the other vassal states than with the “barbarians,” and therefore the vague awareness of belonging to the “Chinese nation” (Huaxia minzu) was eclipsed by the clear and intensive awareness of belonging to one of the vassal states, such as the State of Lu, State of Qi, State of Jin, State of Chu, etc. If we compare the contemporary “state-patriotism” of ancient Greece, which was nationalism taking shape, to the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period (from the eighth to the third century BCE) of China, where the emergence of powerful rulers with fully developed “statism” affected the feeble nationalism of that time, one thing becomes very obvious: Greek poleis had different kinds of political systems, but in contemporary China there was only one system, namely monarchical rule. Even in Sparta, which was the most “militarist” of the Greek city-states, the power of the king was limited in many ways, so that it could not be compared to any of the monarchical vassal states of China of that time. The statism of China impeded the shaping of nationalism, thus it obstructed the “nationalism in the situation of taking a fixed shape” or the emergence of state-patriotism. (This “statism” was much stronger than “patriotism.”) This can be seen from the attitude of the states of Qi, Lu, Jin, or Song toward the states of Qin and Chu in the Spring and Autumn Period. It can also be seen from the phenomenon whereby talented men (including Confucius himself ) would perform their services by “job hopping” (tiao cao) and by showing loyalty to foreign customs when they crossed state borders. combination of Ruist (Confucian) traditions on the outside and a legalist system in the core (“Outwardly Confucian, inwardly legalist”). In the twentieth century, seven decades of revolutions have wiped out traditional Chinese culture. In 1949 a new “overall system” (總體系) was established in China: the first three decades were “Marxism plus Leninism,” and the next four decades were “Western market economy plus Leninism,” whereas now this is shifting to “nationalism plus Stalinism”; none of these “originated in Chinese culture.” 101

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Similarly, unlike the Greco-Roman (and later Western) hegemon-­ imperialism, which was “nationalism in rapid expansion,” in the five centuries before 221 BCE, China had many different “dominant powers” (baquan), and throughout the next two millennia China had many “empires” (diguo), but the pattern of their emergence was essentially not nationalism. It was rather the expansion of political power. First, the powerful states did not emerge in opposition to peoples outside of the Chinese (Huaxia) but as a result of the expansion of power within the different states of the Chinese nation. Second, The Qin empire did not come into existence by an expansion of the Huaxia nation but by the malign expansion (which developed into “militarism”) of one state within the Chinese nation. In the third place, the Han Empire was also not the result of an expansion of the Huaxia nation, it was caused by an insurrection against the abuse of state power by the Qin Empire, and the Han Empire was corroborated by the system of “Outward Confucianism, Inward Legalism” (yang ru yin fa). (Of course, after it had established itself, this empire also attacked other nations and tried to expand.) In the fourth place, the following two millennia saw the repeated collapse and revival of many “empires,” but with the exceptions of the Mongol and the Manchu empires, most of these were not the result of national expansion but the result of the idea that “state power is supreme” exemplified in the power of the emperor and expressed by popular sayings like “conquer the land and become emperor” (da jiangshan dang Huangdi). In the later period of the European Middle Ages there appeared in Europe “sovereignty-nationalism,” which I have called “mature and stable nationalism,” but this development never took place in China. The cause for this was precisely that the Chinese pursued and maintained “state power” or “monarchic power,” and this quest suppressed anything else. It even suppressed considerations concerning the interests of the people, and it was even possible to sacrifice the interests of one’s own nation to maintain power (this was the “inner cause” of several of the “unequal treaties” signed with foreign nations in the nineteenth century). A classical example of this is that from the mid-­ nineteenth century, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty only sought to maintain their imperial rule and were not at all concerned about the interests of the Chinese people. From the end of the nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century, a nationwide crisis was brought about by the actions of the Manchu rulers, in combination with the impact of nationalism introduced from the West. 102

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At that time, China for the first time saw the phenomenon of real nationalism. The military aggression of Japan during the 1930s and 1940s again incited China’s nationalism. The nationalism of the early period was exactly what the revolutionary circles (Tongmenghui and GMD) needed to wrest political power from the Qing court and from the hands of the warlords, and thus in Sun Yatsen’s Doctrine of the Three Powers of the People (Sanmin zhuyi) there were slogans influenced by revolutionary needs, such as “Expel the Tartars, restore China” (quzhu Dalu, huifu Zhonghua) and “Overthrow imperialism” (dadao diguozhuyi). The nationalism at the time of the anti-Japanese war was exactly suited to the needs of the CCP, which strove to wrest political power from the Nationalist government supported by the USA. The alliance with Soviet Russia served to protect the new ruling power, which was to be led by the Chinese Communist Party and aptly expressed by Mao Zedong’s phrase “Overthrow American imperialism and all its running dogs” (see Sayings of Chairman Mao). After 1949 this kind of nationalism was in the control of the party leadership, and thus it would only turn against those foreign nations that the party wanted to oppose or attack: in the 1950s and 1960s, the target was the USA and all capitalist states (“imperialists and counterrevolutionaries”), which found expression in all the media, in school textbooks, and in the “demonstrations” organized by the government. In the 1960s and 1970s, the target was Soviet Russia and its socialist allies, (“socialist imperialism and revisionism”), and this nationalism was expressed by all media and government organizations and by mass rallies during the Cultural Revolution. From the 1980s until today, nationalism has been expressed only at certain times when demonstrations were allowed by the government: there would be boycotts or even attacks on certain shops, but only certain foreign nations were targeted (for example when Chinese diplomats were attacked by Nato missiles [in 1997], NATO was targeted, and when South Korea installed the “THAAD” anti-missiles equipment, South Korea was targeted, but when the Russian government confiscated the goods of Chinese merchants, and when Chinese sailors were killed on Russian cruisers, there was no reaction at all). Besides that, after the Chinese government had slowly normalized the relationships with “special foreign nations” (such as Japan or France), these expressions of nationalism disappeared. This shows clearly that China’s nationalism is not the really excessive type of nationalism. It is not as intensive and powerful as it seems to be on the surface; it is only an outer cover of “national-statism” while its real core is statism. This can also be readily perceived 103

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in the increasingly frequent expressions of dissatisfaction (tucao) or mockery17 of nationalist propaganda or nationalist debates, which have been poured out by netizens on the internet or on social media. Of course, since this “national-statist” system was always in a dominant position, China’s nationalism today is in no position to “overcome the limitations of isolation” or to “break out from itself ” and move on to a kind of “federal-­unionism.” However, we should also pay attention to one fact, namely this: China’s problem is not the nationalism that seems to be so intense on the surface, it is the actual control of this nationalism and an increasingly serious statism. This statism has taken the state and political power as its aim and a purpose in itself, although the state and political power should only be means and methods to serve the one who is sovereign, namely the people.18 The beginning of Christian preaching may be the command “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”19 Therefore the purpose of human life should be the heavenly kingdom and not any earthly state. Jesus Christ proclaimed: “My kingdom is not of this world.”20 Accordingly, none of the states of this world is a purpose in itself, they are all only means; they have only a relative value and no absolute value. The basic political theory of the Bible, of the Christian tradition, and of theology is not describing the state as a purpose in itself but as a means to a higher purpose, namely as one of the instruments to provide the conditions for human life, and it is also one of the means that helps humans to sanctify themselves. On the level of the universe and of the person, God is the last aim, and thus the ultimate aim of a person is to walk toward sanctity, to be reunited with God, to receive the grace of justification from God, and to become a citizen of the kingdom of God. On the level of nationality and secular matters, the human person is the last aim and must never become a tool or a means to some other purpose. All other factors, including the state and the government, must be means in the service of the human person. 17 Recent several statistical surveys, including those of the Global Times (Huanqiu ribao), seem

to show that the support of the Chinese population for a military operation to unify Taiwan has decreased by 30 percent. 18 See He Guanghu “Dangdai Zhongguo de guojia mubiao” [The National Aim of Contemporary China], Daofeng: Jidujiao wenhua pinglun, no. 41, 2014: 71–101. 19 Matt 3:2, 4:17. 20 John 18:36. 104

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According to the narrative of the Bible, state power or monarchical power were rather unwillingly granted by God as a response to a request in a helpless situation,21 and according to the view of Thomas Aquinas, God set up the king “unwillingly” and “angrily.”22 The prophet Samuel immediately pointed out the many defects and dangers of monarchic rule, and he clearly stated which laws the king should obey. From this, one can see that kingly power is but an evil that cannot be avoided in a human society, and besides, that the power of the king must be limited by the law. Christianity even goes a step further, when it claims Jesus to be “the Lord of lords, and the King of kings.”23 Jesus also suggested to “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.”24 In this way, kingly power can of course not have a supreme position, and its power should be limited within a certain framework. At least two of the early theological authors, namely Irenaeus of Lyons and Augustine of Hippo, claimed that the origin of the state was due to the fallen state of humanity, so that it was necessary to use a rational institution to limit sin and to respond to the need for safety and order in social life. Since “peace on earth” was seen as beneficial for “peace in heaven,” the state was perceived as a means of God to realize the great plan of salvation.25 The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas also pointed out that within the state a person only needs to realize his or her earthly happiness, but the higher purpose would be the salvation of the soul and eternal happiness, which depended on the church, and in this line of thought the state was only a means to achieve a temporal and earthly purpose.26 The theologians of the reformation, such as Martin Luther and Jean Calvin, only protected the state as a means and not as a purpose, which was in accordance with the Bible and with Christian tradition. Luther’s theory of “two kingdoms” was based on similar views found in Augustine’s “City of God”: the secular city is beset with evils, and thus it needs the authority of a government. In the spiritual realm, however, all people are free and equal, and one’s conscience would have 21 Sam 8–10. 22 Ma Qinghua, trans., Akuina zhengzhi zhuzuoxuan [Selections from Aquinas’ Political Writ-

ings], (Beijing: Commercial Press, 1982), 130.

23 Revelation 17:14. 24 Matt 22:21; Mark 12:17; Luke 20:25. 25 R. W. Carlyle & A. J. Carlyle, A History of Medieval Political Theory in the West, Vol. I, 117

(quoted from the Chinese translation in Cong Riyun, ed., Xifang zhengzhi sixiang shi [History of Western Political Thought Vol. 2], 63. 26 Ma, Selections from Aquinas’ Political Writings, 66 105

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priority over any secular authority.27 Calvin also thought that the state was only an outward means to obtain salvation; the task of the government is to maintain peace and justice, to cultivate faith and mutual trust in business matters, and to protect the worship of God, because any ruler should be seen as the servant of God.28 Based on Calvin, the more modern political theorist J. Milton clarified the concepts of state power (or monarchical power, sovereignty) and its relationship to the people. He argued that “seen from the natural order, the rights of the people are supreme,” and he also mentioned that the state, represented by the king, is only a means in the service of a higher purpose of the people.29 Christian tenets claim that state power or kingly power are subordinated to the rights of the people, and that they are only means or instruments at the service of the people. They should not become an aim or purpose in themselves. In this respect, the overwhelming majority of important non-Christian and even non-religious political theories converge with this claim, and in fact they are mutually supportive, which forms a kind of universal claim. Here I will only use three examples to explain this. The second great sage of Confucianism, Mencius, said “The people are the most important thing, the state comes second, and the ruler is the least important”30 which means that both the ruler and the state are subordinated to the people. As to Mencius’s statement “protecting the people and being king, no one can resist it,”31 the inherent logic of it is that “protecting the people” is seen as the basic function of “being king” (this verb means “to rule” or “to be politically active”). The ancient Chinese expressions “ren zheng” (仁政 benevolent government) and “wang dao” (王道 the way of the king) mean that the principle of “a benevolent person loves the people” (仁者愛人 renzhe ai ren) is applied to politics, which means that “a virtuous person acting in a benevolent way can be king” (only by using moral standards to act out the principle of “loving the people” can one govern the state). “Therefore, if a wise ruler controls the property of the people, he will allow them enough to serve their parents, and he will allow them 27 Luther, “On Secular Power,” in Xu Qingyu, trans., Lude xuanji vol. 1, (Hong Kong: Jinling

shenxueyuan tuoshi bu, 1954), 446.

28 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, chapter 6, trans. Qian Yaocheng (Beijing:

Sanlian, 2020).

29 J. Milton, Defense of the English People, trans. He Ning (Beijing, Commercial Press), 1958,

109.

30 “民為貴，社稷次之，君為輕” See Mencius, chapter Jinxin xia. See https://ctext.org/

mengzi, or D. C. Lau, ed. and trans., Mencius (London: Penguin, 1970).

31 “保民而王，莫之能禦也” Mencius, chapter Lianghuiwang shang. 106

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enough to raise wives and children, so that one year with a rich harvest is enough food for a whole life, and even in a year of adversity one can escape death,” so that the population had “no regret in leading one’s life or mourning one’s death, and this was the beginning of the kingly way.”32 These words concerning the happiness of the people are the proper description of the real purpose of the state, and these theories were further developed by the great masters of the Confucian school during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, such as Wang Fuzhi, Huang Zongxi, or Li Zhi. The English thinker Thomas Hobbes has been called the “father of modern political thought” because he did not base his theories on religion but only used the method of reason to discuss the meaning of the state. He described the state as a man-made “Leviathan,” a huge monster, but the purpose of it was still “to protect the natural human person.”33 Although there are ongoing debates about whether Hobbes’s position was Christian or atheist, it is at least sure that he departed from the observation that human nature would lead to a situation of “a war of all against all,” concluding that the emergence of the state served the purpose of providing “peace and order” for the people, thus for him the state was not a purpose in itself but a means to serve the people, and this conclusion is in agreement with Christian political theories. Finally we may consider the view of Marxism, generally considered an atheist ideology, concerning this question. All readers in China are familiar with the standardized formulation from their school textbooks: the state is a “tool” of class oppression, a “historical phenomenon” which will become extinct in higher communist society. So, according to Marxism, the state is not a purpose to be pursued, having no absolute value. Karl Marx once attacked Bruno Bauer for “only criticizing Christian states and not criticizing the state as such.”34 Marx claimed that medieval Christian states were the first kind of state, namely incomplete states or “non-states,” and he held that modern democratic states would be a second kind, namely complete states. Marx said: “The institution of political democracy is a Christian institution, because here a human person, and not only one person but every human person, enjoys sovereignty and is the supreme

32 Mencius, chapter Lianghuiwang shang. 33 Hobbes, Leviathan, trans. Li Sifu (Beijing, Commercial Press, 1985), 1. 34 See Marx “The Question of the Jews” (quoted from Chinese translation, Makesi Engesi quanji,

Vol. 3, (Beijing: Renmin Press, 2002), 167–68. 107

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being.”35 However, he suggested a “third kind” of state, namely a “state no longer existing,” since in this situation the alienation embodied by the state would no longer exist, and humanity was already liberated. This shows that Marx held a negative view of the state; he denied the state. To sum up, the Bible, Christian tradition, Christian theology, political thought, and the vast majority of political theories in antiquity and modernity, in the West and in China, agree that the state is but a means or instrument at the service of the people, and that it certainly cannot be a purpose or an aim that “instrumentalizes” the people or uses and controls them. If this is so, then we should ask why the irrational and tragic phenomenon of “national-statism,” which developed in a distorted way from the habit of using and controlling the people, appears in history at certain periods, and why it exists in certain states of this world over such a long time? In order to answer this question, we need to consider the systemic origins that led to this phenomenon and the different systems themselves, which means we should employ a research methodology of a “comparative theology of systems.” I hope that theologians will continue this inquiry into these different systems, which is really a great need of our day.

35 Makesi Engesi quanji, 179. Of course, Marx was quick to add that those are the people who

“are in a fallen state due to our social organization, they have lost their inward and outward humanity, they are subjected to inhuman relationships and to the control of the forces of nature; in one word, they are not like really existing human beings.” 108

Part II

Sino-Christian Theology as Mode and Method

Chapter 6

SINO-CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY A Peek into the Future Jason Lam 林子淳, Melbourne School of Theology, Australian College of Theology I write as someone who has been working on Sino-Christian theology (SCT) for more than twenty years,1 including during my previous position at the Institute of Sino-Christian Studies (ISCS) in Hong Kong, an institute that played a major part in promoting the academic movement. In this essay I offer my view of this movement from a more distanced perspective and consider the significance of diasporic communities in the development of Sino-Christian theology.

Sino-Christian Theology in a Pluralistic Environment SCT in this essay refers to the academic movement that emerged in the late 1980s in Mainland China and existed alongside other kinds of Christian theology.2 A brief survey will provide some context and a more holistic view of the movement. 1 My earliest article on the topic was 林子淳 ( Jason Lam), “漢語基督神學的語言形式籮

筐 [Issues Concerning the ‘Linguisticality’ of Sino-Christian Theology],” Logos & Pneuma 17 (2002), 229–57; the most recent “漢語神學運動如何繼續下去？[How Should the Sino-Christian Theology Movement Carry On?],” Logos & Pneuma 55 (2021), 305–33; many articles have been published in Logos & Pneuma, with a selection collated in Lam, 多 元性漢語神學詮釋 [A Polyphonic View on Sino-Christian Theology] (Hong Kong: Logos & Pneuma, 2006); Lam, 敘事．傳統．信仰 [Narrative, Tradition, Faith] (Hong Kong: Logos & Pneuma, 2010); and Lam, 存在．歷史．神聖 [Being, History, Sacred] (Hong Kong: Logos & Pneuma, 2016). Part of the material in the first section of this essay section is adapted from: Jason Lam, “Why does Theology Still Matter for Chinese Christianity? A Theological Reflection on Contemporary Christian Mission in China,” in Proclaiming the Gospel, Engaging the World, eds. Michael Bräutigam, Peter G. Riddell, & Justin T. T. Tan, (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2021), 298–313, esp. 300–305. 2 For an overview of the movement, see Lam, A Polyphonic View on Sino-Christian Theology, 27–44.

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In 1949 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took control of Mainland China. It is no secret that the orthodox state teaching is atheism, which is in ideological conflict with Christianity and all forms of theistic faith. As a result, Christian churches and all institutional religions were suppressed and experienced a difficult time during the early reign of the regime, especially during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Since the end of the 1970s, however, a policy of Reform and Opening Up has been implemented and religions have been tolerated, at least to some extent, over the last forty years. This is not to say that the conflict between communism and religion is settled. Rather, after the regime declared its primary aim to be developing the economy, the issue of ideological conflict has often been treated as a secondary matter. At times the authorities have even gone so far as to consider religion a means for social cohesion, so long as the religious communities in question are not seen as making trouble for the government. The sociopolitical situation is evidently just one dimension affecting the shape of Christianity in a given place and time. Nevertheless, no one can escape from this background and Christians living in a given context must try to acclimate to it. The field of Chinese theology since Reform and Opening up has included discourses from both “registered churches” and “unregistered” or house churches. The theological orientation, and thus the nature of faith reflected in each of these, differs. “Sino-Christian theology” meanwhile emerged later, in the late 1980s, as an academic movement. Thanks to the recent volume Chinese Public Theology by Alexander Chow, we have a convenient means for building a discussion of theological types in the field of Chinese theology with consideration to their historical process.3 In the first part of Chow’s work, he describes three major types of Chinese public theology and places them in a chronological order of development. Chow notably separates out “urban intellectual Christianity” as the latest type, although it is a subset of the unregistered churches. The urban intellectual Christians are participants of unregistered churches, but their involvement in social issues provides a distinctive feature and clear contrast with the conservative manner of the majority of the unregistered church. This is a viable perspective, as a result of the sociopolitical changes of the last few decades in the People’s Republic 3 Alexander Chow, Chinese Public Theology: Generational Shifts and Confucian Imagination in

Chinese Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). This book starts with Christian intellectuals speaking for the church in the public realm prior to CCP rule, but we are more interested here in how Christianity responded to the specific situation in the PRC. 112

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of China (PRC). Since a quasi-free market has been established and certain resources (economic and political) shared by the people, a (quasi-) open and liberal society has been felt in the last few decades, and more progressive types of public theology have emerged. Many people are now asking the question: what if China’s economy stops growing or grows less rapidly? This is no longer a conditional clause but a matter of fact; the economic and political situation of the country has become less stable than before—and so the effects on theological development is a live question. More recently there has been an increase in the frequency of phenomena such as arrests of provocative Christians, raids on large unregistered churches, the removal of crosses and even destruction of some official churches, and intellectuals have found that the space for producing their voices in academia is shrinking.4 This is also a reason why Chinese Christians have had an ambivalent view of China’s economic impact. To analyze Sino-Christian Theology in more depth within the pluralistic situation of the PRC, I propose using Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder’s renowned work Constants in Context. Here they articulate three types of theology of mission on the basis of several theological models: A. Mission as saving souls and extending the church B. Mission as discovery of the truth C. Mission as commitment to liberation and transformation.5 Needless to say, in practice the three types are not mutually exclusive but complementary. The registered churches in China are state-sanctioned and run, with limited academic resources. They can thus mainly focus on saving souls and extending the church (type A). To a large extent, however, the unregistered churches have been mostly doing a similar type of mission and theology, in order to avoid 4 Cf. the theme articles in Logos & Pneuma 44 (2016) especially: Ying Fuk-tsang 邢福增, “拆

十字架的政治—浙江省「三改一拆」運動的宗教—政治分析 [The Politics of Cross Demolition: A Religio-Political Analysis of the ‘Three Transformations and One Demolition’ Campaign in Zhejiang Province],” 25–62; Yuan Hao 袁浩, “中國基督教與不服從的傳 統：以王明道、唐河教會與守望教會為例 [Chinese Christianity and Their Tradition of Disobedience: Wang Mingdao, Tanghe Church and Shouwang Church as Examples],” 87–122. 5 Bevans and Schroeder, Constants in Context, chap. 2; their work mainly builds upon the models suggested by Dorothee Sölle, Thinking about God (London: SCM, 1990) and Justo L. González, Christian Thought Revisited (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999). 113

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suppression from the state (and may still encounter problems even just aiming at this); even the unregistered churches find that at times they have to keep silent and make compromises if the truth they learn from Christian tradition is in conflict with the interests of the state.6 Seen against the other types of Christianity in mainland China, the special features of SCT can easily be articulated (including within SCT the theological discourse of Christian studies in Chinese academia more broadly). For the sake of economic development, a compromise has been made between communism and religions, the issue of “spatialization (空間化)” as coined by Li Xiangping (李向平).7 In simple terms, a registered religious community in China is allowed to host its activities at designated venues such as churches, temples, and mosques, while nonreligious communities or nonregistered venues may not run religious activities. Sino-Christian theology, however, is not produced by an institutional church and there is no visible organization to be identified. Its theology, coming from academics at universities and government research institutes, appears in academic discourse within cultural and educational platforms (mainly in the humanities and social sciences) in mainland China. For this reason it can break through the limits of the institutional churches and produce a Christian voice in the public realm. It may even go so far as to use resources shared in the academic realm hosted by the government to develop its theology, which is aimed at discovering the truth (type B). Nevertheless, a downside exists. First, the context of its emergence is a public space controlled by the government. Academic theological discourse can only emphasize the humanistic (academic) character of faith and theology rather than its religious (ecclesial) nature. Thus some years ago doubts emerged among other Chinese Christian platforms, especially in Hong Kong, as to whether SCT 6 Chow draws our attention to an article “House Churches Thrive in Beijing” by Wu Yiyao

and Cui Xiaohuo published in China Daily, March, 17, 2010, http://www.chinadaily.com. cn/cndy/2010-03/17/content_9600333.htm. (accessed Feb, 20, 2020); cited from Chinese Public Theology, 92. Another distinguished work in this area is Marie-Eve Reny, Authoritarian Containment: Public Security Bureaus and Protestant House Churches in Urban China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 7 “Spatialization” is a term coined by Li Xianping to describe the performance of religions in China; cf. his 中國當代宗教的社會學詮釋 [A Sociological Interpretation of Contemporary Chinese Religions] (Shanghai: Renmin, 2006), 123–24; 「 “ 場所」為中心的「宗 教活動空間」─變遷中的中國「宗教制度」[The ‘Place’ Centered ‘Space of Religious Activity’: The Changes of ‘Religion System’] in China,” Logos & Pneuma, 26 (2007), 93–114. 114

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was a genuine theology or not.8 Second, there are no theology departments in the mainland China university system. Even religious studies departments are linked to other disciplines. Therefore, for a long time SCT could only focus on issues that overlap with other academic disciplines, rather than content of a solely religious or dogmatic nature. This is another reason that SCT looks different from traditional theology, that it can easily be distracted by the interests of other disciplines and have difficulty developing its own agenda. Moreover, the situation makes communication with other theological institutes and training the next generation of scholars very difficult.9 Nevertheless, since the organization and sphere of ecclesial Christianity in China can easily be identified, the nonecclesial nature of SCT has, since its inception in the 1990s, enabled it to have a voice in the public realm of the PRC, and thus become a special force within Chinese Christianity.10 Sino-Christian Theology, which emerged from the Sino-Christian Studies movement, is concerned with discovering the truth from within Christian tradition (type B). Some participants may also be inclined toward social liberation and transformation (type C), as they write in the public realm about their findings. Nevertheless, concessions have to be made in expression and even the choice of study topic, as the platform is state-controlled. Given that it is not easy to identify a visible community, expansion (type A) can hardly be a primary 8 The most widely read one is undoubtedly the so-called “文化基督徒 [Cultural Christian]”

debate appearing in the Hong Kong Christian newspaper Christian Times 時代論壇 issue 419 (September 10, 1995) to issue 456 (May 26, 1996); these discussions are collected in Institute of Sino-Christian Studies ed., 文化基督徒：現象與論爭 [Cultural Christians: Phenomenon and Argument], Part II, 96–196. For reviews and discussions, see Peter K. H. Lee, “The ‘Cultural Christians’ Phenomenon in China: A Hong Kong Discussion,” Shun-hing Chan, “Conceptual Differences between Hong Kong and Chinese Theologians: A Study of the ‘Cultural Christians’ Controversy,” in Sino-Christian Theology, eds. Lai and Lam, 53–82. A recent review from another perspective cf. Jason Lam, “Is Sino-Christian Theology Truly ‘Theology’? Problematizing Sino-Christian Theology as a Public Theology,” International Journal of Public Theology 14 (2020), 97–119. 9 Lam, “Is Sino-Christian Theology Truly ‘Theology’?”; Jason Lam, “The Faith Identity of Sino-Christian Theology: An inquiry from a comparative perspective,” in Confucianism and Christianity: Interreligious Dialogue on the Theology of Mission, ed. Edmund Chia (Oxford: Routledge, 2021), 48–64; also Pan-chiu Lai & Jason Lam eds., Sino-Christian Theology: A Theological qua Cultural Movement in Contemporary China (Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang, 2010). 10 Li Xiangping, “漢語神學： 「無形的教會」與「公共的信仰」[Sino-Christian Theology: Invisible Church and Public Faith],” Logos & Pneuma 32 (2010), 57–69. 115

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concern. It seems that in recent decades only urban intellectual Christians have tried to actualize all three missional models, which is why they often court the risk of being raided by the regime. In the last few years, with a less stable sociopolitical situation, news about the persecution of individual Christian leaders and churches has become more frequent. Apart from a small number of urban Christian political activists, all other types of Christianity in the PRC are seeking ways to survive under the rule of an authoritarian regime with an atheist ideology by some form of self-limiting. Marie-Eve Reny has described this phenomenon in her recent book as one of “containment” (ezhixing 遏制性)—the conditional and bounded toleration of a group outside state-sanctioned institutions: Toleration is conditional insofar as it involves a bargain. State security actors grant religious leaders some autonomy in exchange for complying with a set of conditions. Rules may be implicit or explicitly stated. The authorities expect religious leaders to keep a low profile and share information about their internal activities with public security bureaus. They further expect unregistered pastors to refrain from crossing red lines (guo hongxian 過紅線) deemed unacceptable by the regime . . .11 In other words, the party-state, or local government officials, can tolerate the existence of different kinds of Christianity, insofar as they are not perceived to threaten the political security of the regime.12 Nevertheless, in the last few years, as the economic and political pressures on the state have increased, we have seen the augmentation of attacks on Christianity. Obviously, this kind of bargain in exchange for survival space is largely controlled by the hand of the regime. In view of the increasing harshness, some may ask whether engaging in this bargain is a wise tactic in the long run. At another level, one may even ask if it is right to exchange (part of ) the autonomy of the church for survival in the face of unjust persecution.13 Agreeing to enter this perverted game, as 11 Reny, Authoritarian Containment, 6. 12 Carsten T. Vala, The Politics of Protestant Churches and the Party-State in China: God above

Party? (London: Routledge, 2018), 14.

13 This has been a thorny question for the unregistered churches in China; cf. Yuan Hao “Chi-

nese Christianity and Their Tradition of Disobedience;” Fenggang Yang, “Evangelization amid Cooperation, Accommodation, and Resistance: Chinese Christian Response to Persecution in Communist China,” in Under Caesar’s Sword: How Christians Respond to Persecution, eds. Daniel Philpott and Timothy Samuel Shah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 334–57; Fenggang Yang, “From Cooperation to Resistance: Christian Responses to 116

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i­nterpreted by Reny, is a risk-averse behavior that usually pays off. Nevertheless, this kind of informal agreement isolates those communities that do not see it as appropriate, and produces distrust on both sides. It may also strengthen the resilience of the authoritarian regime.14 Whether it is worthy and ethical for Christians and SCT participants to do so is truly a difficult question.

The Interaction between Sino-Christian Theology and Diasporic Platforms The sensitive nature of discourse related to politics and Christianity in China has meant that analyses of SCT are often produced by outsiders. The Institute of Sino-Christian Studies (ISCS) was established in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the 1990s precisely to address this situation. Making use of its special diasporic location and networks, it has provided SCT participants, both mainland and others, with a shared space. The organizations on Tao Fong Shan 道風山 in Hong Kong originated from the ministry of the Norwegian missionary Karl Ludvig Reichelt more than ninety years ago,15 and from the outset the ISCS has enjoyed a good network with Nordic countries. By chance Liu Xiaofeng 劉小楓, one of the pioneers of SCT from mainland China, became the academic director of the institute in Hong Kong and created closer connections between mainland and foreign academia. Aided by skyrocketing economic development and a relatively open political atmosphere in the period between the mid-1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, SCT has grown rapidly. The phenomenon appears almost miraculous against the backdrop of an atheistic country and has for this reason attracted much interest.16 Intensified Suppression in China Today,” in The Review of Faith & International Affairs 15:1 (2017), 79–90; Vala, The Politics of Protestant Churches and the Party State in China. 14 Reny, Authoritarian Containment, 16. 15 For the life and thought of Reichelt, cf. Eric J. Sharpe, Karl L. Reichelt: Missionary, Scholar & Pilgrim (Hong Kong: Tao Fong Shan Ecumenical Centre, 1984); the history and ministry of ISCS can be found from the official website: https://iscs.org.hk/Common/Reader/­ Version/Show.jsp?Pid=1&Version=0&Charset=big5_hkscs (accessed on Aug 1, 2022). 16 See e.g., Chloë Starr, “Sino-Christian Theology: Treading a Fine Line between Self-­ Determination and Globalization,” in Globalization and the Making of Religious Modernity in China, edited by Thomas Jansen, Thoralf Klein, and Christian Meyer (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2014), 379–410; Naomi Thurston, Studying Christianity in China: Constructions of an Emerging Discourse (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2018); David Jasper, “Issues in Sino-Christian Theology,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 19 (2019): 120–32. 117

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The Changing Situation in Hong Kong China studies scholars in the broad sense, including theologians who study Chinese church-state relations in Hong Kong and elsewhere, understand that their work might not be transmitted on the public platform of the PRC—but after crossing the Shenzhen River into Hong Kong scholars can enjoy the freedom to express themselves.17 All types of mission and theology as articulated by Bevans and Schroeder could in the past be found in Hong Kong and among Chinese diaspora. Nevertheless, as Christianity has never been a dominant religion in most Chinese societies, most Chinese churches have focused on saving souls and extending the church (type A). Over time, the academic strength and political concerns of Hong Kong Christianity have grown. Type B theology aiming at discovering truth has grown in tandem, and thus SCT has been challenged less in Hong Kong as theologians from the church there frequently encounter academics in religious studies, both locally and abroad. When compared with the situation in Hong Kong, SCT in the Mainland appears unwilling to go too far towards social liberation and transformation (type C) due to the political situation; and so its responses can at most be a theoretical articulation, rather than existing in concrete actions. Since the end of 2007 when the Chinese government rejected the possibility of a general election for the chief executive of Hong Kong, the region has entered a period of political instability. The Umbrella Movement that occurred in 2014 may be seen as one of the high tides, and was an incident closely related to the participation of Christians and churches in Hong Kong. Theological discourses produced around this time were more concerned with liberation and transformation (type C). Moreover, some of this research appeared on international platforms and attracted a wide range of audiences.18 Set against the Hong Kong developments, SCT in the Mainland appears conservative, despite having also produced voices on public platforms. Since the Umbrella Movement broke out, 17 The Shenzhen River is the natural dividing line between Hong Kong and mainland China

and several custom control channels are established along it. 18 For the participation of Hong Kong Christians in the movement, cf. Shun-hing Chan, ‘The

Protestant Community and the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong,’ Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 16 (2015), 380–95; Nancy Ng & Andreas Fulda, ‘The Religious Dimensions of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement,’ Journal of Church and State 60 (2017), 377–97; Justin K. H. Tse & Jonathan Y. Tan eds., Theological Reflections on the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement (New York: Macmillan, 2016). 118

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the relationship between Hong Kong and the Mainland has gradually changed, with some higher institutes in the Mainland becoming less active in academic exchanges with Hong Kong. Hong Kong has been an important exchange station between east and west for centuries, not only for the business sectors but also academic realms; however, since the implementation of the Reform and Opening up policy, some mainland higher institutes have begun to accumulate their own experience in exchange with the outside world. Even in Christian studies, Hong Kong has lost its role as mediator in many areas. If Hong Kong gradually loses its character as a Special Administration Region and becomes just another ordinary city in the PRC, then the ministry of ISCS and the development of SCT will undoubtedly be affected. Room for developing mission and theology for social liberation and transformation will shrink and may be hard to realize in action. Theological discourses may turn towards more conservative aspects, but such views are difficult to get into mainstream public platforms in the Mainland (and even Hong Kong and Taiwan). Under such circumstances the development of SCT is likely to be constrained. It may still emphasize the mission of discovering truth but would find it difficult to connect to the concrete situation. Since the National Security Law in Hong Kong was passed on June 30, 2020, the borderline at the Shenzhen River marking freedom of speech seems to have disappeared.19 The Chinese government has become more sensitive to Christianity. Scholars and institutes in Hong Kong, including the ISCS, are encountering similar difficulties to their colleagues in the Mainland, a situation new to Hong Kong but one that may appear quite normal to mainland scholars who have been living in similar conditions for decades. In the past the ISCS has provided scholars with a convenient local platform, albeit one across a border, where they might use their own language to express their academic findings. For those fluent in other languages, foreign platforms can provide a similar function, offering research resources and the possibility of expression, but rarely with the convenience of using their mother language (and there are political barriers in Taiwan). Despite the fact that over the last few decades many diasporic research institutes related to Chinese Christianity have been established and made contributions to the field, they exist in different cultural and political circles, and so the 19 Cf. Ying Fuk-tsang 邢福增,「國安」陰霾下的香港教會 “ [Hong Kong Churches under

the Haze of National Security Law],” Xiaoyuan zazhi shuangyuekan 校園雜誌雙月刊 July & Aug 2020; https://shop.campus.org.tw/cm/ebooks/EVAL/20200708/202008Eval1.htm (accessed on 12 May 2023). 119

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distinctive nature of the ISCS in Hong Kong and the Sino-Christian Theology movement have become more apparent.

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Changes in Mainland Academia Mainland scholars’ interest in Christianity and theology was not cultivated by external or diasporic institutes, but emerged from within China during the 1980s and 1990s, influenced by the historic situation after the implementation of the Reform and Opening up policy, when modernity was a major source of interest.20 The ISCS merely provided resources and a platform that acted as a catalyst to the emerging movement. Given the absence of theology departments in the PRC university system and the fact that religious studies departments are usually subsumed under other subjects, interdisciplinary studies has been the only possible approach to doing Sino-Christian Theology in the Mainland.21 Moreover, since there were initially few trained people and resources, historical studies and the history of thought have been the major areas of research.22 Biblical studies and dogmatics are usually regarded as major components of theology elsewhere in the world, but these were only available to latecomers in the field—some of whom have already become mature scholars—when certain conditions were met. This is part of the reason that one focus of earlier studies was often whether SCT participants were believers or not. Since participants have grown in number, this latter discussion has cooled down.23 As Christianity has become increasingly sensitive in mainland China, it is natural that studies closer to “traditional Western” theology will become difficult and contract once more (and indeed this has already happened in some 20 Lam, Being, History, Sacred, 19–25; “How Should the Sino-Christian Theology Movement

Carry on?,” 307–12; Fredrik Fällman, Salvation and Modernity: Intellectuals and Faith in Contemporary China (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2008). 21 A recent overview can be found in Daniel Yeung 楊熙楠 & 謝志斌 Xie Zhibin eds., 跨學科研究與漢語神學 [Interdisciplinary Studies and Sino-Christian Theology] (Hong Kong: Logos & Pneuma, 2021). 22 Cf. Jason Lam, “The Emergence of Scholars Studying Christianity in Mainland China,” in Sino-Christian Theology, eds. Lai & Lam, 22. 23 Cf. my analysis in Jason Lam, “漢語神學共同體的產生與延續 [The Emergence and Continuity of the Community of Sino-Christian Theology]”, Logos & Pneuma 41 (2014), 137–49.

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areas).24 Christian studies may again be reduced to forms of history or intellectual history, such that they appear to be “objective/neutral” and can survive in mainland academia, acceptable not only to agnostics but even atheists. Given the special care required for such scholarship, why do researchers not simply avoid Christianity in their research? During the 1980s and 1990s, part of the reason was the very nature of the studies of modernity in relation to Christianity. But a few decades later, modernity, late-modernity, postmodernity and anti-modernity have all been amply studied. Now, the political atmosphere has become so sensitive that SCT as a field would find it hard to attract newcomers except in areas where Christianity cannot be avoided in discussion, such as medieval history or modern philosophy. In such a situation, we might expect (and have seen to some extent) that more participants in SCT would be those of personal faith, inspired by a religious impulse.25 But such a way of developing SCT would lose its exciting edge of the past when the majority of participants were not affiliated to the church.26

The Role of Diasporic Platforms Where scholars in the Mainland insist on continuing their studies in SCT, these must comply with the norms of the quasi-liberal public platform implemented since the Reform and Opening Up policy emerged. This means they can only publish in an “objective/neutral” interdisciplinary style—covering up any confessional or ecclesial stance with a tone acceptable to agnostics and atheists. 24 This firstly refers to biblical and dogmatic studies, but empirical studies has also become a

sensitive area in the PRC; cf. Jiangbo Huang, “Trend and Reflections: A Review of Empirical Studies of Christianity in Mainland China since 2000,” Review of Religion and Chinese Society 6 (2019), 45–70. 25 Cf. Lam, “The Emergence and Continuity of the Community of Sino-Christian Theology,” 146; for the concrete situation of the participants in PRC cf. Gao Xin, “Preliminary Survey on the New Generation of Scholars of Christian Studies in Mainland China,” in Sino-­ Christian Theology, eds. Lai & Lam, 225–37; Thurston, Studying Christianity in China. 26 Milton Wan and I have pointed out in the past that most theologians were nurtured by the church, while outsiders researching Christianity usually bore a critical if not antagonistic stance. Most SCT participants are not affiliated with the church but are appreciative of Christianity—this is remarkable if not unique in the history of Christianity. Cf. Milton Wan 溫偉耀, “神學研究與基督宗教經驗 [Christian Studies and its Corresponding Religious Experiences],” Logos & Pneuma 29 (2008), 125–26; Lam, A Polyphonic View on Sino-­ Christian Theology, 41.

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For those trained in dogmatics and biblical studies, this may not be the ideal approach. If scholars want to produce their works in more conventional theological styles, they may only do so on closed ecclesial platforms or publish their work in the diaspora. There are evidently many such opportunities in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, but here authors cannot usually use their native language, a situation that is not ideal especially where authors aim to produce a local, contextual theology. Since the 1950s, both Christian theology and other disciplines have made use of diasporic Chinese platforms for an outlet, but the effectiveness depends largely on the quality, population of users, and liquidity of the platform. Hong Kong as a diasporic platform may be losing its original distinctive nature. Can other places provide complementary functions or become substitutes? While this is a topic for Chinese Christianity and China studies more broadly, despite China being its subject, this kind of study paradoxically may not be able to be voiced from the land itself. As a topic that may encounter difficulties getting published, it manifests the importance of diasporic platforms for the Chinese-speaking world. Where studies include political, economic, and social analysis and are related to Christianity, then a genuine public theology may be produced in the process in diasporic settings with freedom of speech and a free press, and attract scholars from other disciplines. In the past, SCT has always claimed to be a kind of public theology, since it takes human and social sciences in the Mainland as its basis and uses public discourse to speak out and attract non-Christians. This has truly been a remarkable phenomenon in the history of Chinese Christianity. Nevertheless, public theology in the general sense is a discourse that speaks out on contextual issues. It may produce a prophetic voice, which is sensitive under the current political atmosphere in the PRC, thus some have already suggested that mainland academic theology at this stage should take the role of a servant rather than a prophet, serving the prevailing (government) viewpoint rather than critiquing it.27 This could be seen as a phenomenon of containment as described by Reny, but for confessing scholars it may not be so easy to separate the two roles. Critical discourse taking Chinese Christianity as its subject has often appeared outside 27 Zhuo Xinping 卓新平, “中國教會與中國社會 [Zhongguo jiaohui yu Zhongguo shehui],”

in Zhuo Xinping 卓新平 and Sa Yeer 薩耶爾 eds., 基督宗教與當代社會 [Jidu zongjiao yu dangdai shehui] (Beijing: Religious Culture, 2003), 249.

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the PRC in the fields of history, sociology, and political science. It is worth asking whether after a rational analysis one can produce constructive theology? This would be difficult in mainland academia when conventional theological discourse cannot readily appear on a public platform. For this reason, people have been asking for some time what the concrete results of SCT are. In the near future Hong Kong academia may also encounter a similar problem. Discourses written in Chinese may try to find an outlet in the diaspora, but this raises the question of how effective such efforts can be outside of the original context. Even if valuable results are produced, could they be transmitted back to their original setting, or at least engage in exchange, without being regarded as political infiltration? Such questions make clear the crucial function that the ISCS and other diasporic institutes have performed over many years. In the future, however, we can only hope that diasporic platforms may continue to provide complementary functions.

A Peek Into the Future The above analysis shows how SCT has encountered difficulties, not from within its own practice or discourse but as a result of the background situation. Zhang Xu wrote many years ago: This social-political environment cannot be changed by SCT; it exists in the environment. If we do not take this environment with its social space and institutions into consideration, we lose the historical sense and reality of our studies.28 No theology or academic movement should, or can, avoid the topic of context. SCT has been able to grow rapidly in the last few decades in a situation where Christianity is not a dominant religion, because participants have been able to respond to issues arising in society appropriately from their professional perspectives. The situation in the Mainland and Hong Kong today was foreseen by one of the initiators of SCT, Liu Xiaofeng. Liu is well known for his early theological 28 Zhang Xu 張旭, “基督教神學的漢語之路 [The Chinese Way of Christian Theology],” in

Inheritance and Development, Daniel Yeung 楊熙楠, Jason Lam 林子淳 & Gao Xin 高莘 eds., 傳承與發展 (Hong Kong: Logos & Pneuma, 2012), 43.

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work and his introductions over the last two decades to the political theologies of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. Liu’s early writing on SCT included the concept of “esoteric writing” (隱微寫作) for those in danger of persecution.29 At the time, scholars in Hong Kong and even the Mainland were living in a relatively open situation and the concept escaped attention, but it may be helpful to resurrect the concept today. If scholars on the largest Chinese platforms have difficulty using their voice, then those in the diaspora, especially confessing Christians, would seem to have a duty to help them speak. Nevertheless, although SCT cannot distance itself from the social, economic, and political situation, as a kind of theology it must first construct itself precisely as a theology to be able to communicate on common ground.30 Various theologies in diaspora and exile from Hong Kong people scattered abroad have already arisen, but they are still in a stage of infancy and must be allowed time to develop.31 Regardless of the concepts used—­ diaspora, exile, remnant, or other notions from the Hebrew Bible—these emphasize that the subjects involved are separated from the original place but long to return or to make a contribution back home, thus they echo with the exilic experience of Israel but differ from the ordinary experience of migration. In Taiwan and other diasporic Chinese communities, many do not have the same nostalgia as the newcomers from Hong Kong. Local theologies in places like Taiwan are already well developed, and people can analyze the political situation of Hong Kong and the Mainland from a more distant perspective. The Christian population is small in most Chinese societies; and in diasporas it is usually a minority. Now that a relatively large number of Hong Kong people are moving abroad, their influence will be felt. As the population on these external platforms is not large, producing and transmitting constructive theology is not easy. Newcomers with mission and 29 Liu Xiaofeng 劉小楓, Hanyu shenxue yu lishi zhexue 漢語神學與歷史哲學 (Hong Kong:

Logos & Pneuma, 2000), 69–72, referring to Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Some differences can be detected if we compare the Mainland and Hong Kong version of Liu’s works, which can be taken as an example of esoteric writing. On “esoteric writing” see further Liang Chia-Yu’s essay below. 30 Lam, “Is Sino-Christian Theology Truly ‘Theology’?” 31 See, e.g., He Zhaobin 何兆斌, “Yumin shenxue chuyi「餘民神學」芻議,” 時代論壇 Christian Times, June 8, 2018; Chiwai Wu 胡志偉, “Liufang shenxue de chutan「流放神 學」的初探,” 時代論壇 Christian Times September 4, 2020; John Wai-On Chan 陳韋 安, “Cong shengdian shenxue dao liufang shenxue 從聖殿神學到流放神學,” 時代論壇 ­Christian Times, February 4, 2022. 124

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vision are expected to bring a positive influence. However, as they are nostalgic and have close links to the homeland, the sentiment may not be easily shared and echoed by the already-settled and may stir up conflict if they embrace different political and theological positions. The difficulty of developing rational discussion on politics in diasporic Chinese churches in recent years has proved as difficult as in Hong Kong. Some churches even try to avoid it in order not to produce differentiation within a small community.32 Nevertheless, in this crisis we may still try to produce some positive developments. A genuine public theology can only be constructed with appropriate socio-political analysis. If SCT wants to extend and develop on external platforms, it will be necessary to overcome any hesitation in dealing with the sociopolitical world. Since the 2000s issues related to the Mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have become a source of international focus. In diaspora Chinese scholars can meet others in different circles easily and directly: how to deal with these sociopolitical issues is a difficult but crucial topic for Sino-Christian theologians in the future. The near future looks gloomy for mainland, and even Hong Kong, academia.33 Yet while scholars may find it difficult to speak out or publish freely, this does not mean that theology cannot be constructed. As Yang Junjie 楊俊杰 writes, when SCT participates in the contemporary Chinese social situation, it naturally contributes Christian resources to academia and may even help develop a kind of Christian humanism in China.34 This is an important idea from a long-term SCT participant and has been put into action over many years by numerous humanities scholars in the PRC. When suggesting the concept of Christian humanism and its possibilities, Yang Junjie was reviewing the history of mainland academia since the 1980s, from its early discussions on humanitarianism (人道主義) to the recent trend of interest in Leo Strauss—exactly the period when SCT emerged and flourished. Early on, scholars criticized the previous collective approach that overemphasized the participation of individuals in a community. The new trend did 32 This is not a topic on which one can easily find relevant literature, despite widespread discussion.

One short essay may offer some insights: Chiwai Wu 胡志偉, “Haiwei huaren jiaohuide biladuo xianxiang 海外華人教會的彼拉多現象 [The Pilate Phenomenon in Diasporic Chinese Churches],” https://chiwaiwu.wordpress.com/2022/03/29/海外華人教會的「彼拉多」現象 (accessed on May 10, 2023). 33 Part of the material in this section is adapted from “How Should the Sino-Christian Theology Movement Carry on?,” 318–24. 34 Yang Junjie 楊俊杰, “人文學回顧與漢語神學展望” [Recent Chinese Humanistic Movements and Their Significance for Sino-Christian Theology], Logos & Pneuma 50 (2019), 194. 125

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not intend to deny the importance of a collective self but wanted to state that every individual had the right to strive for their own fulfillment. In the recent wave of Straussian interest, one of the talking points was freedom, which is not a value-neutral condition but comes from a virtuous self.35 We can readily find SCT scholars like Liu Xiaofeng, He Guanghu, Yang Huilin, and Zhuo Xinping contributing their discussions on the formation of the human self in relation to Christian thought and history, and engaging in dialogue with Chinese culture.36 In the process, they have struggled with the concept of “human”—a kind of virtuous being hoping to manifest “more” of this kind of being without just “living as” something limited by a given set of conditions. Commenting on this, Yang Junjie goes so far as to say that Christian humanist scholars shared a common belief that an ultimate power was leading the human to strive for a “higher” objective in life.37 This way of considering human fulfillment in humanistic writing was found in certain early pioneering SCT works. For example, Liu Xiaofeng pointed out from Chinese cultural tradition that Confucian scholars have always borne the responsibility of manifesting “heavenly righteousness” (天道正義), as can be seen from the Spring and Autumn Annals and the subsequent Gongyang Commentary.38 Humans who live in between this world and the other have at all times faced the difficult humanist issue of discerning a heavenly righteousness. According to Rogers and Schroeder’s typology, this concern is not limited to discovering the truth (type B) but includes taking part in liberation and transformation (type C). 35 Yang Junjie “Recent Chinese Humanistic Movements,” 184–93. 36 Examples can be found from Liu Xiaofeng, 拯救與逍遙 [Delivering and Dallying] (Shang-

hai: Sanlian, 2001); He Guanghu, Tianren zhiji 天人之際 (Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences, 2003); Yang Huilin, Jidujiaode dise yu wenhua yanshen 基督教的底色與文化延伸 (Harbin, China: Heilongjiang People’s Publishing House, 2002); Zhuo Xinping, Shensheng yu shisu zhijian 神聖與世俗之間 (Harbin, China: Heilongjiang People’s Publishing House, 2003). 37 Yang Junjie, “Recent Chinese Humanistic Movements,” 193–95; Yang quotes Paul Tillich in his essay and to some degree this explains why existential philosophy/theology has long been attracting humanist scholars and intellectuals in the PRC. 38 See Liu’s introduction to Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History. Liu Xiaofeng 劉小楓, “中譯本導言 Zhongyiben daoyan,” in 洛維特 (Karl Löwith), Shijie lishi yu jiushu lishi 世界歷史與救贖歷史, trans. Li Qiuling 李秋零 & Tian Wei 田薇 (Hong Kong: ISCS, 1997), xxxvii–xliv; also cf. Liu Xiaofeng 劉小楓, “儒 家革命精神源流考”, in Wolfgang Kubin 顧彬, Liu Xiaofeng 劉小楓 et al, 基督教、儒 教與現代中國革命精神 Christianity, Confucianism and Modern Chinese Revolution (Hong Kong: ISCS, 1999). 126

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Humanist scholars do not think that they can grasp this world and bear this responsibility. In Jewish and Christian traditions, a human obtains dignity only through love and its corresponding praxis in a community.39 This could be one reason that Giorgio Agamben’s works discussing the concepts of the remnant and Messianism from a secular context have attracted such wide attention in China.40 Such quasi-religious discourse is like SCT in Chinese academia, invoking religious terms and concepts in writings on themes of concern to humanities scholars. Likewise, academics in atheist China have been immersed in deep study of Christian theology, where topics of wide concern inspired by traditional theological themes produce responses to contemporary issues. Yang Junjie’s contention that many humanist scholars believe that an ultimate power was leading people to achieve a higher objective deserves further discussion. Probing into the eternal question of how the human can experience the sacred, Heidegger pointed out that one cannot bow and pray to the god of causa sui, a tenet diffused into western academia since the Middle Ages through Aristotle.41 Since then the god of causa sui has been something people have longed for, even worshipped as a god, but it remains something that could be created by human beings. In his Harvard lecture in the 1960s, Eric Voegelin, the political philosopher with a deep interest in Gnosticism and Heidegger, reminded the audience that the prophet who articulated the concept of the remnant in Isaiah did not mention this unknown god but asked people to look toward the God of causa rerum (the cause of matters) among them. This God dwells in this world and cares for God’s people; delivered the remnant and calls upon God’s suffering servants (Isa 42). The concept of salvation related is thus not a kind 39 For a general discourse on humanism, cf. R. Giustiniani, “Homo, Humanus, and the Mean-

ings of ‘Humanism,’ ” Journal of the History of Ideas 46:2 (1985), 167–95; also cf. Stephen A. McKnight, “The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: the Löwith-Blumenberg Debate in light of recent scholarship,” The Political Science Reviewer 19 (1990), 183–90; Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), ch. 2–3. 40 Patrick O’Connor, “Redemptive Remnants: Agamben’s Human Messianism,” Journal for Cultural Research 13 (2009), 335–52; for an illustration by Chinese scholar cf. Gao Qiqi 高奇 琦, “Shisuhuade misaiya jingshen: Aganben de zongjiao zhexue sixiang 世俗化的彌賽亞精 神：阿甘本的宗教哲學思想,” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 世界宗教研究 2015, no.3, 33–43. 41 Heidegger, “Die Onto-Theo-Logische Verfassung der Metaphysik,” in Identität und Differenz (Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1957), 40; cf. Jason Lam 林子淳, 接著海德格爾思神學 [Theology After Heidegger] (Hong Kong: Logos & Pneuma, 2019), ch. 3. 127

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of triumphalism.42 Agamben may have been aware of this when he developed Walter Benjamin’s concept of salvation, seeking for the fragments in the “saved night” (Die gerettete Nacht) rather than a sudden abrupt change in reality.43 Humanist scholars, especially those working on the Jewish-Christian tradition, may take some inspiration, too: scholars may not need to overturn the social situation they cannot master, but they can always demonstrate human brilliance in their speaking and writing in the form of enlightening fragments. How the human finds their role in history is part of the responsibility of bearing heavenly righteousness and leads to the question of meaning in history, as posed by Löwith. This may provide some light to SCT participants in a perplexing time. “What is a human being?” is not only the concern of confessing Christians but also of all who care for sentient beings, even atheists.

42 Eric Voegelin, “Immortality: Experience and Symbol”, Harvard Theological Review 60:3

(1967), 86–88.

43 Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford: Stanford Uni-

versity Press, 2004), 82.

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Chapter 7

SINO-CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND THE VEIL OF POLITICS Revisiting Liu Xiaofeng Liang Chia-Yu, University of Sussex Introduction The course of recent events, including Russia’s “special military operation” against Ukraine since 2022, has sharpened a sense of crisis in world politics. The crisis, however, started at least as early as 2014, when, in Eastern Europe, Russia took over Crimea, and when, in Eastern Asia, citizens of Taiwan and Hong Kong launched large-scale protests. In geopolitical terms, these events could be characterized as unrest on the peripheries of the “Heartland” and the “World-Island,” which Halford J. Mackinder once described as the “geographical pivots of history.”1 Since 2014, we have been able to observe unrest unfolding in Eastern Europe in the form of the War in Donbas, and in Eastern Asia, the Anti-Extradition Law Movement in Hong Kong in 2019, as well as the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) military exercises in the Taiwan Strait in 2022. For students of International Relations (IR), these events imply the deterioration of the post–Cold War, globalized liberal international order. 1 H. J. Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” The Geographical Journal, vol. 23, no.

4 (April 1904), 421–37. See also Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (London: Constable and Co., 1919). Discussion about Mackinder in particular, and geopolitics in general, has been revived recently in PRC academia: see, e.g., Liu Xiaofeng, “中譯本導言 [Introduction to the Chinese Translation],” in Karl Haushofer, 太平洋地緣政治學—地理與歷史之間關係的研究 [Geopolitik des Pazifischen Ozeans: Studien über die Wechselbesziehungen zwischen Geographie und Geschichte], trans. Ma Yong and Zhang Peijun (Beijing: Huaxia, 2020), 1–3.

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Yet some of us also watch these events as Christians, since the Church is not merely a silent audience in these events, but rather a spectateur engagé (to appropriate the terminology of Raymond Aron). In Russia, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow provided the “special military operation” with religious legitimation,2 causing the question to arise regarding the expulsion of the Russian Orthodox Church from the World Council of Churches.3 In Ukraine, clergy of different denominations in 2014 showed support for the protesters of Euromaidan; in Taiwan, the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (PCT) set up a “prayer zone” right in front of the police line during the Sunflower Movement; in Hong Kong, one of the founders of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace (that turned into the Umbrella Movement) is the minister of a Baptist Church, which has attracted both approval and disagreement from clergies and denominations. The opposing opinions have naturally become objects of theological reflections.4 Nonetheless, theological reflection becomes urgent when non-Christians join voices with Christians by singing Christian hymns in the social activism of a traditionally non-Christian society. On the night of 11 June 2019, outside of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, which was heavily guarded by the police, the division between Christians and non-Christian was blurred by the hymn “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord”—the unofficial anthem of the 2019 protest until the release of the official anthem “Glory to Hong Kong,” another song with a Christian reference.5 It is not only the religious references in these songs, but also the overwhelming acceptance of such references among non-Christian 2 J. Luxmoore, “After supporting the Ukraine invasion, Russia’s Patriarch Kirill criticized

worldwide,” National Catholic Reporter, Mar 15, 2022, https://www.ncronline.org/news/ world/after-supporting-ukraine-invasion-russias-patriarch-kirill-criticized-worldwide-0. 3 The question was raised by Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, yet disagreement as to William’s argument has also arisen in the Church of England. See Paul Oestreicher and Rowan Williams, “Should the WCC expel the Russian Orthodox Church?,” Church Times, May 20, 2022, https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/20-may/ comment/opinion/should-the-wcc-expel-the-russian-orthodox-church. 4 Theological reflections on the Sunflower Movement and the Umbrella Movement published since 2014 include: Zhuang Xinde ed., 論太陽花的向陽性：公共神學論文集 [The Mythos and Logos of Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement: Anthology of Public Theology] (Taipei: Lordway Publishing, 2015); Tang, Andres S. K. ed., 和平知識論：從理性的暴力走向 對話的可能 [Epistemology of Peace: From the Violence of Reason to the Possibility of Dialogue] (Hong Kong: InPress Books, 2015); Chan, John W. O. ed., 盼望．抵抗．盼望 [Hope against Hope] (Hong Kong: Ming Feng Press, 2018). 5 BBC, “Hong Kong protests: How Hallelujah to the Lord became an unofficial anthem,” 22 June 2019, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-48715224 (Accessed 11 Sept. 2022). 130

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protesters, that calls for a theological explanation. Is this an example of theological politics, which views politics through a theological lens and effectively insists on refusing the usurpation of sanctity by the secular realm?6 Considering the fervent opposition to Hong Kong’s protest demonstrated by overseas Chinese, is it appropriate to characterize these disagreements as political religion?7 Or are both the Hong Kong protesters and their Chinese counterparts cases of something deeper, which Simone Weil called “the great rush of wind sweep[ing] over the masses”8 and “breathing an inspiration into a people”?9 In short: what are the theological explanations for the political difference between the Hong Kong protesters and their Chinese counterparts when the former express their aspiration through Christian reference? These questions are beyond the capacity of IR studies, but they fall within the scope of Sino-Theology, and it is exactly the absence of direct intervention from Sino-Theology thus far that merits investigation. From 2019 to early 2022, there has been no article analyzing the 2019 Hong Kong protest on the official platform of Sino-Theology, Logos & Pneuma: A Chinese Journal of Theology (道風:基督教文化評論, hereafter Logos & Pneuma), let alone discussion of the contestation between the Hong Kong protesters and their Chinese counterparts. This essay therefore seeks to address this absence and asks, What are the causes and implications of such an absence?10 The following arguments are offered in answer to the question: 1. The contestation between Hong Kong protesters and Chinese counterprotesters cannot be easily addressed by Sino-Theology because it is precluded by the way that Sino-Theology was conceived. 6 Luke Bretherton, “A New Establishment? Theological Politics and the Emerging Shape of

Church-State Relations,” Political Theology, 7(3) (2006), 384.

7 See Hans Maier, “Political Religion: A Concept and its Limitations,” Totalitarian Movements

and Political Religions 8(1), (2007): 5–16.

8 Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty, Arthur Wills and John Petrie trans. (London: Rout-

ledge, 2004), 135.

9 Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind, trans.

Arthur Wills, (London: Routledge, 2002), 182.

10 Admittedly, Hong Kong theologians on other platforms and beyond the Sino-Theology

Movement do engage in the social-political movements in Hong Kong. See Kwok Pui-lan, Postcolonial Politics and Theology: Unraveling Empire for a Global World (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021), 123–37; Kwok Pui-lan and Francis Ching-Wah Yip eds., The Hong Kong Protests and Political Theology (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021). This chapter focuses on the theological writing in the Sino-Theology movement. 131

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2. Such a preclusion is political, operating through a civilizational politics that has not been sufficiently problematized in Sino-Theology. 3. This lack of problematization of civilizational politics is facilitated by the methodological emphasis on “academic theology” which downplays the role of context in the construction of Sino-Theology. Through these points, the discussion does not aim to propose a theological thesis, but rather to uncover one site of the political in Sino-Theology, that is the diversity of the “Sino” therein, hidden in the “avoided” context. To achieve such a purpose, and to make the above points, the essay will unfold in three steps. First, it will review how Sino-Theology has been constructed and positioned since its conception and in its evolution, focusing on how the “Sino” has been demarcated in civilizational terms, before outlining the theory of civilizational politics in IR. Second, the essay will propose and justify the Straussian method for interpreting Sino-Theology texts, which emphasizes the discernment of esoteric writing in philosophical texts for grasping the veiled political implications. Third, the essay will apply this interpretative method to two early texts of Liu Xiaofeng for the Sino-Theology Movement in order to demonstrate the political present in the avoidance of diversity in the term “Sino” and in the evasion of context. These points are made by examining the editorial history of the “manifesto of Sino-Theology,” namely Liu’s Sino-Christian Theology and Philosophy of History (漢語神學與歷史哲學), and by rereading the dialogue that Liu had with a group of Taiwanese theologians, published in collected essays on the debate over “Cultural Christians” in 1997.

The Political in the Construction, Positioning, and Evolution of Sino-Theology The proposition here may justifiably be challenged. First it might not be clear, for example, why a theological interpretation for the Hong Kong citizens’ appropriation of Christian references should be provided by Sino-Theology, rather than by Hong Kong–based theologians who may not participate in the construction of Sino-Theology. Second, it is not clear that the Hong Kong protesters and their Chinese counterparts are opposed to one another theologically—their disagreements are clearly political. And even if the political disagreements could be theologically interpreted, and the theological interpretation could be located within the scope of Sino-Theology, it is also not clear why the context of Sino-Theology 132

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should serve as the interpretative focus. Therefore, to establish the question, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by “Sino-Theology,” “the political,” and “context” here, by briefly reviewing the construction, positioning, and evolution of Sino-Theology. The most succinct definition of Sino-Theology to date is “the effort of interpreting the Christian faith in contemporary China through Chinese language.”11 However, in this essay, Sino-Theology refers to the academic movement under the banner of the Sino-Theology Movement (漢語神學運動), as well as the theological discourses it advanced. By defining it in this way, the author positions himself outside of the movement and considers it a sociological phenomenon. Since its emergence in Hong Kong in 1995, with the founding of the Institute of Sino-Christian Studies (ISCS), the Sino-Theology Movement has attracted contributors from disciplines beyond Theology and from locations beyond the PRC.12 As an academic movement, Sino-Theology has been defined by its participants in numerous ways, although most accept a twofold definition. In the broad sense, Sino-Theology refers to all theological utterance made in the Chinese language.13 In the narrow sense, Sino-Theology refers to the theological discourse produced by the Sino-Theology Movement, which has been undertaken by scholars in the humanities in the PRC since the 1980s, and is hence differentiated from theological expressions of Christian institutions in the PRC and from those of other localities.14 Effectively, Sino-Theology in the broad sense (the expression of Christian faith in Chinese) provides the materials for the analyses or interpretations of Sino-Theology in a narrow sense. Expressions regarding the Christian faith, including the translation of the Bible since imperial China, philosophical and political articulations with reference to Christianity, and the theological interpretation of cultural-political topics, once done in Chinese, belong to the former, and could be studied by the latter. The 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Protest in Hong Kong can therefore be an object 11 Gao Zhe, “無處境的處境神學—淺論當下漢語神學的缺失 [A Contextual Theology

without Context: A Study of the Weaknesses of Contemporary Sino-Christian Theology],” Logos & Pneuma, 54A (Winter 2016 Special Issue): 42. 12 Daniel H. N. Yeung (Yang Xinan), “一個停不了的故事: 漢語神學 [Sino-Theology: An Unstoppable Story],” in 漢語神學讀本 [Sino-Christian Theology Reader] eds. He Guanghu and Daniel Yeung (Hong Kong: Logos and Pneuma, 2010): 1–2. 13 Yeung, “Sino-Theology,” 2–3; Jason Lam, “漢語神學運動如何繼續下去？—從人文主義 角度來設想” [How Should the Sino-Christian Theology Movement Carry on? Thinking from the Perspective of Humanism], Logos & Pneuma, 55 (Autumn 2021): 306. 14 Yeung, “Sino-Theology,” 3. 133

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for Sino-Theology to interpret and critique. The question is, rather, how could Sino-Theology undertake such an enterprise? To address this question, it is necessary to consider the self-understanding of Sino-Theology. Since 1995, it has been repeatedly iterated by contributors to Sino-Theology that the movement is characterized by three attributes; that is, it is humanistic (or academic), trans-or non-denominational (or non-ecclesial), and transcultural (or dialogical).15 The humanistic attribute refers to its scholarly tendency, which is based on, and consequently more inclusive of, approaches within the Humanities. The trans- or non-denominational attribute dissociates Sino-Theology from established denominational traditions, including the tradition of the Three-Self Church and the Catholic Patriotic Association in the PRC. Finally, the transcultural attribute underscores the relation between Sino-Theology and theologies of non-Chinese cultures as well as philosophies of other religious traditions.16 The three attributes together map out the diverse approaches developed in the movement for over thirty years, including Intellectual History, Sociology of Religions, Political Philosophy, and Comparative Religious Thought, among others. Such a fruitful enterprise is permitted by this self-understanding of the movement. These three attributes have, however, also established a contextual delimiter for Sino-Theology, that is the “Sino.” It is the “Sino” that demarcates the civilizational self, namely Chinese culture, and consequentially its Other, through which the scholarship of Sino-Theology acquires the humanistic and transcultural attributes. The question of how Sino-Theology could intervene in a political event in one locality encompassed by the “Sino” then becomes one of the relations between the “Sino” and the political. To unpack this question, it seems appropriate to provide a preliminary definition of the political: a tentative proposition might be that which (re)orients power among human collectives. Under this definition, the political could be confrontational (e.g., Carl Schmitt), rational (e.g., Jürgen Habermas), or even spiritual (e.g., Simone Weil). This definition transcends the popular presumption of the confrontational characteristics of the political and allows for other aspects of politics to be included. For example, in world politics, the ethical grounds for the institutional construction of the human rights regime and the more 15 See Wang Xiaochao, “論漢語神學對中國學術界的影響及其定位 [On the Influence of

Sino-Christian Theology to the Chinese Academia and its Position],” Logos & Pneuma, 32 (Spring 2010): 48–49. 16 Yeung, “Sino-Theology,” 3–4. 134

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recent conceptual construction of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) cannot be explained away by the confrontational aspect of politics: they both require compromise of the state-centric assumption and the absolute authority of state sovereignty that accentuate the confrontational characteristics of the political. In fact, it is only on the premise of the potential to transcend confrontational politics that civilizational/ cultural/ religious dialogues can be pursued, an endeavor to which Sino-Theology has contributed since 1995. If the political is that which (re)orients power among human collectives, its location in Sino-Theology is to be found first in the conceptual extension of “Sino,” and then in the relations between “Sino” and “Theology.” As mentioned above, the broad definition of Sino-Theology encompasses all theological utterances produced in the Chinese language since the arrival of Church of the East monks in the Tang dynasty; hence “Sino” here is a linguistic concept. In this sense, Sino-Theology is not a theology that locates itself in the context of a nation, class, gender, or race, but a language. For this reason, He Guanghu situated Sino-Theology in “the great family of mother-tongue theologies” and provided an exegesis of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles as the theological foundation for his claim.17 This demarcation is reflected in the organization of the two-volume collection, Sino-Christian Theology Reader (漢語神學讀本, hereafter the Reader), in which the articles are classified into premodern China, modern China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese, and presented in this order.18 However, this seemingly equal representation of localities as production sites of Sino-Theology is not reflected in the development of Sino-Theology. The publications of the Institute for Sino-Christian Studies demonstrate an overwhelming emphasis on premodern and modern (mainland) China. The difference between the equal representation of localities in the Reader and the accentuation on China in the journal Logos & Pneuma suggests the different weights that these localities carry in the development of Sino-Theology, which was illuminated by the metaphor of “wall” that Li Yuehong used to separate the contexts of China (inside the wall) and other locations such as Hong Kong 17 He Guanghu (2000), “漢語神學的根據與意義 [The Foundation and the Significance of

Sino-Theology],” in 漢語神學芻議 [Preliminary Studies on Chinese Theology], ed. Daniel Yeung (Yang, Xinan) (Hong Kong: ISCS, 2000), 25–26. 18 See He and Yeung eds., the Reader, and the translation of Vol. I, Chloë Starr ed., A Reader in Chinese Theology (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2022). 135

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and Taiwan (outside the wall).19 Li’s metaphor teases out the significance of “context,” to which other contributors of Sino-Theology have paid attention, and their attention further explains the neglect of the context “outside the wall.” For example, Gao Zhe, when criticizing the “aphasic condition of Sino-­ Theology”20 in the face of a societal crisis, identified the context of the crisis— and of Sino-Theology—exclusively as the PRC in the post-Mao era.21 The attention to the context of China has generated important insights from Sino-Theology itself. He Guanghu, for example, dissected and criticized the statism of the PRC,22 while Chin Ken-Pa pushed this criticism further and asserted that “the real peril of Sino-Theology lies not in its concern for the divine, but in the nationalist discourse” of Chineseness.23 Such criticism of statism and nationalism, in fact, has been present in Sino-Theology since its emergence: in 1995 Liu Xiaofeng was already arguing against the “indigenization (本色化) or sinicization (中國化)”24 of Christian theology, and advocated for keeping the “Sino” as a contextual parameter of Sino-Theology. However, if Sino-Theology fundamentally rejects the nationalist discourse of China, what would be the meaning of the “Sino” that could explain the differentiation between China and other localities also characterized as “Sino,” such as Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong? Indeed, if “Sino” means only Chinese language, these localities cannot be differentiated, at least in the way Sino-­ Theology delimits the term. On the other hand, the emerging field of Sinophone 19 Li

20 21 22

23 24

Yuehong, “當代「漢語神學」發展及其標識──林子淳《多元性漢語神學詮 釋》的意義 [The Marks of the Development of Contemporary Sino-Christian Theology: The Significance of Jason Lam’s Polyphonic View on Sino-Christian Theology],” Logos & Pneuma, 27(Autumn 2007): 271. Gao, “Contextual Theology without Context,” 50. Gao, “Contextual Theology without Context,” 39. He Guanghu, “當代中國的國家目標—一種基督宗教兼非宗教角度的思考 [The National Goal of Contemporary China: A Reflection from Christian and Non-Religious Perspectives],” Logos & Pneuma, 41(Autumn 2014), 71–101. Chin Ken-Pa, “Introduction,” in Chin Ken-Pa ed., 政治哲學與漢語神學 [Political Philosophy and Sino-Christian Theology] (Hong Kong: Logos and Pneuma, 2007), 21. Liu Xiaofeng, “現代語境中的漢語基督神學 [Sino-Christian Theology in Modern Context],” Logos & Pneuma, 2 (Spring 1995), 42. Here, I translate 中國化 as sinicisation, because, although the English term could mean the adoption of Chinese language, culture, intellectual tradition, political system, and religious-cosmological beliefs etc., and could be differentiated into 漢化 (becoming Han), 華化 (becoming Hua), 中國化 (transforming into, at some level, part of China), these nuances belong exactly to the “avoided context” according to the civilizational politics in play.

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Studies has made the same distinction on the grounds of political historicization. According to Shu-mei Shih, China historically performed a “continental colonialism,” which can be compared with modern Western maritime colonialism, and this history is not shared by the Sinophone societies such as Hong Kong and Taiwan.25 However, Shih’s conceptualization of Sinophone is precisely meant to distinguish the historical and political divergence between China and other Sinophone societies that Sino-Theology binds together. Therefore, for Sino-Theology, the “Sino” belongs neither to the historically constructed context that differentiates Sinophone societies from China, as Shih proposed, nor to mere linguistically defined unity, as He suggested. The “Sino” in Sino-Theology must belong to another category. One category that could permit both distinction and inclusion might be “civilization.” In writings of Sino-Theology, the juxtaposition of “Western Christian civilization” and “Chinese Confucian civilization” raises few eyebrows.26 “Sino” here serves as the identifier of a civilization. In recent years, contributors to Sino-Theology have noted the role of civilization in analyzing the context behind the evolution of Humanities Studies in the PRC that exercises an influence on Sino-Theology.27 The descriptive and analytic roles that “civilization” plays in this discourse qualify Sino-Theology as a case of civilizational politics. According to Gregorio Bettiza, civilizational politics means the process where “a positive loop is generated between civilizational narratives; the (re)orientation of actions, institutional arrangements, and international practices around civilizational categories; and processes of recognition bestowed on actors claiming a civilizational identity and voice.”28 Bettiza’s constructivist approach to civilization allows for the examination of how civilizations are narrated, how powers are reoriented by such narratives, and how these reorientations reproduce civilizational subjects. Through this lens, the association between China and other localities in Sino-Theology can be seen as the construction of a narrative of Chinese civilization with a center (premodern and modern China) and 25 See Shu-mei Shih, “What Is Sinophone Studies,” in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, ed.

Shu-mei Shih (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 1–16.

26 See Qu Xutong, “尼采以後—今天我們如何做漢語神學? [After Nietzsche: How Could

We Do Sino-Christian Theology Today?],” Logos & Pneuma, 50 (Spring 2019): 158.

27 See Jason Lam, “How Should the Sino-Christian Theology Movement Carry on?,” 313–14. 28 Gregorio Bettiza, “Civilizational Analysis in International Relations: Mapping the Field and

Advancing a ‘Civilizational Politics’ Line of Research,” International Studies Review 16, no. 1(2014): 2.

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certain peripheries (Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc.). The question then is this: how does such civilizational politics operate in Sino-Theology to marginalize the peripheries?

How Can We Discern the Political in the Conception of Sino-Theology? In order to answer the question of how civilizational politics operates to separate the center and the peripheries and cause the marginalization of the latter in Sino-Theology, we need to apply an appropriate method. Unlike Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis, which conceptualized civilizations as entities with an essence (formed in history, admittedly), here civilizational politics refers to the process whereby actors actively construct and reconstruct their collectives and themselves. This approach recognizes the agency of actors, the space for interactions, and the possibilities for change. This perspective therefore does not see a “clash” between civilizations as the sole path that is structurally determined but allows for different imaginations to emerge. Civilizational politics does not prioritize the center-periphery construction, nor does it necessarily advocate a particular state being the representative of a civilization, but the kind of civilizational politics that positions a state as the representative—and therefore the center—of a civilization is specifically the politics of a civilizational state. According to Christopher Coker, civilizational states mobilize narratives of a civilization for particular states to justify their domestic and international actions.29 This is easily observed in the PRC, where intellectuals actively rebrand the state a “civilizational state” (文明型國家) instead of a “nation-state.”30 According to Zhang Weiwei, a civilizational state “has exceedingly strong historical. . . cultural traditions” and “strong capability to draw on the strengths of other nations while maintaining its own identity,” therefore can “exist and evolve independently of the endorsement or acknowledgment from others.”31 Zhang argues that China is a typical civilizational state, while Europe or the Islamic world could have also become one, had they not been divided into nation-states.32 29 See Christopher Coker, The Rise of the Civilizational State (Cambridge: Polity, 2019). 30 See Weiwei Zhang, China Wave: The Rise of a Civilizational State (Hackensack, New Jersey:

World Century Publishing Corporation, 2012).

31 Zhang, “China Wave,” 2–3. 32 Zhang, “China Wave,” 2.

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To suggest that Sino-Theology might partake in this form of civilizational politics, would require verification through three criteria, namely the involvement of elites, actions of identity construction, and the fixation of a state at the object of such an identity.33 The humanistic-academic attribute of Sino-­ Theology meets the first criterion, while the transcultural attribute meets the second. The question then is whether the third criterion is met, and how. This may be elucidated by examining the delimitation of the context of the “Sino” in the conception of Sino-Theology. For Sino-Theology, its conception refers not to its definition but to the way the definition is made, the examination of which requires an interpretation of the key texts of the movement. The question of the method therefore concerns the texts to be interpreted and the principles for interpreting them. Here the interpretative method of Leo Strauss offers a helpful intervention, since the task is focused on “the moment of conception” in the texts selected and requires a careful reading of these texts. The political thought of Leo Strauss is also relevant given its introduction into Sino-Theology as early as 2000 and how it has caught the imagination of many scholars; its influence and implications in the PRC in the twenty-first century have been noted and analyzed by contributors to Sino-Theology.34 Liu Xiaofeng, the scholar who coined the name Sino-Theology, has also practiced Straussian Political Philosophy as well as the Straussian method of “doing Political Philosophy.” Liu not only organized major book series on Strauss’s political thought, but also played the role of a Straussian philosopher who contented himself in reading classics, performing exegesis of classics, and cultivating young talents with philosophical germs of wisdom.35 Furthermore, it was Liu who offered an intervention in the 2014 Umbrella Movement in a Straussian manner, when in his preface to the Chinese edition of Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies, Liu wrote: 33 See Bettiza, “Civilizational Analysis,” 17, and Zhang, “China Wave,” 2. 34 See Leo Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,” Lin Guorong

trans., Logos & Pneuma, 13 (Autumn 2000): 65–88. On it influence, see, e.g., Yang Junjie, “人文學回顧與漢語神學展望” [Recent Chinese Humanistic Movements and their Significance for Sino-Christian Theology], Logos & Pneuma, 50 (Spring 2019): 187–93. 35 See Liu Xiaofeng, “編著前言” [Editor’s Preface], in 馴服欲望:施特勞斯筆下的色諾芬 撰述 [Taming of Thymos: Leo Strauss on Xenophon’s Writings], ed. Liu, Xiaofeng, trans. Cheng Zhimin et al. (Beijing: Huaxia, 2002), 1–13.

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The commoners, dominated by ideologies, do not understand the complex political events in history [.  .  .] Therefore, if, in our time, when some radical group protests for “independence” on the body of the people, and the state resolutely exterminates them in the name of the people, it should not be surprising that such a state behavior would be called “fascist,” while “occupying the legislative council” or rioting on the street for “independence” would not be considered “fascist.”36 Straussian Political Philosophy is grounded in two convictions: the universality of truth and the scarcity of the aspiration for truth among humankind. Based on these, Strauss argued that Philosophy is fundamentally Political Philosophy, because philosophers as seekers of truth could not expect to be appreciated by the masses, while a lack of prudence in disclosing any given truth to the public could arouse unrest among the masses. Therefore, a philosopher should be prudent when “doing (political) philosophy,” which would require them to make the “exoteric-esoteric distinction” in their writings: by allowing like-minded philosophers or young talents to detect the real intention of the text (esoteric) disguised for the public to penetrate with another set of codes (exoteric). In this way, philosophers are saved from public persecution when their truth offends the orthodoxy of their society.37 These tenets of Straussian political philosophy are the foundation of the Straussian interpretative method, which I apply here, without associating these tenets themselves with Sino-Theology. The Straussian interpretative method is derived from this understanding of philosophical writings, which consists of the identification of the exercise of “esoteric” writing and the decipherment of such writing. Esoteric writing aims at communicating to some while concealing from others and is therefore the 36 Liu, Xiaofeng, “中譯本前言: 被斬首的人民身體—人民主權政體的政治神學和史學

問題 [Preface to the Chinese Translation: The Beheaded Body of the People—The Theopolitical and Historiographical Questions of Regimes of Popular Sovereignty],” in 國王的 兩個身體：中世紀政治神學研究 [The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology], ed. Ernst Kantorowicz, trans. Xu Zhengyu (Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 2018), 19. 37 Craig Ewasiuk, “The Interpretative Methodology of Leo Strauss,” in Interpretation in Political Theory, eds. Sean Noah Walsh and Clement Fatovi (New York: Routledge, 2017), 26–27, 29; see also Strauss, Leo (1954), ‘On a Forgotten Kind of Writing,’ Chicago Review, Winter-­ Spring 1954, 8(1): 64–75. 140

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art of “writing between the lines,” the decipherment of which entails a “reading between the lines.”38 In the lines, there are “blunders that a schoolchild would be ashamed to make,” contradictions, frequent and infrequent statements, inter alia, that are indicative of the writer’s intention. Furthermore, it can be assumed that an author aware of esoteric writing practices it, for such an author would have been introduced to the quality of prudence that “true philosophers” value the most.39 The last principle legitimizes the application of the Straussian interpretative method to the writings (or utterances) of Liu Xiaofeng, because Liu is surely aware of and clearly practices Straussian esoteric writing. In the expansion of his publication project, he explained the purpose of a new book series (on world history and classical traditions) as being “to face ourselves, in the new age when the Chinese civilization (華夏文明) is once again on the rise, through the writing of mise en abyme” which he translated with novelty as “buried in ink (秘藏那筆墨)”—effectively he writes in the line that he writes between the lines.40 It would be questionable to apply the Straussian interpretative method to other contributors to Sino-Theology, if they have not repeatedly demonstrated the same familiarity of “the writing of mise en abyme (à la Liu)” as Liu has, but it would be problematic not to apply the Straussian method to interpret Liu’s text.41 A final point regarding the application of the Straussian interpretative method: its limitations. As the interpretation is intended for understanding how civilizational politics operates in Sino-Theology through its naming and conception, and the texts to be interpreted are confined to Liu’s texts, the interpretation cannot make claims regarding other Sino-Theologians’ work and centers on the passages most relevant to this kind of civilizational politics, namely the 38 Leo Strauss, “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing,” Chicago Review 8, no. 1 (Winter-Spring

1954): 66–67.

39 Ewasiuk, “The Interpretative Methodology of Leo Strauss,” 30; Liu, Xiaofeng, “尼采的微

言大義 [Nietzsche’s Exoteric Teaching],” in 重啟古典詩學 [Revisiting Classical Poetics] ed. Liu, Xiaofeng (Beijing: Huaxia, 2013), 249–50. 40 Liu Xiaofeng, “‘世界史與古典傳統’ 出版說明 [Publication Note for the “World History and Classical Traditions” Series],” in 西方古代的天下觀 [Oekumene in Western Ancient Perspective], ed. Liu Xiaofeng, trans. Yan Zhicheng et al. (Beijing: Huaxia, 2018), 2. 41 For the implication of Liu’s “Straussian turn” for Sino-Theology, see Jason Lam, Being, History, Sacred: A Reflection on the Contemporary Sino Theologico-Political Discourse (Hong Kong: Logos and Pneuma, 2016), 16–17. 141

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marginalization of localities such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. Since it is this marginalization that the interpretation will seek to illuminate, the examination of the texts will mainly look for any omissions and erasures of these localities. With these methodological issues clarified, the following section will examine Liu’s Sino-Christian Theology and the Philosophy of History (漢語神學與歷史 哲學, hereafter Sino-Christian Theology), and his discussion with Taiwanese theologians in “Brainstorming Sino-Theological Minds” (漢語神學心靈的 激盪, hereafter “Brainstorming”), through a Straussian interpretative method, focusing on Liu’s mise en abyme.

Interpreting the Political in the Conception of Sino-Theology: Two Cases The two texts to be interpreted demonstrate two different kinds of operation of the same civilizational politics that consolidates Chinese civilizational identity by marginalizing localities beyond the PRC. In Liu’s Sino-Christian Theology, the marginalization is committed first by such means as deleting the political difference between the PRC and other localities in later editions, and, second, by omitting these localities in crucial paragraphs to avoid the political question. In “Brainstorming,” a transcript of the roundtable discussion between Liu and a group of Taiwanese theologians, the operation of civilizational politics consists in first labeling the question of contextualization as political and then dismissing it as denominational or ecclesial, and therefore differentiated from Sino-­Theology. In both texts, the weight of the context is downplayed, resulting in the political implications being diluted, since these can only be addressed through contextualization.

Civilizational Politics in the Editorial History of Sino-Christian Theology Liu’s Sino-Christian Theology is an extended version of his 1995 article, “Sino-Christian Theology in Modern Context,”42 which has been credited as the “treatise” or “manifesto” of Sino-Theology.43 The extension is incisively analyzed by Jason Lam as a shift from the question of Sino-Theology in the “context of modernity” to the relations between Sino-Theology and “philosophy of history,” indicating a turn from “universal modernity” to “questioning universal 42 See Liu, “Sino-Christian Theology in Modern Context.” 43 See Qu, “After Nietzsche,” 156. 142

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modernity.”44 Despite the turn, equally important to note is that both the 1995 article and Sino-Christian Theology conceptualize Sino-Theology in both the broad and the narrow senses.45 They both univocally argue for detaching Sino-Theology from the nationalist narrative. They can be considered as texts that represent the initial conception of Sino-Theology. (In fact, the first essay collection published by ISCS on Sino-Theology had planned to include Liu’s 1995 article, which was not done only because Liu extended it into the booklength Sino-Christian Theology.46) The interpretation here focuses on Sino-­ Christian Theology, because it has been published repeatedly and thus provides an editorial history where revisions can be interpreted through the Straussian method. The editorial history of Sino-Christian Theology is as follows: it was published first in 2000 in Hong Kong; then in 2003 in the PRC; 2015 in Leiden, Netherlands (in English); and 2017 in the PRC (hereafter the HK2000, CN2003, ND2015, and CN2017 editions). The examination focuses on one particular paragraph in the “Preface” of the text, tracing its revision chronologically. The paragraph has been chosen because it explains how Sino-Theology was defined as different from the “theology of Chinese” (華人神學) and “Chinese theology” (中國神學), hence standing for the conception of Sino-Theology. The first revision of the paragraph occurred between the HK2000 and CN2003 editions, in the following sentence: “the expression ‘Sino-Theology’ was originally meant only to provide a kind of terminological basket in order to respond to the geopolitical context of contemporary Chinese-speaking culture and scholarship.”47 In the CN2003 edition, the “geopolitical context” was modified to the “geographical cultural context,” which is kept in the ND2015 edition.48 In other words, after the HK2000 edition, the purpose for proposing Sino-Theology as a linguistically based theology was depoliticized, and depoliticization is very political. As Straussian political philosophy suggests, this could 44 Lam, “How Should the Sino-Christian Theology Movement Carry On?,” 310–11. 45 Liu, “Sino-Christian Theology in Modern Context,” 33–35. 46 Daniel H. N. Yeung, “序 [Preface],” in 漢語神學芻議 [Preliminary Studies on Chinese Theol-

ogy], ed. Yeung (Hong Kong: ISCS, 2000), ix–x; the “Chinese Theology” in the English title is actually “Sino-Theology” in the Chinese title. 47 Liu, Xiaofeng, 漢語神學與歷史哲學 [Sino-Theology and the Philosophy of History] (Hong Kong: ISCS, 2000), 3. The translation is based on the ND2015 edition, with my revisions based on HK2000. 48 Liu Xiaofeng, Sino-Theology and the Philosophy of History: A Collection of Essays by Liu Xiaofeng (Leiden: Brill, 2015), vii. 143

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very well be the act of a philosopher who exercises prudence in order to avoid persecution from the public who are offended by the message, which, in this case, is the “geopolitical context.” To apprehend this “geopolitical context,” one has to examine the next revision, between CN2003 and CN2017. In this second revision, the entire paragraph regarding the “geopolitical” or “geographical cultural” context was edited out. The erased section is as follows: [The expression “Sino-Theology” originally was meant only to provide a kind of terminological basket in order to respond to the geopolitical context of contemporary Chinese-speaking culture and scholarship.] The academic circles in Hong Kong and Taiwan commonly use the term “theology of the Chinese” (華人神學), but this expression is not precise and clear enough to serve as an academic term, and in the present geographical cultural language context, the name “Chinese theology” (中國神學) is not exact enough either. The Chinese-speaking scholars in Malaysia and Singapore use the Chinese language to express their theology, but this cannot be called “Chinese theology.” If the philosophy of German-speaking Austrians and Swiss is not called “Philosophy in the German language,” but “German Philosophy,” and if the intellectual culture of North America is not called “English-speaking culture” but “English (British) culture,” this will inevitably lead to political conflicts.49 Evidently, it is the “political conflicts” that the erasure of the paragraph was attempting to avoid, notwithstanding the fact that the paragraph also justifies the proposition of Sino-Theology as a way of avoiding such conflicts. There is no reason to think that, between 2003 and 2017, the cause of the political conflict specified in this paragraph, that is calling theology expressed by Chinese-speaking scholars in Singapore or Malaysia “Chinese theology,” ceased to be valid. Therefore, the political reason for the deletion lies in the other two localities: Hong Kong and Taiwan. Indeed, in the paragraph, Liu first mentions Hong Kong and Taiwan as localities where the “theology of the Chinese” is adopted; second, he 49 Liu Xiaofeng, “漢語神學與歷史哲學 [Sino-Christian Theology and the Philosophy of

History],” in The Narrative of the Descending Holy Spirit, ed. Liu Xiaofeng (Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing, 2003), 3; Liu Xiaofeng, “漢語神學與歷史哲學 [Sino-Christian Theology and the Philosophy of History],” in Liu Xiaofeng, 聖靈降臨的敘事 [The Narrative of the Descending Holy Spirit] (Beijing: Huaxia, 2017), 2. The translation here is taken from the ND2015 edition. 144

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criticizes the term as lacking precision, and then he moves on to apply the criticism to “Chinese theology,” before explaining the possible political question of “Chinese theology.” In this sequence, he did not say that calling the theology expressed in Hong Kong and Taiwan “Chinese theology” would be imprecise. The erasure of this paragraph serves to prevent such questions from being asked. With the deletion of the above passage, Liu’s explanation for the expression of Sino-Theology was then based on the words of Emperor Kangxi, which he cited: “those Westerners and other commoners [. . .] of their kind, how could one say that they grasp China’s great wisdom [. . .]? Besides, none of the Westerners really has a good command of the Chinese language, and for this reason their theories and statements are often ridiculous.”50 Liu’s interpretation effectively teases out the question of language in theological expression, but he also juxtaposes China with the West, which is not a nation but a civilization. Therefore, the discussion of Sino-Western relations is not national but civilizational. This does not affect Liu’s call for transcending the nationalist approach to theological expression, but it does marginalize Hong Kong and Taiwan by quietly avoiding the political question between the PRC and the two localities, framing all three through the Chinese language as one civilization. Therefore, in the conception of Sino-Theology, according to the evolution of Liu’s Sino-Christian Theology, the emphasis on civilizational identity gradually outweighed the political question, which is embedded in the context of the relations between the PRC and the other two localities. The examination of the next text will shed light on the avoidance of context.

The Political in the Avoided Context In 1997, the year when the PRC “resume[d] the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong,”51 a roundtable discussion between Liu Xiaofeng and a group of Taiwanese theologians was published in the official magazine of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan (PCT), New Messenger Magazine (新使者雜誌), and the first volume of the book series of ISCS, Cultural Christian: Phenomenon and

50 Liu, “Sino-Christian Theology (HK2000),” 3–4; Liu, “Sino-Christian Theology (CN2003),”

4; Liu, Sino-Christian Theology (ND2015), vii–viii; Liu, “Sino-Christian Theology (CN2017),” 2. 51 See “No. 23391. China and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong (with annexes). Signed in Beijing on 19 December 1984,” Treaty Series, Vol. 1399 (New York: United-Nations, 1994), 61. 145

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Argument (文化基督徒—現象與論爭), with “Brainstorming” the transcript of their discussion.52 The interpretation of Liu’s contribution on this occasion necessitates an overview of the discussion. At the roundtable, Liu spoke three times, and the last two were in response to questions posed by Taiwanese theologians. Liu’s first response focused on the question of “context,” which seemed to be of greatest concern to several Taiwanese theologians, and his second response centered on the distinction between theory and practice, which is the main approach he took in his first response. The interpretation here will focus on his first response. Liu recognized the impression he got from the first round of questions, that is, that Taiwanese theologians seemed to be “deeply concerned with the question of context and reality,” which made him look, in contrast, “out of touch with reality.”53 His response took three steps: first, he established the distinction between theoretical and contextual approaches to theology; second, he assigned different functions to the congregation, clergy, and theologians, and located the work of ISCS in the functions of the theologians, which is theoretical; and third, he relocated the questions posed as practical theology or theoretical theology, arguing that he characterized the questions as being about practical theology and therefore that they should be examined and reformulated by theoretical theology, while he characterized the questions about theological theories, such as Asian Theology, on the grounds of the theoretical assumption of the presumed context, namely Asia.54 In this way, Liu defended the work of ISCS as one that takes an academic approach, and therefore distinguished it from the more context- or practice-oriented approaches in which the Taiwanese theologians seemed to take the most interest. The political implication of Liu’s first response lies in the third step: the question he characterized as being about practical theology was one about identity, and he rephrased the question as “whether supporting Taiwanese independence with theology is possible?”55 The first “blunder” here is that the original question, posed by Taiwanese theologian Yang-en Cheng, was not about Taiwanese 52 Lin Shufen, “漢語神學心靈的激盪 [Brainstorming Sino-Theological Minds],” in 文化

基督徒—現象與論爭 [Cultural Christian: Phenomenon and Argument], ed. ISCS (Hong Kong: ISCS, 1997a), 76–92; Lin Shufen, ‘Brainstorming Sino-Theological Minds,’ in 新使 者雜誌 [New Messenger Magazine], no. 50 (1997b): 61–71. 53 Lin, “Brainstorming,” 81. 54 Lin, “Brainstorming,” 82–84. 55 Lin, “Brainstorming,” 84. 146

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independence but about the identification between Christian and Taiwanese identities.56 Assuming that Liu’s was not an ad hominem response, then, following the Straussian interpretative method, Liu’s mention of Taiwanese independence could be considered intentional. The question then is what Liu’s intention was. As he reformulated Cheng’s question and classified it into the category of practical theology while arguing that questions of practical theology should be examined by theoretical theology, he did not answer his “Taiwanese independence question” directly, but attributed the authority to address such a question to Sino-­Theology, which he characterized as academic theology. In this way, he theoretically included the question of Taiwanese independence in the scope of Sino-Theology. However, since he also separated theoretical from contextual approaches, his proposition of Sino-Theology’s examination of the theological support for Taiwanese independence was less contextual than theoretical. The question then is this: what does the theoretical approach consist of, if not a civilizational tradition carried by historical writings in Chinese? And if so, how much would the theoretical components of Sino-Theology allow for contextual consideration that is not shared between Taiwan and China? These remain open questions that only the future development of Sino-Theology can answer. For now, we can only underscore the tendency towards the theoretical justification of a civilizational framing of Sino-Theology. Through this framing, Sino-Theology facilitates the operation of civilizational politics that overlooks the political differences between the PRC and the other two localities, making the intervention of Sino-Theology in the recent disputes between them difficult.

Conclusion This essay has invoked the theoretical framework of civilizational politics and the method of Straussian interpretation to investigate the concept of Sino-­ Theology, and argued that, since its conception, Sino-Theology has prioritized the context of Chinese civilization over that of other localities such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. The problem in this is that, when theological reflection in the latter is guided by a politics acutely opposed to that of the former, the inclusiveness of Sino-Theology is sabotaged. Since the purpose of conceptualizing Sino-­ Theology in the first place was to transcend nationalist discourse, by uniting different localities through their shared linguistic tradition, Sino-Theology 56 Lin, “Brainstorming,” 77–78. 147

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either has to be content with being an apolitical theology or has to further develop the political in the linguistic tradition. That would require a thorough re-evaluation of the history in which the civilizational tradition of the Chinese language was formed, as well as the political tradition accompanying such a formulation, including the value of territorial Great Unity,57 the cycle of imperial unification and division, and the justification for a war of unification.58 These constitutive elements of the civilizational tradition of China actually contributed to the intensification of crises of the time, such as the tension between the PRC and Hong Kong, or the threat of potential “military action” against Taiwan.59 When the 2019 Hong Kong protesters’ demands were to defend the respect for the “one country, two systems” formula, when this formula has been characterized by Chinese scholars as traditional wisdom of “one country, many systems,”60 when the suppression of the protest was internationally regarded as the end of that formula, and finally, when non-Christian Hong Kong citizens “sing hallelujah to the lord” with Hong Kong Christians facing this end, the more profound and thought-provoking intervention from Sino-Theology is exactly how the academic project can reach for its initial purpose of transcending the nationalist discourse. Given the interpretation provided here, this would require a contextualized dissection of “Sino,” so the diverse trajectories through which different communities of the Sinophone world (as production sites of Sino-Theology in both the broad and the narrow senses) can be incorporated into the project of Sino-Theology. In this way, a Sino-Christian Political Theology can begin to be envisioned.

57 See Yuri Pines, “‘The One That Pervades the All’ in Ancient Chinese Political thought: The

Origins of ‘The Great Unity’ Paradigm,” T’oung Pao 86, no. 4/5 (2000): 280–324.

58 Nicolas Tackett, The Origin of the Chinese Nation: Song China and the Forging of an East Asian

World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 195.

59 See Jiang Shigong, China’s Hong Kong: A Political and Cultural Perspective (Singapore:

Springer, 2017); Zhao Tingyang 天下體系: 世界制度哲學導論 [The Tianxia System: An Introduction to the Philosophy of World Institutions] (Beijing: Renmin University of China Press, 2011). 60 Zhao Tingyang, Redefining a Philosophy for World Governance. Tao Liqing trans. (Singapore: Springer, 2019), 36–42. 148

Chapter 8

DECENTERING CHINA IN CHINESE CHRISTIANITY Reconsidering Sino-Christian Theology and the Prospect of Sinophone Theology Easten Law, OMSC at Princeton Seminary Introduction: What does Sino-Christian Theology have to do with me? This essay begins on a reflexive note regarding a most common yet intimate item: one’s personal name and its genealogy. My given name is Easten Law. Contrary to common Sinophone sensibilities, I am not of Cantonese-speaking ancestry (some Cantonese speakers transliterate the surname 羅 as Law). My family line can be traced to the Yangzi River delta region and, linguistically, my immediate family only speaks the national or common language, Mandarin. My surname, Law, is my father’s preferred transliteration of 樓 (Lou). He chose it when immigrating to the United States from Taiwan because he wanted something that sounded Anglophone, something that would not be received as foreign. Mindful of racism, he was already thinking about cultural and linguistic assimilation before he even stepped foot in North America. When I was born, the personal name my father gave me signaled a different disposition than the surname he had chosen when he first arrived in the United States. To the disdain of many an autocorrect system, as the reader may notice, my name is one letter shy of eastern, the common adjective reserved for ascribing the cardinal direction to whatever it modifies. My father did this with great intention. He wanted me to remember that regardless of how assimilated I might be to the United States, I should always remember my roots are in the East. Dropping the r, however, sets a rather ambiguous tone. I am called to remember that I

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am from the East but I am also lacking something that might make that memory complete. Embedded in the story of my name is a tension regarding cultural belonging across oceans and cultures. I am a second-generation Chinese American Christian, a transnational and multicultural product of many places and times seeking grounding in a global faith that confesses diversity in its universality. My journey includes work and study in the land of my ancestors with churches and scholars of faith. Fostering this fellowship in both ministry and learning has formed a genuine concern for Chinese Christianity and its theological developments. Along the way, I have acquired a reasonable level of competency in Mandarin Chinese that has provided me means to read some Chinese language scholarship, including works of Sino-Christian Theology. While I am much more comfortable reading English translations of these works than I am reading the original Chinese, the ability to read both side by side has elicited telling moments of resonance and dissonance. The complexities of belonging, roots, identity, culture, and language embedded in my name similarly complicate my relationship to Sino-Christian Theology. This academic discourse is largely occupied with the challenges of Chinese culture and modernity in the People’s Republic of China, and yet it simultaneously claims relevance to the larger imagined community of Chinese all over the world. What does Sino-Christian Theology have to do with a mixed-up Chinese American like me? To what degree does Sino-Christian Theology, as it has been constructed and pursued during the past thirty to forty years, take into account the diversity of times and places that accompany Chinese-speaking (Sinophone) peoples’ experiences around the world? We persons of Chinese ancestry, commonly referred to as the Chinese diaspora but referenced in this essay as Sinitic communities, are planted around the globe, spanning multiple generations and geographies. Like me, many are products of cultural hybridity and linguistic ambivalence with personally imagined or socially imposed ties to the so-called motherland. If Chinese language is the eternal spring of cultural values, then what can the broken trickle of hybridized Chinese spoken in diaspora households around the world offer? As a committed Christian of Chinese ancestry, my faith compels me to rework the relationship between a universal God and the messy particularities of fluid belonging among many cultures and languages. There are liminal spaces on both sides of the Pacific that are pregnant with possibilities for new theological frameworks that honor the diversity 150

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of Sinitic communities, especially during a time of heightened migration and nationalistic tensions. This essay argues that Sino-Christian Theology’s current orientation limits the theological imagination of Chinese Christianity and proposes adopting methodological concepts and approaches from Sinophone Studies as a potential remedy for reconfiguring Sino-Christian Theology’s orientation into something that recognizes multiple centers, modernities, and hybridizations.1 Sino-Christian Theology and Sinophone Studies are two academic perspectives that converge in their centering of the Chinese language as a basis from which theology and cultural studies respectively ought to be pursued, and yet they diverge in their framing of “Chineseness” itself. Whereas the majority of Sino-Christian Theology has been written from the de facto standpoint of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), wrestling with questions of culture and modernity in the wake of the Opening and Reform Era, Sinophone Studies has prioritized Sinitic communities outside the cultural orbit of China, many with limited or no relationship to recent socio-political developments in the PRC. Because Sino-Christian Theology’s framework implicitly centers Chinese culture, history, and identity as experienced in the PRC, it engages diaspora Chinese Christian communities as peripheral extensions of this center. In contrast, Sinophone Studies treats Sinitic communities on their own terms, providing a broader and more dynamic canvas for theological reflection from multiple standpoints. This argument will be outlined in four movements. First, I examine the promise of Sino-Christian Theology’s principles and its endeavor to articulate theologies grounded in Chinese language and culture. Second, I identify a problem in Sino-Christian Theology’s practice, a sociopolitical captivity to questions grounded in the context of the PRC. Third, I explore the potential that some of Sinophone Studies’ key principles contain as means for realizing Sino-Christian Theology’s promise and remedying its problem. In conclusion, I propose a tentative definition for “Sinophone Theology” as a concept and 1 For a primer on the challenges of relating Sino-Christian Theology to a globalized context, see

Chlöe Starr, “Sino-Christian Theology: Treading a Fine Line between Self-­Determination and Globalization,” in Globalization and the Making of Religious Modernity in China, eds. Thomas Jansen, Thoralf Klein, and Christian Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2014): 379–410. This essay is indebted to Starr’s framing of these challenges as a basis for the argument presented here.

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approach to theological reflection and construction characterized by three traits: it should be 1) geographically multipolar, 2) culturally multi-valent, and 3) sociopolitically invested, so that it honors the diversity of Sinitic linguistic heritages but is free of methodological nationalism and cultural essentialization.

The Promise of Sino-Christian Theology in Principle The concept of Sino-Christian Theology emerged as an academic expression of a larger interest in Christianity and culture during the height of the Reform and Opening Up Era in the 1980s and 90s.2 Of its many distinct traits, Sino-­ Christian Theology has been credited with building a platform for the Chinese academy to engage questions regarding Christianity’s role in Chinese culture and society with an academic and philosophical rigor that many intellectuals felt were absent in ecclesial discourses.3 For the purpose of this essay’s argument, I highlight three themes common to much of Sino-Christian Theology that hold promise for the field’s relevance to Sinitic communities around the world. First, Sino-Christian Theology takes seriously the intellectual and cultural inheritances of Euro-Western theological discourse and thought. Second, the field’s emphasis on language grounds its intellectual discourses in culturally resonant expressions. Third, it recognizes and values the diversity of Chinese-speaking peoples in multiple contexts and histories. Sino-Christian theologians have engaged European-heritage theology with great care and respect while simultaneously recognizing its linguistic limitations. In doing so, they seek universal truths in the particulars of European language theologies that are mindful of new possibilities for these truths when expressed in Chinese language(s). Liu Xiaofeng has called this an “interactive relationship between the linguistic experiences of historical Christian thoughts,” that “rules out ethno-centric theological positions (rejection of all Western theological experiences) as well as non-ethnic theological experiences (theology does 2 A historical summary of the movement and its various expressions and contestations can be

found in Pan-Chiu Lai and Jason Lam, Sino-Christian Theology: A Theological Qua Cultural Movement in Contemporary China (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010) and Naomi Thurston, Studying Christianity in China: Constructions of an Emerging Discourse (Leiden: Brill, 2018). 3 For a thorough definition of Sino-Christian Theology situated in the larger context of the Chinese academy and church, see Zhuo Xinping, “The Status of Christian Theology in China Today,” in Christianity, eds. Zhuo Xinping and Caroline Mason (Leiden: Brill, 2013): 7–30. 152

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not admit the experiences of Western theological traditions).”4 This position makes Sino-Christian theology an endeavor that, in principle, is not focused on Chinese language theology as an end in itself. Instead, it frames the development of Chinese language theology’s contribution to the larger theological quest of faith seeking understanding globally. This bigger view of the project is important for its relevance beyond the boundaries of “China,” however it is imagined. Second, Sino-Christian theologians advocate for a deep inculturation and contextualization of Christianity to Chinese cultural questions and concerns via expression in the Chinese language.5 This emphasis on language parallels a larger turn to cultural-linguistic and interpretive methods in theological and religious studies during the late twentieth century.6 He Guanghu defines Sino-Christian Theology as “Theology of Native Language,” that “refers to a theologian using his native language or mother tongue or major language as a medium, and the life experiences and cultural heritage inherent in this language as his materials to serve this particular linguistic group.”7 In this definition, He appeals to the relationship between special and general revelation to establish language as a locus theologicus for discerning the particularities of universal truth. He’s methodological focus on language emphasizes “instrumentality,” “openness,” and “context” in a dynamic downward-upward relationship that grounds and roots theologizing in culture and experience while also freeing it to engage the world’s diversity in myriad ways. Anyone who was raised with or has gained fluency in the language, in theory, has access to the cultural framework that it carries. Third, building on the above two traits, Sino-Christian theologians recognize the diversity of Sinitic communities and cultures as an imperative part of Sino-Christian Theology’s global relevance. In doing so, they also implicitly acknowledge a diversity of theological possibilities. Regarding the principle of openness that He asserts is fundamental to Sino-Christian Theology, he says, 4 Liu Xiaofeng, “Sino-Christian Theology in the Modern Context,” in Sino-Christian Studies

in China, eds. Yang Huilin and Daniel Yeung (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006), 75. 5 See Yang Huilin, “Inculturation or Contextualization: Interpretation of Christianity in the Context of Chinese Culture” in China, Christianity, and the Question of Culture, (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014), 25–46. 6 See Richard Rorty, The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). 7 He Guanghu, “The Basis and Significance of Sino-Christian Theology,” in Sino-Christian Studies in China, eds. Yang and Yeung, 123. 153

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… we should “accommodate” and allow others to “accommodate” the needs of Chinese speakers, whatever geographical regions they belong to … whatever classes they belong to … and whatever institutions they belong to … “I have become all things to all men.” Such a multiplicity and openness of theological method is a matter of course whether it is seen from the perspective of the Scriptures or the actual state of affairs of all ethnic groups and Chinese speakers.8 This recognition of multiplicity in Sinitic communities scattered around the world prompts He to recognize Paul’s dictum that the capacity of Christian faith to become “all things to all people” is as applicable to Chinese language diversity as it is to other forms of identity and belonging. The three principles briefly reviewed here reveal the potential of this movement beyond China’s political and sociocultural boundaries. It is clear that many of the field’s most prominent voices not only recognize the global diversity of Chinese-speaking communities but view this diversity as a strength for theological inquiry. He Guanghu boasts of this grand vision when stating, The “life experiences” and “cultural resources” serving as the materials of Sino-Christian Theology should not be restricted by time and space, i.e. they should not be restricted to the ancient at the expense of the modern, and Mainland China at the expense of foreign countries. Moreover, since the most genuine and relevant life experiences are actually those experienced by the modern people, and the most important cultural resources are actually the contemporary lifestyles, the materials of Sino-Christian theology should all the more refrain from being restricted to past scriptures at the expense of our current living conditions. Neither should it be restricted to the scenes of the ancient sages at the expense of the current situations of society. Apart from the fact that Sino-Christian theology serves primarily the Chinese speakers in the present and near future, this is also due to the fact the life experiences of Chinese speakers have seen far too many changes down through the ages and there have been almost 8 He Guanghu, “The Methodology of and Approaches to Sino-Christian Theology,” in Yang

and Yeung, eds., Sino-Christian Studies in China, 109.

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qualitative changes in the cultural resources expressed in the Chinese language.9 Nevertheless, the practice of Sino-Christian theology has been constrained by contextual obstacles that must be remedied if this visionary potential is to be realized.

The Problem with Sino-Christian Theology in Practice While Sino-Christian Theology’s promotion of Chinese language provides space for diversity in principle, its practice up to this point has exhibited three problems that reflect implicit biases and challenges in the context of the PRC. As currently practiced, Sino-Christian Theology’s capacity to engage the social and cultural questions of an increasingly diverse array of lived experiences among Sinitic communities is severely restricted by 1) the particular history of the PRC as the basis for the movement, 2) its contemporary location within an academy that is beholden to the priorities of an ideologically centralized state apparatus, and 3) its reified conception of Chinese culture and its central-peripheral framework for relating Sinitic communities to an essentialized Chinese civilization. Despite its rhetoric of theological inclusivity, most Sino-Christian theological scholarship can be recognized as responses to questions that have (re)emerged during the Reform and Opening Up Era to make sense of the PRC’s rapid sociocultural transformations. Sino-Christian Theology’s critical evaluations of Chinese culture and society vis-à-vis European Christian theological resources can be understood as sequels to the first wave of diverse inquires that exploded during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this previous era, Chinese scholars of many philosophical backgrounds sifted multiple religio-­ cultural traditions and modern ideologies to answer the question, “How can China be saved?” In the current era, talk of saving China as a political entity is arguably no longer relevant given the Chinese Communist Party’s dominant narratives of liberation and unification, yet the quest for salvific grounding remains pertinent at the psychological, social, and cultural level.10 9 He, “The Methodology of and Approaches to Sino-Christian Theology,” 109–110. 10 For greater context on the role Chinese theology has played in modern Chinese society, see

Alexander Chow, Chinese Public Theology: Generational Shifts and Confucian Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

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Whereas the theological endeavors of early Protestants took place during a fragmented time of displacement wrought by colonialism and international or civil wars, the contours of contemporary Sino-Christian Theology emerge out of displacements rendered by the policy decisions of the PRC’s politically centralized state. For this generation, questions of culture and belonging are lodged between a childhood formed by the Cultural Revolution and adulthood immersed in an expanding globalized economy.11 A key change in Sino-­ Christian Theology has, therefore, been its shift from a nationalistic register to a humanistic register that endeavors to set the cultural complexities of the PRC’s past fifty years on stable ground, utilizing Christian theology’s ethical and philosophical categories. The answers that Sino-Christian theology proposes in its current form are designed to respond to the very specific context of the PRC’s disorienting and rapid development. The Chinese state’s power and expanding capacity to control discourse is a second dimension restricting Sino-Christian Theology’s potential because of its ability to direct and shape the priorities of the discourse. This dynamic likely plays a role in the heavily humanistic and conceptually abstract nature of Sino-Christian Theology to date. While new voices flourished in the 1990s and 2000s, Xi Jinping’s rise to power has reignited the party’s oversight of public discourse, which has and will continue to influence Sino-Christian Theology’s future expressions.12 Moreover, the current regime is more likely to endorse work that emphasizes Chinese superiority, and a theological project that is grounded in Chinese language can easily be categorized as such.13 Richard X. Y. Zhang 11 See Fredrik Fällman, Salvation and Modernity: Intellectuals and Faith in Contemporary China,

(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2008), for an analysis of Sino-Christian Theology’s emergence as a response to the PRC’s post-Mao struggles. 12 This is not to say that Sino-Christian Theology is apolitical. On the contrary, Sino-Christian Theological scholarship often draws on political and ethical philosophy to address the PRC’s social concerns in less confrontational ways. See Yang Huilin, “The Contemporary Significance of Theological Ethics: The True Problems Elicited by Auschwitz and the Cultural Revolution,” in China, Christianity, and the Question of Culture, 61–78. For an analysis of Sino-Christian Theology’s public sociopolitical influence, see Jason Lam, “Is Sino-Christian Theology Truly ‘Theology’? Problematizing Sino-Christian Theology as a Public Theology” in The International Journal of Public Theology, 14 (2020): 97–119. 13 This has been the case with the “Sinicization of Religion” being enacted within the institutions of the government-registered church (Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council). See Xiaowei Zhou, “Localisation of Christianity in China: difficulties in and possibilities of achieving harmonious cultural integration,” Journal of Beliefs & Values: Studies in Religion & Education 43, no. 3 (2022): 320–30. 156

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(Zhang Xianyong) recognized the problematic undertones of “Hanyu Chauvinism” in an early piece on Sino-Christian Theology and Nationalism: For the Chinese theologians, whether you accept it or not or however you take it, nationalism has had long existence, while the Chinese theology is coming into being and calls for more care for growth. Then, why do we bother about nationalism, the time-consuming and complicated thing? The answer is we have to deal with it. As a citizen, a Christian has the duty to take the challenge together with other members of society and, for a Chinese theologian particularly, in order that the Chinese theology develops smoothly, it is necessary to leave nationalism under serious consideration.14 What is striking about much of the Sino-Christian Theological project is its attempt to avoid direct engagement with the challenges of nationalism’s role in contemporary society in favor of more abstract questions of philosophical ethics and cultural transformation. By advancing a theological discourse that engages Chinese cultural essence by contextualizing theological truths through language, Sino-Christian theologians attempt to side-step thorny political issues while still advocating for meaningful cultural change. Cultural essentialization constitutes a third obstacle to realizing Sino-­ Christian Theology’s potential. In many works of Sino-Christian Theology, Chinese culture is reified in a way that depicts all Chinese-speaking peoples as sharing a supposedly undeniable cultural essence. The result is that Sino-­ Christian theologians often implicitly frame the diversity of Sinitic communities using center-periphery language.15 Such language either plays down the authenticity and relevance of Sinitic communities at the margins of the Chinesespeaking world or engages their value primarily in terms of their relationship and contributions to the center.16 This mentality can be identified in Liu Xiaofeng’s reflection on Chinese geographical and cultural diversity: 14 Richard X. Y. Zhang, “Sino-Christian Theology and Nationalism,” in eds. Yang and Yeung,

Sino-Christian Studies in China, 186.

15 For an influential example of his, see Tu Weiming, “Cultural China: The Periphery as Center”

in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, eds. Shu-mei Shih, Chien-Hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 172–86. 16 See Madeline Hsu, “Decoupling Peripheries from the Center: The Dangers of Diaspora in Chinese Migration Studies,” in Diaspora 20, no. 2 (2011): 204–15. 157

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Presently, the Chinese-speaking world has expanded to include Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and various regions in North America. The differences in social structures and cultural contexts will bring different linguistic experiences to these different regions in Chinese academia. Therefore, the development of Sino-­Christian theology will also differ in these areas. Nevertheless, the profound advancement of Sino-Christian theology is still rooted in the life experiences of original Chinese thinking for almost two millennia. The development of Sino-Christian theology is inseparable from the thoughts and language accumulated in the individual life experiences of the Chinese language throughout its history.17 While it is clear that Liu recognizes differences, his reference to the “original Chinese thinking” of two millennia gestures toward a Chinese cultural essence undergirding the language that binds together this diversity. In fact, much of Sino-Christian Theology’s comparative project relies heavily on reified conceptions of culture and civilization on both sides of the world, whether Chinese or Western.18 How do these analyses of Chinese and Western religio-cultural orientations manifest in the worldviews of those betwixt and between these cultural standpoints? While Liu rejects ethnocentric conceptions of theology in relationship to historical and cultural particularities, the specter of ethnocentricity remains in his conception of a shared cultural unity among Sinitic communities rooted in history and language. This emphasis does not take seriously the linguistic change and hybridization so commonly found among Sinitic communities after generations embedded in other cultures and places. This conception of cultural continuity based in language may signify what is “passed on,” but it has no means for working out what is “picked up” and how language changes alongside cultures reshaped by time and movement. Sino-Christian Theology, therefore, needs more sophisticated engagement with the relationship between culture 17 Liu Xiaofeng, “Sino-Christian Theology in the Modern Context,” in Sino-Christian Studies in

China, eds. Yang and Yeung, 78–79.

18 See, for example, Liu Xiaofeng, ed. and trans. Leopold Leeb, Sino-Theology and the Philosophy

of History: A Collection of Essays by Liu Xiaofeng (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 117–32. In this essay on “The ‘Chinese-Language’ Problem of Christian Theology,” Liu’s conceptions of both European and Chinese intellectual heritage rely on essentialized notions of cultural continuity embedded in Greek/Latin and Chinese languages. 158

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and language across generations and geographies, particularly among minority ethnic communities within the PRC and second-generation Sinitic communities aboard. This brief analysis of Sino-Christian Theology’s contextually restricted practice rehearses the often-referenced adage that all theology is contextual. As a result, the issues that Sino-Christian Theology addresses are products of a particular set of experiences that are tethered to contemporary challenges facing one generation of PRC Chinese. How then can Sino-Christian Theology respond to the contentious nature of “Chinese heritage” from a plurality of standpoints? In order to move beyond a de facto focus on modern China’s contradictions and essentialized conception of Chinese culture, new frameworks are needed.

The Potential of Sinophone Studies for Theology Sinophones Studies (Huayu yuxi wenxue/yanjiu 華語語系文學/研究) arose in the 2000s as an alternative epistemological starting point for engaging Sinitic-­ language cultures and communities focused on language but which, unlike Sino-Christian Theology, argues against Chinese ethnocentricity and cultural essentialization. This approach to Sinitic language–based literature and culture emerges out of Chinese literary studies, diaspora studies, postcolonial studies, and critical cultural studies that engage Sinophone communities. While a history of Sinophone Studies’ emergence as a subfield or approach within the broader umbrella of Chinese cultural studies cannot be rehearsed here, a key dimension of the Sinophone Studies perspective is its reactionary stance to the growing dominance of Han-centric and PRC-centric narratives of Chinese cultural identity.19 This fundamental divorce of language and culture from national and ethnic identity gives Sinophone Studies a unique standpoint in the larger landscape of Chinese language scholarship, one with great potential for correcting the deficiencies of Sino-Christian Theology and realizing its promise. While both Sino-Christian Theology and Sinophone Studies focus on language as the grounds from which to study theology or culture, they do so from radically different starting points. Shih Shu-Mei defines the emerging discipline’s focus in this way: “Sinophone studies takes as its objects of study the Sinitic-language communities and cultures outside China as well as ethnic 19 See Shu-Mei Shih, Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific (Berkeley,

CA: University of California Press, 2007).

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minority communities and cultures within China where Mandarin is adopted or imposed.”20 Essential to this definition is a decoupling of Chinese or Sinitic language with the political and even cultural entity recognized as “China.” Whereas Sino-Christian Theology essentializes and binds a centralized Chinese culture to Chinese language, Sinophone Studies decenters China in favor of a multipolar Sinophone world where many cultural streams and sociopolitical conditions mix to create distinct communities with heritages that, while grounded in Sinitic languages, ought to be engaged as distinct expressions of their own. Instead of viewing Chinese language through the lens of cultural unity, Sinophone Studies investigates language as a product of hybridization and colonial legacies. This understanding of the Sinophone can be illustrated by comparing it with the contemporary use of terms like Anglophone and Francophone. Just because a community is recognized as Anglophone, for example, does not necessitate that their use of English as their lingua franca ties them to some united sense of English culture dating back centuries. Neither are Francophone persons assumed to carry some deep resonance with French heritage. Rather, each community is analyzed on its own terms as a product of multiple cultural and sociopolitical factors that make its creative use of English or French their own. This is similar to how Sinophone Studies orients its study of how language, culture, and society relate in Sinitic communities. What can such a posture do for the study of Sino-Christian Theology? In this section, I will briefly explore how Sinophone Studies can reshape our understanding and practice of Sino-Christian Theology. The fundamental shift that Sinophone Studies brings to Sino-Christian Theology is the recognition that theology expressed in Sinitic-languages can be done without any reference to being “Chinese,” whether nationalistic (Zhongguo ren 中國人), ethnic (han zu 漢族), or even cultural (hua ren 華人). This reformation of the relationship between language and cultural belongings is at once resonant and disruptive, offering three important means to correct Sino-Christian Theology’s contextual weaknesses. First, by decentering a centralized conception of Chinese civilization and heritage from Chinese language, the diverse communities of the Sinophone are 20 Shu-Mei Shih, “Introduction: What is Sinophone Studies?” in Sinophone Studies: A Critical

Reader, 23.

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freed to theologize from their own diverse contexts with or without the weight of a monolithic Chinese history and its modern struggles. Shih Shu-Mei states, Sinophone studies allows us to rethink the relationship between roots and routes by considering the conceptions of roots as place-based rather than ancestral or routes as a more mobile conception of home-ness rather than wandering and homelessness. . . . When routes can be roots, multidirectional critiques are not only possible but also imperative. Transcending national borders, Sinophone communities can maintain a critical position toward both the country of origin and the country of settlement.21 One of the great weaknesses of Sino-Christian Theology is its contextual captivity to the concerns of modern China as expressed through the recent history of the PRC. Sinophone Studies’ emphasis on Sinitic-language communities outside the geographic and ethnic boundaries of what is commonly considered China brings with it a multiplicity of cultures and histories. From this standpoint, Sinitic-language communities around the world are reframed as negotiators of multiple identities and heritages, even if a form of Chinese is the primary language through which the negotiation takes place. Whereas Sino-Christian Theology tends to view diaspora Sinitic communities through a cultural center-peripheral lens, Sinophone studies rejects the imagined center altogether. This frees the theologian based in a Sinitic community outside of China to analyze variables and contingencies that contain no explicit link to Chinese heritage and yet occupy vital parts of their community’s life world. By debunking “the Chinese diaspora” as the organizing concept for the study of various immigrant peoples who left China from centuries ago up to the present, it is possible to propose organizing concepts other than such essentialist notions as “Chineseness” and “the Chinese.” Instead, rigorously rearticulated concepts such as multiplicity, difference, creolization, hybridity, métissage/mestisaje, and others can be deployed for more complex understandings of histories, cultures, and literatures.22

21 Shih, “Against Diaspora,” 54. 22 Shih, “Against Diaspora,” 54.

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If we take Shih’s proposal seriously, Sino-Christian Theology must become more than a medium for theological reflection on the state of the PRC. Communities of Sinitic heritage anywhere in the world should not only theologize with the conditions of their ancestors’ homeland but also their migration and distinct experiences of new homelands. As a result, the theologies being cultivated by Sinophone Christians living as close to the PRC as Myanmar or as far away as North America may have very little overlap with the kinds of questions asked by Sino-Christian Theologians based in the PRC. What does Christian theology have to say to the Burmese Chinese communities’ relationships to Myanmar’s other ethnic minorities and the effects of the military dictatorship? How might Christian theological themes and doctrines speak to Chinese American Christians navigating the rise in Anti-Asian hate incidents in the United States? This posture also grants authority to ethnic minorities living within Han Chinese spheres of authority, from Uyghurs and Tibetans in the PRC to the Amis and Thao in Taiwan, the freedom to theologize their experiences as products of Sino-influenced hybridized cultures. For such communities, the Chinese language is not simply a link to Chinese heritage but one piece in a larger bricolage of multiple belongings. Ethnic minorities who have been folded into the Chinese-speaking world may not be the peoples that Sino-Christian theologians imagined as mediums for Sino-Christian Theology, but why not?23 Their fluency in a Sinitic language is as strong as any Han speaker even if their cultural world is altogether different. In fact, their status as minorities engages more than just cultural hybridity. It also engages dimensions of political domination. The condition of ethnic minorities living in Sinophone societies highlights a second important dynamic that Sinophone Studies can bring to Sino-­ Christian Theology: an explicit engagement with power and politics. Unlike most Sino-Christian Theology conducted in the context of the PRC, Sinophone Studies often contains direct sociopolitical critique that reframes the PRC as a contemporary colonial power and interrogates previous expressions of the centralized Chinese state through the lens of colonial expansion from 23 For examples of how ethnic minority Christian citizens of the PRC have negotiated faith

and identity, see Juhong Ai, “Belief, Ethnicity, and State: Christianity of Koreans in Northeastern China and Their Ethnic and National Identities” in Christianity in Chinese Public Life: Religion, Society, and the Rule of Law, eds. Joel A. Carpenter and Kevin R. den Dulk (New York: Palgrave, 2014), 29–44, and Duncan James Poupard, “Translation as Hybridity in Sinophone Bai Writing” in Asian Ethnicity 20, no. 2 (2019): 210–27. 162

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the Qing Dynasty to the present.24 This kind of engagement with the political is something that Sino-Christian Theologians working in the PRC context do not generally pursue, as explored in Liang Chia-yu’s essay in this volume. What does it mean for native-language theologies when the language being used is not native but forced? How does theological expression work when it is articulated in the language of one’s oppressor? Indeed, Sinophone Studies discourse has emerged, in large part, out of the politics of Taiwanese identity over and against the PRC’s hegemonic claim on the island.25 The result is an inherently critical and suspect posture toward the growing power of the PRC and that power’s ability to influence Sinophone communities’ self-image and determination. Regarding the use of Mandarin Chinese as the standardized form of Chinese, Rey Chow observes, The enforcement of Mandarin in China and the West is rather a sign of the systematic codification and management of ethnicity that is typical of modernity, in this case through language implementation. Once we understand this, we see that the acquisition of the Chinese language as such, whether by environment or by choice, is never merely the acquisition of an instrument of communication; it is, rather, a participation in the system of value production that arises with the post-colonized ascriptions of cultural and ethnic identities.26 Chow’s point argues that language is more than culture but also politics. This posture of resistance against coercive expressions of Chinese identity tied to language reframes and reinterprets Sinitic language as polyphonic, giving multiple forms of Chinese the same respect and potential as Mandarin. By resisting Mandarin as the common tongue and honoring the Sinophone world’s intrinsic diversity, “Putonghua 普通話” (Modern Standard Chinese, or Mandarin) loses its normative dominance. This liberates other forms of Sinophone language 24 See Nicola Di Cosmo, “Han Frontiers: Toward an Integrated View” in Journal of the Amer-

ican Oriental Society 129, no. 2 (April–June 2009): 199–214, and Christian C. Tyler, Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004). 25 See Shu-mei Shih, “Globalization and the (in)significance of Taiwan” in Postcolonial Studies 6, no. 2: 143–53, for an early example of the role Taiwan has played in the development of Sinophone Studies. 26 Rey Chow, “On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem” in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, 65. 163

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from the label of “dialect,” giving each spoken tongue credence of its own.27 In turn, this creates a polyphonic basis for theological reflection in many forms of Chinese that will each have their own distinct quality and concerns. Theology that is written or spoken in Cantonese, Shanghainese, or perhaps even hybridized versions of Uyghur-Mandarin or English-Mandarin (Chinglish), will carry within them contextualized theological truths that Mandarin Chinese would not be able to articulate or process. Third, because Sinophone Studies provides Sinitic communities the social and cultural opportunity to chart their own sense of belonging apart from the imagined community of Chinese civilization, their cultural identities need no longer be Chinese at all. This somewhat controversial claim is encapsulated in Shih’s pronouncement that “diaspora has an end date.” When the (im)migrants settle and become localized, many choose to end their state of diaspora by the second or third generation. The so-called “nostalgia” for the ancestral land is often an indication or displacement of difficulties of localization, voluntary or involuntary. Racism and other hostile conditions can force immigrants to find escape and solace in the past, while cultural or other superiority complexes can estrange immigrants from the locals. Emphasizing that diaspora has an end date is therefore to insist that cultural and political practice is always placebased. Everyone should be given a chance to become a local.28 This move to recognize the complete particularity of Sinitic communities outside China pushes directly against the assumption that language is inextricably tied to any essential civilization or nation. Dependent on the local context, particularly when we take into account multiple generations, Sinitic communities may no longer consider themselves part of any Chinese diaspora. As a result, their Sino-Christian theologizing will not be about or for China but for their newly recognized homeland. Moreover, Shih’s argument recasts every 27 See Gina Anne Tam, Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2020).

28 Shih, “Against Diaspora,” 53. This is one of Shih’s most controversial assertions and remains

hotly debated. Responses have been varied including Lingchei Letty Chen, “When Does ‘Diaspora’ End and ‘Sinophone’ Begin?” in Postcolonial Studies 18, no. 1 (2015): 52–66, and Flair Donglai Shi, “Reconsidering Sinophone Studies: The Chinese Cold War, Multiple Sinocentrisms, and Theoretical Generalisation,” in International Journal of Taiwan Studies 4, (2021): 311–44. 164

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Sinitic community’s self-ascribed relationship to China as a product that is constructed out of the conditions and experiences of their local place. Even when a third-generation person of Chinese ancestry identifies with “China” or Chinese cultural heritage, what that person imagines is likely altogether different than what Chinese in the PRC experience or imagine. In this sense, working toward a Sino-Christian Theology without China is not to banish the concept of China altogether but rather to recognize that there will be many Chinas at work, each rooted and raised in other soils far from the so-called heartland. Shih summarizes the implications of this shift by arguing, “In short, the Sinophone decouples Chineseness and China, bringing to the fore a critical perspectivalism and an interpretive positionality that are essential in our reconceptualization of ‘diaspora’ (Chinese or otherwise) in the twenty-first century. Rather than arguing that the precarious center cannot hold and will one day become a new margin, the Sinophone makes clear that the center is always already the margin.”29 When applied to theological reflection and construction, this assumption radically transforms how Sino-Christian Theology might be conceived as a field and discourse. Untethered to the PRC in every way, it suggests that any theology done in a Sinitic language in any context or condition will have unique insights into the universal truths that ground our experiences of God. These theological insights will be Sino-Christian by definition because of the language employed, but they may have little to do with dominant conceptions of Chinese, identity, heritage, and/or culture promoted by the perceived centers of Chinese civilization. An Australian or British Chinese person’s Sino-­ Christian theology may prioritize the conditions of Chinese living in Australia or the United Kingdom over that of the PRC. The so-called margins can and ought to be recognized as centers of Sino-Christian theological production in their own right. Altogether, the field of Sinophone Studies conceptualizes the Sinophone as an open community of linguistic and cultural change. Shih states, “The Sinophone community is therefore a community of change, occupying a transitional moment (however long in duration) that inevitably integrates further with local communities and becomes constitutive of the local. Furthermore, it is an open community because it is defined not by race or nationality of the speaker but by the languages one speaks.”30 First, instead of essentializing Sinitic communities 29 Shu-mei Shih, “Issues and Controversies” in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, 33. 30 Shih, “Against Diaspora,” 53. 165

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around the world as indelibly linked to a single Chinese heritage or nation, this broad definition recognizes the transient flow of language and culture and honors the multiple identities and belongings these communities hold as fundamental dimensions of theological inquiry. Second, by integrating dynamics of power and politics into language and culture, Sinophone Studies injects a grounded postcolonial impulse into Sino-Christian Theology’s more abstract orientation. Third, by emphasizing the importance of local place and experience, Sinophone Studies can break open a kaleidoscope of Sino-Christian theologies that may have nothing to do with China at all. Instead, they will offer hybridized insights into the changing conditions of other parts of the world that Sinitic communities make their home. For all of these reasons, I believe Sinophone Studies ought to be integrated into Sino-Christian Theology to foster a more inclusive and dynamic theological discourse that is truly global in scope, the very hope of many Sino-Christian Theologians.

Conclusion: A Proposal for Sinophone Theology In the preceding sections, I have identified great promise as well as significant problems with Sino-Christian Theology’s current trajectory. In particular, Sino-Christian Theology’s conceptual captivity to the PRC context and its essentialized conceptions of Chinese culture severely limit theological reflection and construction for those outside this sphere. My attempt to remedy some of these problems draws from Sinophone Studies’ emphases on honoring the independence and hybridity of Sinitic communities on their own terms, each with their own particular questions and concerns driven by both global and local ties. As a result, this essay argues for an expansion of the Sino-Christian Theological project under the even broader banner of Sinophone Theology. By decentering the context of the PRC and dispelling the idea of a single centered Chinese culture and heritage, a Sinophone Theology approach sets the stage for the diversity of the Sinophone world to theologize from a whole array of different standpoints. In this conclusion, I argue for Sinophone Theology as a natural extension and expansion of current Sino-Christian Theology. Because both Sino-­Christian Theology and Sinophone Studies share a common emphasis on language as the focal point for cultural expression and intellectual discourse, there is a conceptual compatibility that can advance Sinophone Theology as a mode of theological

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reflection that leans into the promise of Sino-Christian Theology while remedying its weaknesses. First, Sinophone Studies pushes Sino-Christian Theology’s many nods to the importance of diversity among Chinese-speaking peoples in multiple contexts and histories to its logical conclusion, arguing they ought to be treated as discrete and unique cultural products of their own. Second, Sinophone Studies’ explicit engagement with the political dimensions of language and culture also enriches the theological potential of Sino-Christian Theology to address sociopolitical topics that it generally avoids. Third, by dispersing with center-peripheral language, Sinophone Studies’ explicit rejection of any implicit ties to the context of the PRC opens up multiple new pathways for theologies done in the Chinese language to address the social and cultural conditions of other places, sometimes without any relationship to China at all. The implications of the above can be summarized in the following three characteristics: • Geographically Multipolar: Sinophone Theology emphasizes multiple centers of production that are not tethered to the social imaginary of Chinese civilization but are grounded in local sociopolitical experiences with hybridized language and ways of being. • Culturally Multivalent: Sinophone Theology expands theological engagement with cultural texts and materials beyond traditional theological/ philosophical writing produced in the Sinophone world and recognizes the many layers of identity and belonging that shape these cultural expressions. • Sociopolitically Invested: Sinophone Theology intentionally integrates contemporary dynamics of social, political, and cultural power into its theological analyses, often prioritizing marginalized voices with an affinity to liberation and postcolonial theological calls for justice against hegemonic impulses and ambitions. These three characteristics are not meant to be exhaustive. Neither are they proposed as a way of denigrating or rejecting Sino-Christian Theology’s work to date. Rather, they serve as signposts for expanding the work of Sino-­Christian Theology into new territories to help realize the larger vision that Sino-­Christian Theology seeks: theologies rendered in Chinese languages that will not only span regions and cultures but will also enrich our understanding of God and society as a whole.

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I began this paper on an autobiographical note, exploring the struggle of my liminal Chinese American positionality in relationship to Sino-Christian Theology by using the tensions embedded in the English versions of my personal and family name as an illustration. The crux of the struggle involves the question of what Sino-Christian Theology has to say to persons of mixed Chinese ancestry around the world. The quandary symbolized in my name is not unique to me and, by extension, the expansion that I am proposing and prescribing is neither new or radical. As the larger field of Chinese Theology continues to grow, it is only natural that the diverse Sinitic-language communities of faith around the world begin to wonder what their role might be in the bigger story of the Sinophone church. Sino-Christian Theology has given a distinct voice to a generation of PRC-based scholars to work out their theological questions in an academic and public manner that would otherwise not be possible. This has been a gift for Chinese Christianity in the context of the PRC. The idea of Sinophone Theology affirms the nature of this gift and seeks to extend it to the rest of the Sinophone world—affirming the uniqueness of Chinese language as a medium for theological inquiry that can uncover theological truths embedded in multiple cultural heritages. When we consider recent developments in the PRC under Xi Jinping’s regime, the three traits of Sinophone Theology proposed here provide a theoretical frame and pathway for understanding and mapping the future of globally dispersed Chinese theologies characterized by hybrid heritage and place-based sociopolitical formation. Take, for example, the changing dynamics of identity and belonging in Hong Kong, where the Institute for Sino-Christian Studies has served as one of Sino-Christian Theology’s greatest platforms.31 Hong Kong’s liminal position between the PRC and the world made it a natural and neutral space to expand Sino-Christian Theology, regularly hosting scholars from the mainland and around the world to develop the discourse and publish its findings. Since 2010, however, the sociopolitical transformation of Hong Kong under the increasingly rigid grip of the Chinese Communist Party has triggered a strong countercultural movement among Hong Kong’s youth who increasingly identify as Hong Kongers instead of as Chinese. This particularity has had 31 Founded in 1995, the Institute for Sino-Christian Studies (ISCS) is a nonprofit academic

institute registered with the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region that aims to promote Christian studies, construct Sino-Christian theology, and enrich Chinese culture with a focus on translation, dialogue, contextualization, and interpretation. See further Jason Lam’s chapter above. 168

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theological implications that can be evidenced in younger Hong Kong theologians like Tsz-him Lai. Lai’s essay, “Hong Kong Theology as a Construction of Postcolonial Theology,” is a case study in what Sinophone Theology might look like.32 His work emphasizes Hong Kong’s unique identity, culture, and struggle as instructive for theological construction from a postcolonial standpoint that is uniquely liminal and in between empires. Likewise, theological work by newer generations of Sinophone Christians in Taiwan, Singapore, Europe, and North America may follow this trend, as they distinguish themselves apart from an imagined and centralized Chinese heritage and are more inclined to emphasize local conditions and experiences. In fact, if the collection of essays gathered in this very volume is a sign of things to come, I suspect that this proposal for Sinophone Theology is less of a prescription and more of a description of what is already taking place. A fair share of the essays in this volume do not center the PRC context. Many touch upon the influence of multiple cultures and identities, and several are invested in sociopolitical issues from both local and global perspectives.33 Sinophone Christians are increasingly conscious of their multiple belongings to heritages that go beyond (but do not exclude) China. Regardless of where in the world they are based, they are already theologizing beyond China and slowly reshaping the academic study of Chinese Christianity and theology with it. When considering all of these factors, perhaps Sinophone Theology is not a matter of some future agenda but a recognition of the present moment.

32 Tsz-Him Lai, “Hong Kong Theology as a Construction of Postcolonial Theology” in Chris-

tian Social Activism and Rule of Law in Chinese Societies, eds. Fenggang Yang and Chris White (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2021), 149–65. 33 This expansion of Sino-Christian Theology from a PRC-centered endeavor into a multipolar and global one follows a larger trend exemplified in the work of World Christianity. For thoughts on the relationship between Chinese Christianity and World Christianity approaches, see Lai Pan-Chiu, “What Does World Christianity Do for Sino-Theology?” in World Christianity: History, Method, Horizons, ed. Jehu Hanciles (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2021), 158–70, and Alexander Chow and Easten Law, Ecclesial Diversity in Chinese Christianity (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2020). 169

Part III

Hong Kong and Diasporic Theologies

Chapter 9

DIASPORIC THEOLOGY IN THE MAKING The Identity and Experience of Princeton Hsu and N. Z. Zia Hing-Cheong Ho, Bethel Bible Seminary No one can escape diasporic movement if the physical environment is changed drastically through factors such as military invasion, political persecution, pandemic, or racial segregation. Some try to seek a better life and start a diasporic journey at different stages of life, eventually forming a diasporic life. Sometimes diaspora is an arduous journey full of hardship and difficulty, and people may also experience changes in self-understanding, including identity crises when dispersed from a homeland to different diasporic settlements. The journey of dispersion is like a pilgrimage, elevating the horizon, causing a review of one’s life orientation, yet the final settlement may not be a homeland at all.1 Satisfaction derived from pursuing a sense of homeland may be better than settling in a homeland. Two case studies are introduced in this essay. The diasporic experience at different stages of life sheds light on the tension among the religious, cultural, and national identities of Princeton Hsu and N. Z. Zia, both of whom adjust their theological orientation when facing contextual change, making their own diasporic theology in a glocal perspective. Through comparing and contrasting the two cases, I argue that the more diasporic experience, the more enlightened the tension of the diasporic identities; the more enlightening the tension of the diasporic identities, the more varieties of diasporic theologies in the making. The diasporic experience of Hsu and Zia may be regarded as a reference point for 1 Cf. Kim D. Butler, “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse,” Diaspora 10:2 (2001): 201–

11. Judith T. Shuval, “Diaspora Migration: Definitional Ambiguities and Theoretical Paradigm,” International Migration 38:5 (2000): 43–45. Butler illustrates different models of diaspora while Shuval states that diaspora discourse is (re)constructed and reflected from the transnational network between homeland and diasporic settlements.

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Hong Kong Christians facing the drastic change of context before and after the imposition of the National Security Law in Hong Kong in 2020.2

Princeton Hsu, Life and Thought Princeton S. Hsu (Xu Songshi 徐松石, 1900–1999) was a well-known fundamentalist Chinese Christian pastor and a theologian in the Baptist tradition as well as a prolific anthropological scholar who specialized in the study of ethnic minorities in later life.3 Paradoxically, Hsu was a liberal Christian actively involved in promoting dialogue between Christianity and Chinese cultures, especially interreligious dialogue, during his early life in China. His life and thought are full of explicit and substantial changes closely related to his diasporic instinct and experience. Hsu was born in Guangzhou, where his Hakka ethnicity embodied its own rich experience of diasporic tradition, as a people that moved southward from the central plains during political unrest in previous dynasties. In adolescence, Hsu came to Hong Kong (HK) and stayed for a short while studying, before turning to Shanghai to seek educational opportunities. Studying at Shanghai Baptist College proved foundational to Hsu’s life and thought. The more he came into contact with different social science disciplines and helped translate Western books and articles into Chinese, the more eager he was to migrate his stance from supporting traditional religions like Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism to embracing Western thought, albeit not Western religions. Negating traditional religions, customs, and celestial festivals as superstitious and as means of dynastic governance and factors in the downfall of the nation, Hsu seemed to replace his own cultural identity with Western 2 The Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong

Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), (National Security Law), was passed on June 30, 2020. 3 For one recent study on Hsu’s life and thought, see Ho Hing-Cheong, 徘徊於保守與開 放之間：徐松石的思想歷程 [Tramping between Conservative and Liberal: Thought Process of Princeton S. Hsu] (Hong Kong: Chinese Baptist Press and Research Center for Chinese Christianity (CYCU), 2019); also Chan Oi-Nei, “二十世紀的一位牧師、敎 育家、學者—徐松石(1900–1999),” [A pastor, an educator, a scholar—Princeton Hsu (1900–1999)] (Master’s thesis, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002). Hsu’s short autobiography, Sixty-Five Years a Christian 歸主六十五年 was written in 1984 but printed and distributed to participants at his funeral service in July 1999 through Tsim Sha Tsui Baptist Church.

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values but retain his national identity without much tension, as did many of his generation. National crisis and widespread nationalism during the 1910s catalyzed the order of priority of his identities, and saving (or replacing) Chinese culture with Western culture became his major concern in this first encounter with the West. This was, however, only the first part of Hsu’s life story. Although he welcomed various Western values and rejected Western religions, he eventually accepted Christianity after participating in Sherwood Eddy’s (1871– 1963) evangelical revival meetings in 1919, while still studying in college. His former attitude rejecting all religions experienced a sudden change, to one that confirmed the positive value of Western Christianity, especially the eye-catching nature of Christ’s virtues, but that still negated Chinese traditional religions. The reason for his conversion was not, however, as others in that generation widely believed, that the virtue of Jesus Christ could save China in a political, ethical, or national sense. From his close contact with education, sociology, and philosophical thought,4 he believed that modeling Jesus’s virtue was not the way of salvation; rather, the way of salvation was through Christ and the Holy Spirit alone. Salvation, for Hsu, means dealing with the spiritual, emotional, and psychological needs of a person, rather than an agenda or internal momentum for any social, political, or cultural reform or revolution, as strongly promoted among circles of Christian liberal intellectuals.5 Hsu realized, through influential Western readings, that the impact of religion on social, cultural, and political change was limited, while factors other than religion were dominant and decisive. This concept forms a kernel of his theological thought and was consolidated during his many later territorial changes. Graduation and further study in the United States elevated and broadened Hsu’s horizons. Observing and experiencing the Anti-Christian Movement during the 1920s, Hsu’s national identity was reinforced but guided by his religious identity under the influence of his Baptist peers and other liberal intellectuals, explaining why his thought can be located between conservative 4 Princeton S. Hsu, “志願行動之哲學觀” [The philosophical understanding of voluntary

behavior], Qingnian jinbu 青年進步 [Association Progress], vol. 38 (Dec. 1920): 55, 58; Princeton S. Hsu, “何謂少年時期” [What is meant by the youth period] Qingnian jinbu vol. 41 (March, 1921): 10–14. 5 Princeton S. Hsu, “基督教如何適應今日中國之需要” [How Christianity Fits the Needs of Today’s China] True Light 真光, vol. 26, no. 2 (Feb. 1927): 22–23.

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and liberal.6 Hsu discovered both the legacy and negative impacts of Western culture while studying for a master’s degree in education at Peabody College of Tennessee in the United States in 1929–1930. The former broke down the myth that a “superior” western culture could save China, while the latter illuminated the intrinsic value of Hsu’s own culture. Through Bible reading, spiritual illumination and review of Chinese traditional culture, Hsu uncovered the legacy of Confucius and Jesus as a new outlet for the fate of Chinese in the future. His overseas study journey offered a harvest beyond his expectations and eventually turned his former negative attitudes to Chinese traditional culture toward a reaffirmation of the value of his cultural identity. However, his harvest did not become mainstream intellectual thought in China, since many returned overseas Chinese intellectuals had disambiguated cultural identity from national identity.7 More importantly, such a short diasporic experience rearranged Hsu’s hierarchy of identities and consolidated the priority of his religious identity over his own national and cultural identity.8 After returning to China, apart from Hsu’s education work, his effort was mainly focused on the dialogue between Christianity and Chinese culture. He made use of a short period as an editor of the conservative Christian periodical True Light 真光 to publish some important essays on this dialogue. He also wrote books on religious dialogue under the Buddhist name “Zhao Liu Ju Shi” (照流居士), which was derived from a popular Tang dynasty poem and metaphorically related to his own name.9 Such a pseudonym reflects his familiarity with Buddhism and knowledge of Buddhist belief, ritual, and writings. Though many of Hsu’s liberal peers identified with the “Saving China through Cultural Revolution” bloc, there is no evidence from his writings that he ever treated Christianity as an agenda promoting cultural revolution or social reform 6 Princeton S. Hsu, 歸主六十五年 [Sixty-Five Years a Christian] (Hong Kong: Tsim Sha

Tsui Baptist Church, 1999), 2–3. 7 See Tse-Tsung Chow, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, repr. 2013), 317–19. Yü-Sheng Lin, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Era (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press 1979) explores the relation between nationalism and identity crisis. 8 Ho, Tramping between Conservative and Liberal, 57–58. 9 Hsu’s four books are The Chinese Nation Through the Eyes of Jesus (耶穌眼裏的中華民族, 1934); Jesus in the Eyes of the Chinese Nation (中華民族眼裏的耶穌, 1934); A Buddhist Flavor in the Religion of Christ (基督教的佛味, 1935); The Christian Awakening of Faith (聖道起信論, 1940). These record Hsu’s religious dialogues with different audiences of different faiths and cultural ideologies. 176

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in China.10 Salvation, to him, deals only with the spiritual needs of an individual, which is why he pays much attention to the ways of Christian salvation in regard to Chinese culture, especially local religions. He engages Confucian and Buddhist language and concepts to explain Christian beliefs, and vice versa, to an audience of Chinese Confucians, Buddhists, and Christians.11 Such practice aimed at initiating dialogue and enriching the exchange of religious ideas between believers of different religions from a position of mutual respect. The practice not only fulfilled the 1920s and 1930s indigenization agenda but was a step forward in deepening the encounter, understanding, and dialogue between Chinese religions and Christianity.12 Hsu’s Theocentric and Christocentric approach to salvation was not dogmatically oriented as either inclusive or exclusive in the manner of Western theologians and did not focus on the authenticity of doxastic discourses; conversely, he extended his concern as to the meaning of the salvation of Christ for the lives of people in China, especially as they suffered social and economic hardship, military confrontation between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Guomindang (GMD), and Japan’s invasion and occupation during the 1930s and 1940s.13 Hsu’s religious dialogue focused not only on the dogmatic and theological, but also on the social, material, and religious lives of people. Preaching the gospel to ethnic minorities in China’s border territories provoked Hsu’s greater interest in theocentric salvation. The more he visited and preached the gospel to different minorities, the more intense interest he felt in 10 Leung Ka-Lun 梁家麟, 徘徊於耶儒之間 [Tramping between Confucianism and Chris-

tianity] (Taipei: Cosmic Light, 1997): 276–77. Ying Fuk-Tsang 邢福增, 文化適應與中 國基督徒 : 一八六〇至一九一一年 [Cultural Accommodation and Chinese Christians, 1860–1911] (Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 1995): 196–97. Both argue that whether Christianity can provide a workable agenda for the social and political context was the dominant factor in Chinese deciding whether to become Christian; the decision was often pragmatic. However, Hsu is an exception: his decision to become a Christian derived from his particular training. 11 Ho Hing-Cheong, “以佛教詮釋基督教；徐松石的本色神學” [Engaging Buddhist concepts to interpret Christianity: the indigenous theology of Princeton S. Hsu] in 近代中國 佛教與基督宗教的相遇 [Buddhist-Christian Encounter in Modern China] ed., Lai Panchiu, (Hong Kong: Logos and Pneuma Press, 2003), 213–74. 12 See Ho Hing Cheong, “Reinterpreting Christianity Buddhistically: Xu Songshi’s Indigenous Theology,” Ching Feng, vol. 6, no.1 (2005): 77–111. 13 Princeton S. Hsu, 中華民族眼裏的基督 [Christ through the Eyes of the Chinese Nation] (Shanghai: Chinese Christian Society, 1948): 25, 29, 39, 83. Ho, Tramping between Conservative and Liberal, 149–62. 177

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studying their ancestral histories prior to the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945. The more Hsu gathered, studied, and compared different artifacts of various ancestral histories, the more resources he used to articulate the relation of God’s revelation to the ancestors of the Asian ethnicity.14 He tried to correlate God’s revelation with studies of ancestral histories based on sources like mythical creation stories inherited orally or recorded in written documents, tribal relics, totem illustrations, customs and habits, antiquities and monuments. Assuming that each nation came from one family and that all nations share a fraternal bond, he paid much effort to exploring this not from theological or doctrinal sources but with academic peers in ethnic studies. Hsu’s studies on the minority ethnic diaspora continued until his retirement in North America and explored the importance of studying global diasporic movements through sources and perspectives other than the theological. Significant change came in 1949. It is not clear exactly what happened to Hsu but his property in Shanghai was confiscated and nationalized, and his teaching and administrative career affected. Since the PRC government’s ideological policy in the 1950s entailed running a series of political movements rectifying traditional Chinese culture and religions, including re-interpreting Confucianism and reviewing the orientation of religions, it is believed that Hsu avoided identifying and agreeing with the Confucianism of governmental interpretation and maintained a silence. His devotional work on the dialogue between Chinese Culture and Christianity was forced to cease, since both subjects were politically distorted. The political and social context changed drastically to the degree that traditional cultures began to disappear while the national identity inculcated by patriotic nationalism grew fierce. Cultural identity was firmly under political leadership and interpretation.15 Alert to the crisis of cultural identity and its maladaptation within a politicized national identity, Hsu followed ethnic precedent to migrate, like the ethnic minorities he had previously studied. Migrating from China elsewhere still enabled him to sustain the interpretation of his religious, cultural, and national identity, since, for Hsu, all three identities were embedded and embodied concretely in each member of a nation who is not limited or restricted to the place they were born. As with the historical diasporic 14 Princeton S. Hsu, 百粵雄風嶺南銅鼓 [A Study of the Bronze Drums of South China ]

(Hong Kong: South East Asia Research Institute, 1974): 134–42.

15 Pan-Chiu Lai and Yuen-tai So, “Migration, Theology and Religious Identity: Christianity

and Chinese Culture in the Life and Thought of Xu Songshi,” Asia Journal of Theology 18:2 (Oct 2004): 334–35. 178

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experience of his Hakka ethnicity, their cultural, ethnic, and religious identities could be maintained and enriched through new migration journeys. Hsu left Mainland China and came to Hong Kong (HK) in 1957 through legal and official procedures. He stayed in HK until 1975 as a Baptist elder, a pastor, and eventually the chief pastor of Tsim Sha Tsui Baptist Church. He was also invited to lecture on Chinese Culture and Christianity at Baptist Theological Seminary. Director and chief editor of the Baptist Press, he actively promoted spiritual life as witness and loyalty to Christ from the exegetical contemplation of scriptural texts.16 After migrating to HK and finding the political and cultural context different from the Mainland, and seeing the spiritual needs of believers, Hsu shifted his theological orientation and heavily engaged the values and perspective of a Christocentric and spiritual salvation in his pastoral career, while still holding to a stance of theocentric salvation in his personal studies of ethnic minorities.17 It seems that there is not much tension or conflict between the value of a Christocentric or theocentric orientation to be observed in his writings. We might safely conclude that Hsu engaged different theological resources according to the division of pastoral service and personal interest. However, the theocentric approach he took in dealing with the relation between Christianity and Chinese culture during the 1930s and 1940s in Shanghai could not meet or fulfill the needs of his theological teaching and pastoral career in HK.18 Hsu rewrote his works and old published essays on religious dialogue into books, but with different theological conclusions and his Buddhist nickname excised.19 His religious identity seems to reach its maturity in his pastoral service in Hong Kong.

16 See Chan Oi-Nei, “A pastor, an educator, a scholar,” which focuses on Hsu’s life in Hong

Kong. Hsu wrote more than twenty books on spiritual life and contemplation for lay readers. 17 A typical work is Hsu’s 我的好處不在你以外 [Apart from you I have no Good Thing]

(Hong Kong: Baptist Press division, 1965). See also Ho Hing-Cheong, “漫步於保守與開 放之間—徐松石後半生的思想” [Pacing between conservative and liberal: the second half of Princeton Hsu’s life] in Between Continuity and Change: Studies on the History of Chinese Christianity since 1949 恆與變之間—1949 年以來的中國基督教史論集, eds. ManKong Wong, Paul W. Cheung, Chi-hang Chan (Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 2017): 383–401. 18 Lai and So, “Migration, Theology and Religious Identity,” 334. 19 Two sources record the different viewpoints of his youth in Mainland China: Princeton S. Hsu, Christianity and Chinese Culture 基督教與中國文化 (Hong Kong: Baptist Press, 1962); Princeton S. Hsu, Chinese Nation Through the Eyes of Christ - Comparative Studies of Religions 基督眼裡的中華民族：宗教比較學研究 (Hong Kong: Baptist Press, 1974). 179

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New diasporic situations bring new challenges. Hsu’s former cultural identity was reawakened as he met several hundred thousand Chinese refugees who had left the Mainland for HK to seek asylum, and for whom Confucianism was their mainstream value and practice. National and cultural identity were fiercely debated among Chinese intellectuals in a few highly popular and reputable periodicals. Although ethnic identity and cultural heritage remain wherever one migrates, many Chinese who went overseas changed their nationality after 1949. The second generation often do not learn Chinese anymore and eventually do not know how to speak and write Chinese, forgetting both their original or essential ethnic identity and cultural identity. Despite facing such issues and discourses, Hsu did not participate in or take these for granted as an evangelical issue or source of religious dialogue. Some famous liberal Christian intellectuals like Nai-Zing Zia and Cha-wen Wu (胡簪雲), meanwhile, were actively involved in these debates. It is possible that Hsu was wary of the spies and agents of the PRC in every aspect of life in HK, collecting information from news and periodicals not welcome in the PRC. Many intellectuals’ viewpoints in these periodicals were anti-communist and dissatisfied with the Communist rule, but Hsu’s family members were still living in the Mainland. Thus in HK, Hsu focused rather on the Christocentric orientation of pastoral work and the theocentric orientation of his ethnic studies.20 Although Hsu had undertaken the diasporic journey to HK, he was territorially near China and had to consider family members in the homeland. From 1975, Hsu migrated with family members to the United States, where he continued to work as a pastor, trainer, and mentor in evangelical movements. Here the US context matched his religious identity, over and above both national and cultural identities. His interest and his research work in ethnic studies continued without obstacle and his academic work was published in HK. Hsu spent his remaining life in the United States, occasionally visiting HK at the invitation of Baptist groups. He did not step foot back on his homeland, even after the PRC adopted Reform and Opening Up in 1978. In the United States, he fully realized his dreams both in his pastoral career and his interest in 20 On dialogue between Christianity and Chinese religions, and the change of theological ori-

entation from theocentric to Christocentric perspectives, see Ho Hing-Cheong, “A Baptist Pastor in the 20th Century—The Life and Thought of Princeton S. Hsu 二十世紀浸信會 會牧—徐松石的生平和思想,” Journal of the History of Christianity in Modern China 近代 中國基督教史研究集刊 vol. 5 (2002/2003): 79–98.

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ethnic studies with a Christocentric, theocentric and spiritual perspective and orientation. To him, the United States was a final settled home until his death.21 Without reading Hsu’s early writings carefully, it is easy to miss the limited recourse to a theocentric stance in his later life. As a result, readers who focus only on his HK writings may regard his theological stance as conservative and even fundamentalist in outlook. However, with a clear survey of Hsu’s whole life and his changing stance over his rich diasporic experience, one may find that he still retains a certain degree of liberal interpretation.22

Nai-Zing Zia, Life and Thought Nai-Zing Zia (Xie Fuya 謝扶雅, 1892–1991) is a renowned Chinese liberal Christian intellectual, philosopher, and theologian whose academic reputation was established through his translations of western Christian philosophical and theological works. These were completed in the later stages of his life in the United States and include a series of classic and contemporary texts that served as teaching materials in theological seminaries in Hong Kong (HK) in the 1960s. Zia is a controversial Chinese intellectual who existed between the blocs of Chinese Christians and the New Confucianists, a critical commentator against the hostile regimes of the GMD on Taiwan and the PRC, an enlightened theologian who challenged both liberal and conservative Christians. He actively devoted himself to interreligious dialogue during later life, especially focusing on Christian theological thought and Chinese culture, in particular neo-­Confucianism, and to intrareligious dialogue among different factions in Christian circles.23 His prolific publications include philosophical and theological works and criticism of politics and social issues, cultural values, and religious dialogue. His autobiographies and the six-volume collection of his Anthologies of living in a mountain hut in South China 南華小住山房文集 were compiled and stored in the libraries of HK universities. His rich diasporic experience at 21 See William Safran, “Diaspora in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return,” Dias-

pora 1:1 (1991): 91.

22 Yuen-Tai So and Hing-Cheong Ho, “Conservative and Liberal - Princeton S. Hsu’s Early

Stage of Religious Dialogue,” Jian dao 18 (2002): 65.

23 On Zia’s life and his thought on religious dialogue, see Hing-cheong HO, Identity Develop-

ment of Christian Diaspora: Thought Process of N. Z. Zia (New Taipei City: Chinese Christian Literature Council, 2013).

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different stages of life gave him a critical perspective on the tension among his religious, cultural, and national identities over his long life.24 Zia experienced extensive political, social, and cultural change, and his writings record the critical reflection of his faith under sudden and drastic vicissitudes, as well as his experience of migration. He was born in an intellectual but poverty-stricken family in Zhejiang province and lost his father while young. Although he received a traditional Confucian education and succeeded in the public examinations of 1907, without enough money for tuition fees and board, he had to give up the chance of contact with Western knowledge. However, in February 1911 he fled to Japan alone, without notifying his mother, learnt Japanese, and eventually earned the status of overseas student with a state stipend.25 This first foray abroad was so dramatic and remarkable that Zia claims it as the first turning point of his life. Zia accepted the Christian faith and was baptized in Japan, explaining this as a consequence of his mother’s sincerity to Chinese gods, the sincere fellowship of his Chinese peers, and his poor treatment by a nurse in the hospital.26 Zia observed Chinese political party members in Japan but kept a distance while joining the YMCA alongside many overseas Chinese students. This overseas diasporic experience offered a higher horizon, connected him to the world and prepared him for the next tide of life. With a pastor’s encouragement, Zia returned to China in 1916 and worked in the YMCA. He claimed that this was the happiest time of his life. He married, participated in different national and international conferences, was interested in the idea of indigenization, observed the breakout of the anti-Christian movement in 1922, and most importantly, earned the chance for overseas study in the United States.27 His second diasporic experience was also beyond his expectations. Zia was sent to Andover Theological Seminary in 1925 to study for a higher degree, but went to Chicago University to study philosophy, theology, and religious studies, enrolling and auditing the classes of famous theologians, scholars of biblical 24 N. Z. Zia wrote two autobiographies, 巨流點滴 [Drops in the Stream] (Hong Kong:

­ hinese Christian Literature Council, 1970), recording his life and experience before 1970; C and one published posthumously in 1992, 自辮子至電子: 謝扶雅百年生平紀略 [From Pigtail to Electron] (Hong Kong: Chinese Christian Literature Council). Anthology of Living in a Mountain Hut in South China, vols. 1–6 南華小住山房文集, (Hong Kong: South Blue Sky Company, 1974) mostly comprises his writings before 1972. 25 N. Z. Zia, Drops in the Stream, 70–100. 26 N. Z. Zia, Drops in the Stream, 102–105. 27 N. Z. Zia, 生之回味 [Life Reflections] (Hong Kong: Tao sheng, 1979): 157–58. 182

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studies, and philosophers. He then went to Harvard University to audit some influential Christian scholars’ lessons, covering the historical development of theological thought from the early church to contemporary times. Two important harvests in the United States included observing the American people’s respect for their own nation and learning that the national spirit is the foundation of building a state, and coming to understand that the momentum of Western culture derived from the integration of the impulsive pursuit of knowledge from Greek tradition and the spirit of Hebrew religion.28 In Zia’s new grasp, Western democracy, freedom, equality, fraternity, ethics, and technological advancement all originated from these two cultures. These ideas laid a concrete foundation for his thinking on building a future indigenized Chinese theology for Chinese intellectuals and Christians. After returning to China in 1927, Zia became professor, then chair of the philosophy department of Lingnan University. He critically reviewed the idea of wholesale Westernization as advocated by the May-Fourth Movement, investigating and reconstructing the legacy of traditional Chinese thought and Western culture in relation to Christianity.29 Beside teaching, conducting research, and writing, he encouraged university students and Chinese churches to participate in rural reconstruction and illiteracy eradication. He gave up his teaching position as an example and took part in a program of popular educational experiments in Hebei province promoted by Yan Yangchu (晏陽初, Y. C. James Yen 1890–1990). Zia claimed this was the second turning point in his life.30 Although he participated in social reform, Zia’s thought is not classified as Social Gospel oriented. Conversely, his theological thought and stance was deeply influenced by Alfred Whitehead, emphasizing a personal, inward, and mystic relationship with God, and obeying God in the face of challenges with a Christlike and rational response. Zia held that individualization and rationalization were working principles for conducting religious dialogue between Chinese culture and Christianity, a stance generated from his overseas learning in the United States.31 28 N. Z. Zia, From Pigtail to Electron, 45–47. 29 N. Z. Zia, “The Criticism of Wholesale Westernization,” in Anthology of Living in a Mountain

Hut Vol. 5 (1934): 36–37. N. Z. Zia, “An interpretation of the problem of Chinese culture,” in Anthology of Living in a Mountain Hut Vol. 5 (1934): 32–33. 30 N. Z. Zia, From pigtail to electron, 13–26, 53–66. 31 N. Z. Zia, “基督教如何與中國文化結合” [How Christianity Integrates with Chinese Culture], Truth and Life 真理與生命 vol. 2 no. 9 (May, 1927): 244–46. 183

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Shortly after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war (1937–1945), Zia started a long voyage moving between many places in China and Hong Kong, a third stage of migratory existence. He divorced his pro-Japan wife and lost his son and daughter during the war, remarrying during his flight. After the war, civil war between the CCP and GMD (1945–1949) prolonged the hardship and suffering of dispersed citizens. Zia resumed his teaching in universities in Guangzhou, far from the war field, meeting new colleagues who included famous neo-­Confucian scholars like Qian Mu (錢穆, 1895–1890) and Tang Junyi (Tang Chun-I 唐君毅, 1909–1978), and keeping close contact with philosophical discourse in Hong Kong and the United States. After the civil war, Zia came to HK as an educator, teaching mainly in university and colleges.32 Zia stayed in HK for just nine years, regarding this period as a transitional stage of life, a (self ) exile journey of segregation from his homeland. Hong Kong was a temporary asylum for many elite Chinese. It served as a shelter brimming with discourses on national, political, and cultural issues while they waited to return to the Mainland if the political situation allowed, or to migrate elsewhere. Under the British flag, these temporary settlers enjoyed rights of freedom of speech and publication, if their publications did not violate the law by spreading communist thought or propaganda under British colonial law. Many articles in periodicals, in addition to sharing news of Chinese from overseas, focused on the discourse of the fate of the Chinese nation and its culture, reflecting their anxieties over identity crisis and conflict, given that their national and cultural identity had long been nurtured, shared, and interlocked with their homeland, and that their blood ties were with tribes and ethnic communities in which the traditional Confucian cultural ideology had been tightly embedded and deeply rooted in the past.33 In the eyes of many, the new rulers of 1949 had adopted an alien Western communism as their ruling ideology, implemented its radical land reform against local institutions, and treated brutally ethnic communities and traditional rural customs, all of which uprooting measures left Chinese literati feeling severed from their kinship, ancestral, and cultural affiliation. These Chinese literati and nonpatriotic neo-Confucian intellectuals joined together and became deterritorial marginal communities, with heterogeneous identity discourses and diverse views on their traditional Confucian cultural 32 N. Z. Zia, Drops in the stream, 208–18. 33 See the insights from Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin

and Spread of Nationalism rev. ed., (London and New York: Verso, 1991): 5; Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2010): 25–27. 184

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orientation during this high tide of dispersion. Facing the dilemma of deterritorializing national and cultural identities,34 their antinationalist nationalism continuously grew as they built and consolidated their deterritorialized social identity.35 Zia identified himself as a solitary rebel and orphan in the eyes of the new regime and shared their feelings of sorrow; his own dialogues on identity were sincere but fierce.36 In a fourth diasporic experience, Zia moved to the United States. This was to undertake a giant translation project, to avoid political assault in HK, and out of consideration for his son’s education.37 It was a long and distant (self-) exile from his homeland but a productive time for writing on identity and religious dialogue.38 The discourse was initiated by pressing issues, as many overseas Chinese abandoned their national identity and traditional culture was distorted and negated by the new rulers in mainland China. Many literati and neo-­Confucian communities claimed that Confucianism was a traditional cultural ideology that could be revived and re-established, to serve as a religion, life foundation, and orientation for diasporic communities.39 They refused to acknowledge the Christian religion, which was embedded with distinctive Western cultural origins they believed contrary to Chinese culture and nation. This issue touched the nature of identity and the priority of hierarchical relationships among cultural, national and religious identities for diasporic Chinese communities. Zia, as a member of diasporic communities, addressed the issue not through the normative approach to understanding Confucianism but engaged a Western dialectical approach to offer a modern interpretation of Confucius’s teaching, 34 See Emmanuel Ma Mung, “Groundlessness and Utopia: The Chinese Diaspora and Terri-

35 36 37

38 39

tory,” in The Last Half Century of Chinese Overseas, ed. Elizabeth Sinn (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1998): 38–41. Judith T. Shuval, “Diaspora Migration,” 43–45; Steven Vertovec, “ Three Meanings of ‘Diaspora,’ Exemplified among South Asian Religions,” Diaspora 6:3 (1997): 281–82, 289. Hing-Cheong Ho, Identity Development of Christian Diaspora, 135–75. N. Z. Zia, “Self-Introduction 自狀(中) (episode II),” 人生 [Life ] vol. 20, no.1 (May 16, 1960): 25. Rosina C. Zia, 我生與神蹟 [Miracles in My Life ] (Hong Kong: Chinese Christian Literature Council, 1975): 131. See the insightful analysis from James Clifford, “Diasporas,” Cultural Anthropology 9 (1994): 304, 307–08. Fan Pang-to 范澎濤, “Bear suffering, cheer up the national spirit—inspired by drifting petals of the Chinese nation] 承擔苦難，煥發國魂！—有感於「中華民族之花果飄零」,” College Life Monthly 大學生活 vol. 7 no. 14 (Dec. 1, 1961): 29. Kim D. Butler, “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse,” Diaspora 10:2 (2001): 211. 185

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elaborating his understanding from abundant supporting classical texts, claiming that it was not human virtue but the art of living that was core to Confucius’s teaching.40 In Zia’s interpretation, Confucius provided a concrete framework to deal with one’s relation with others, which itself became the basic virtue of all aspects of life. Zia criticized the traditional optimistic understanding of human nature (Mencius’s potential for good) with concrete daily observable experiences, and interpreted Christianity from an anthropological perspective based on the life of Jesus narrated in Gospels (not from the perspective of the historical Jesus). He posited not humanity or human virtue, but God as the ultimate orientation of the life of all nations, listing the difficulties in becoming a saint from a sinner, and explaining the rationale of incarnation of Jesus as the bridging agent between God and sinful humanity. Frequent dialogues helped formulate Zia’s Chinese Christian theology (of dynamic neutralism) when he initiated discussions with Christian communities from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, focusing on the relation between the praxis of Chinese virtue and God’s general revelation, Jesus’s incarnation and his realizing ideal humanity.41 Zia held that Christianity, as an extract from the legacy of Hebrew religion and Greek philosophy, could serve as an important source facilitating the construction of Chinese Christian theology.42 How to put Zia’s “dynamic neutralism” into practice depended on the diasporic context (not the homeland); the mobile embodiment of the legacy of Chinese culture, the diasporic Chinese (not the rulers of the homeland); and historical Confucian texts, a means of God’s revelation alongside the narrative of Jesus in biblical texts. Here source and praxis do not rely on systematic theology, which is an amalgamation of Christianity and Western culture. The process rather is a creative composite, serving to empower Chinese culture and build Chinese 40 N. Z. Zia, “唯中論—中國特有的哲學,” [Neutralism—A Unique Philosophy of China],

College Life Monthly 大學生活, vol. 7, no. 16 ( Jan. 1, 1962): 11.

41 Kong Yat-Sun 江日新, “The Hermeneutics of Confucianism and Nai-Zing Zia’s Chinese

Indigenized Theology—The Encounter from the Principle of Religious Dialogue 謝扶雅 的中國本色神學及儒學詮釋：從宗教對話的律令來切磋,” 鵝湖學誌 [Legein Society] no. 26 (2001.6): 136. 42 On how Zia responded to different parties and the creation of Chinese Christian theology generated from the dialogue, see Hing-Cheong Ho, “Contextual Theology—Nai-Zing Zia’s Understanding of Indigenization 處境神學—謝扶雅的本色化理解,” in Studies in Christianity and Chinese Society and Culture: Essays from the Second International Young Scholars’ Symposium, eds. Peter Tze-Ming Ng and Wu Xiaoxin (Hong Kong: Center for the Study of Religion and Chinese Society, 2006): 117–40. 186

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character during diasporic Chinese experience. In this stage, Zia’s thought seems more precise, mature, and stable, and he benefited from the exceptional culture of dialogue in HK at the time. He set a priority of religious identity over cultural and national identity in dialogue with diasporic Chinese literati and with different Christian groups (both Western missionaries and Chinese Christian intellectuals released from mainland China), with help from the abundant legacy of Greek philosophy and Hebrew religion. In a fifth and final diasporic experience, Zia accompanied his son, a US scholar, to visit mainland China for an academic conference in 1984, and delivered lectures where invited by old friends and students. Returning to Guangzhou in 1985, he then lived there with his lost son (from his first marriage) for a few years, celebrated his hundredth birthday, and died a few months later in 1991. Zia chose to die in mainland China, yet he still kept his US passport privately for personal protection.43 In the last stage of his life, Zia came back to his homeland, but what the nature of that homeland was in his mind remains a mystery. Was this the realization of his desire for homeland or homecoming ever since his explicit acknowledgment that he was homeless in 1949? Zia finished his great task of creating and enriching Chinese theology and practicing religious dialogue, and of prioritizing the hierarchy and interaction between three diasporic identities.

Contrast and Comparison The two cases of Princeton Hsu and N. Z. Zia have notable similarities and differences. Both grew up, resided, and were educated in mainland China, with its drastic changes of context, and left China for educational opportunities. Hong Kong (HK) and the United States served for them as asylum and source of illumination in constructing their own diasporic theology when temporarily or permanently settled. Both actively initiated and participated in religious dialogue from a transnational-Christian and deterritorialized perspective during their diasporic journeys, and both built their pastoral status or academic reputation after middle age, with prolific publications in HK and elsewhere. Since neither were nurtured and trained as systematic theologians in the Western tradition, they were not bound to follow the theological thought gained during their diasporic journey. Their training in secular Western knowledge served as 43 N. Z. Zia, From Pigtail to Electron, 100–101. 187

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an abundant resource, allowing them to construct their own theologies that were generated and formulated from out of their global and deterritorial diasporic journey, embedded with contextual and glocal features and inherently hybrid in nature. It is safe to say that the making of (diasporic/global) contextual theologies was quite different from the systematic theology that originated and was inherited across the boundaries of Europe and North America. The preliminary refining learnt from each diasporic journey became an asset for them to prepare the next journey. There are, however, significant differences between the two cases. Their responses to changes in context were quite different in nature as well as in theological orientation, and there was a clear difference in the final settlement of their diasporic treks. Both arrived in HK under the British flag and in the United States after 1949. Hsu kept silent in both places while Zia actively participated in discussing the many political, social, cultural, and existential issues that arose among the diasporic communities. Their different responses to the contextual changes may reflect their differing priorities among their identities when facing the above challenges. However, the context of diasporic settlement seems to be their ultimate concern rather than their own homeland, and this served as both challenge and empowerment for adjusting the priority of their identities with the help of religious sources. Neither seem to regard HK as a safe place of final settlement, given its location adjacent to the PRC. Hsu treated the settlers in HK as the target of his pastoral concern, modifying his former liberal, theocentric orientation in Shanghai to a focus on pastoral care in the newly settled HK. While his main passion was a Christocentric teaching on spiritual and devotional life, he never gave up his personal interest in minority ethnic studies from a theocentric perspective. Zia treated frequent discourses on existentiality, religiosity, Confucianism, and (inter)national issues with the heterogeneous members of diasporic communities in HK as a source for developing his theologies for diasporic Chinese facing identity crisis and tension, especially the question of how to relate to one’s long-inherited cultural identity when compelled to leave the national homeland; the loss of root ties of blood and territoriality; and the experience of “drifting petals overseas” (花果飄零) when one’s cultural essence was distorted by the (PRC) state. Zia may be more significant in that he actively and stridently expressed his critical comments on the impact of the PRC social and political movements ruining lives in mainland China in the voice of his

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diasporic communities, in a common stance; on the GMD seeking only ease and comfort in Taiwan; and on the two-China politics of the US government. He extended religious and cultural dialogue to Chinese Neo-Confucian communities, Chinese Christian communities and missionaries coming out from the Mainland post-1949.44 The two cases raise questions that challenge certain academic paradigms: for example, the primacy of family impact on the life of offspring, especially the unconscious and deep effects in their relationship with others. Is the impact of horizons or insights learnt from the diasporic journey more influential than the primary family’s socialization in the homeland in a traveler’s mind? The two drifters Hsu and Zia actively formed their own deterritorial and imagined communities of heterogeneity, in which the creation of their own diasporic identity was detached from the national identity of their own state-territorial boundary, and each tried to preserve their own cultural and religious identity, but not national belonging, during the journey.45 Perhaps cultural and religious identities are more fluid, adaptive, and full of rejuvenating energy than stateterritoriality and nation-state identity. Not only is the diasporic journey full of hardship, but the physical sufferings of diaspora are also difficult to face when a government does not welcome new settlers and its policies ignore their basic human rights and well-being. Immigrants will compare and contrast the degree of sufferings (including political execution, as well as various kinds of social, economic, and cultural discrimination) of both the homeland and the temporary city of settlement. The writings of Hsu and Zia show that although they faced economic hardship in HK, they experienced a friendly and supportive hospitality in both HK and the United States. They enjoyed freedom of expression and were able to write and publish their views during the diasporic journey, despite facing difficulties in adapting. Both quickly became familiar with their new migrant environment, successfully forming their own diasporic communities and building up-close relationships according to their ideas of common good, their values, and faith, sharing physical and psychological hardships with other new members as they created an 44 See Hing-Cheong Ho and Pan-Chiu Lai, “A Chinese Christian Intellectual in Diaspora: A

Case Study of Xie Fuya,” Monumenta Serica, vol. LVI (2008): 427–58.

45 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed.

Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990): 235, 225.

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imagined, transnational and deterritorial diasporic identity distinct from that of their homeland.

Reflections from Hsu and Zia on the Recent Diasporic Movement from Hong Kong Hong Kong is a remarkable place of in- and out-migration, where diasporic experience has prevailed in the past and present. Hong Kong is not only a city of entrepôt trade, but also an entrepôt of human resources, logistics, and currencies, all freely mobilized. Hong Kong in the nineteenth century was notorious for the smuggling of labor (especially young men and women) from the Mainland to Australia, San Francisco, and Southeast Asia; a transit depot of cargo southward and northward along the mainland seacoast, inland and overseas; a strategic center for mobilizing liquid assets during the initial breakout of the Sino-Japanese war. Hong Kong has continued to play an important historic role for the diaspora in terms of secondary remigration, when settlers meet unrest or economic uncertainty elsewhere.46 Before the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, the 1989 incident of Tiananmen Square in mainland China caused some second-generation settlers in Hong Kong to initiate a large-scale diasporic movement. There was no political clampdown in HK and the global economic depression and China’s economic boom ironically resulted in the reflux of the tide.47 The next wave of large-scale diasporic movement from HK was provoked by China’s approval and immediate execution of the National Security Law for HK in July 2020. Those who were suspected of involvement in the political protests of 2019 were prosecuted and mass arrests were launched, especially targeting party leaders, news editors, leaders of civic organizations, and teachers who were regarded as politically incorrect, or whose radical comments were found on public websites, internet forums, or even Facebook. This threat was not as mild as that felt prior to 1997 and cannot be compared to the short-lived movement of Occupy Central with Love and Peace in 2014. It is a real threat to the hundred thousand who participated in the protests during 2019–2020. The diaspora movement of the 46 Cf. Nan M. Sussman, Return Migration and Identity: A Global Phenomenon, a Hong Kong

Case (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011): 32–36.

47 Diana Lary, Chinese migrations: the movement of people, goods, and ideas over four millennia

(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012): 159.

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third generation is still ongoing, as reflected in government data, although the HKSAR government denies this in public.48 Many tiny diasporic communities have been extensively formed and fractally connected, in both civic society and in Christian churches. Contextual challenge: With the outbreak of Covid 19 in 2019 immediately after the climax of the protest and adoption of the National Security Law in 2020, churches in Hong Kong not only suffered from the cessation of normal gatherings, such as face-to-face fellowship, gathered worship, communion rites, teaching, training, visiting the old, sick and infected, and evangelical activities, but also from the rapid and continuing high tide of migration to other places such as the UK, Canada, Taiwan, and Southeast Asian cities. It was not just second- and third-generation laity and their families who were leaving, but also deacons, church leaders, and pastors.49 Many devoted lay people were greatly disappointed with both the handling of protest and pandemic by the HKSAR government and the churches’ stubbornly dumb and passive response; their feeling of security guaranteed by the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 was devastated.50 Pastors who remained in HK delivered sermons related to the experience of Jewish diaspora in the Hebrew Bible, in order to bring comfort and provide resources for congregations’ doubts and misery. Christian identity was highlighted in sermons: no matter where they move, the identity of being Christian does not change and cannot be forgotten in any circumstances.51 Such a message had not been delivered and heard since 1997. 48 Ip Chin-see 葉靖斯, “香港BNO移民潮：戰後港人歷次「走出去」的因由” [The

Migration of BNO Passport Holders from Hong Kong: Reasons for Post-War Exodus of Hong Kong People], BBC News Chinese (Feb. 1, 2021) (retrieved on Aug 26, 2022, https:// www.bbc.com/zhongwen/trad/world-55874253. 49 See migration data and research from the Business, Economic and Public Policy Research Center, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, issued by the Center for Life and Ethics Studies in March, 2022 (retrieved on Aug 26, 2022), https://www.truth-light.org.hk/myimage/d7/ flipbook/booklet/k0021/k0021.pdf. 50 Eric Cheung, “An Analysis of the Impact of National Security Law on Churches in Hong Kong,” Oct 20, 2021, later issued in Christiantimes, no. 1764 ( June 20, 2021) (retrieved on Aug 26, 2022), https://christiantimes.org.hk/Common/Reader/News/ShowNews. jsp?Nid=165892&Pid=2&Version=1764&Cid=1144&Charset=big5_hkscs. 51 Ming-Him Ko and Ka-Lok Chow, “Leave or Stay in Faith,” Pastoral Letter of Christian and Missionary Alliance Church Union Hong Kong, no.74 (August 2021) (retrieved on 26 Aug, 2022), https://cmacuhk.org.hk/2021/08/04/第74期-信仰身分下的去與留/.

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The churches in HK had enjoyed the prosperity and stability promised by the PRC since 1984, and lacked experience in facing struggles between the masses and government. They exhibited deficiencies in dealing with political and social movements, and rarely shared different views on these issues in fellowship or Sunday school. Too many put their effort into promoting programs or activities to consolidate internal relationships among members and push evangelical movements for church expansion, resulting in public critique that churches were like a religious club, indulging in expansion in terms of quantity but without solid spiritual essence.52 The picture and phenomenon is redolent of the description of the early church in Acts 2:44–47, but lacking in eschatological message and a sense of crisis. Theological investigation: Churches in HK were baptized in political movements in 2014 and 2019. Despite the short time period in between, these political movements polarized the political stance among denominations, pastors, church leaders, and laity. Different stakeholders have had their own concerns, struggling with factors like pastoral care, church management and administration, political safety, and external image. Church politics led many adolescents and youngsters to leave their own churches, migrate to other churches, move to online churches, or leave for elsewhere due to their disappointment and grievance at the church’s silence in a critical context and moment while still publicly claiming to be witnesses to Jesus. Once a church faced a political movement, the deacons’ major concern was often the survival and safety of the church, and they usually imposed measures such as restricting the freedom of expression in order to avoid fractional confrontation inside the church and agitating the government outside the church, provoking an exodus of lay members. The two case studies of Princeton Hsu and N. Z. Zia and their diasporic life histories are able to contribute significant illumination to Christians in HK who are planning to migrate. Although Hsu and Zia become diasporic members of imagined or deterritorialized communities, they did not forget their own religious identity, which dominated and interacted with their other cultural and national identities, guiding and enriching the latter during their life in diaspora.

52 Wu Chi Wai, “The Church’s Craving for Greatness and Success,” Hong Kong Church Revival

Movement (posted on Nov 18, 2016) (retrieved on Aug 26, 2022), https://tinyurl.com/ yfbcydf4. 192

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Laity in HK face an identity crisis before they move.53 Pastors in HK advising believers who are heading abroad should encourage them to bear in mind their religious identity, no matter where they go. Their sermons seem to imply that religious identity should override national and cultural identity in a heterogenous diasporic community or when settling in a new national and cultural environment such as Hsu and Zia experienced. Religious identity has somewhat similar features to diasporic identity: deterritorial, transnational, imagined. Fundamental questions remain for diaspora theologies. Who should do it, and why? Systematic theologians or laity? Should it aim at establishing a theology fashioned out of multiple disciplines that also addresses global diaspora studies? For whom and for what purpose: to draw international attention to the suffering of many tiny diasporic communities, or to establish a branch of practical theology beyond systematic theology? Inspired by cultural studies of diaspora, Asian American theologians have contributed a sizable body of work and thought derived from the conceptual categories of heterogeneity, hybridity, multiplicity, marginality, and negotiation, generating such theological reflections as Jung Young Lee’s “in-between and in-both” theology and Peter Phan’s “betwixt and between” theology.54 Their works serve as a great treasure of reference for doing diaspora theology in America—but also raise questions. Is the theologian’s agenda and concern the same if the host place is not the United States? The movements from HK since 2014 show the significant differences in terms of agenda, concern, and interpretation between Asian American and HK theologians.55 Diaspora theology perpetually deals with the struggle of identities. As demonstrated in the two case studies above and in diasporic faith communities elsewhere, it is dependent on the sources the community has and the weight given to the sources engaged, 53 Jenny McGill, Kim Kuen Ip, Jeffrey Chiu, and Timotheus Mui, “Identity Negotiation and

Social Activism: Hong Kong Christians during the Umbrella Movement” in Christian Social Activism and Rule of Law in Chinese Societies, eds. Fenggang Yang and Chris White (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021): 125–39. 54 Julius-Kei Kato, Religious Language and Asian American Hybridity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 35–57. 55 See Kwok Pui-lan, “Introduction,” in The Hong Kong Protests and Political Theology, eds. Kwok, Pui-lan and Yip, Francis Ching-wah (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021). Ann Gillian Chu, “Stanley Hauerwas and ‘Chan Tai-man’: An Analysis of Hong Kong Laypeople’s Lived Theology and Hong Kong Theologians’ Engagement with Stanley Hauerwas’s Political Theology from a Practical Theology Perspective,” Practical Theology (2023): 1–15 (retrieved June 8, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/1756073X.2023.2179277. 193

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and it may produce diversified typologies, contradictory forms, and controversial stances. The experience of historical and current diaspora in HK may be beneficial and illuminative to those Christians who are planning to start their own journey of diaspora, and their experience in turn may enrich the orientation and content of diasporic theologies. Last but not least, lay Christians who cannot leave HK should not be ignored in diaspora theologies. To those who migrate from or stay in their homeland, Chinese diasporic theology is still in the making, one branch in a theology of global diaspora, able to contribute to and learn from other diaspora theologies, like a coat of many colors, a body with many parts.56

56 Sam George, “Conclusion,” in Diaspora Christianities: Global Scattering and Gathering of South

Asian Christians, ed. Sam George (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2018): 283–99. 194

Chapter 10

HOLY SPIRIT, MISSION, AND FORMATION Exploring Philip Teng’s Pneumatology Wenjuan Zhao, Oxford Center for Religion and Public Life Philip Teng (滕近輝, 1922–2013) was the first executive committee chair of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church Union of Hong Kong and cofounder of the Lausanne Movement. His spiritual life was nurtured by Western missionaries and Chinese Christian revivalists, both of whose experiences with Chinese church revival empowered by the Holy Spirit, along with his own personal spiritual experiences, led Teng to value the work of the Holy Spirit and stress the Holy Spirit’s role in empowering Christians in their commitment and evangelism. The missionaries and revivalists also laid the foundation for Teng to develop his pneumatology from a fresh angle—intermingling Western missionary spiritualities with Chinese Christian ones—to guide the Alliance Church through the challenges that arose with the second wave of the Charismatic Movement in Hong Kong. In this article, I explore how Teng’s interactions with Western and Chinese Christian leaders shaped his strategy for addressing the most controversial issue of speaking in tongues—including his twelve-principle approach for distinguishing Charismatic Christianity and guiding Hong Kong’s Alliance church through the crisis of the movement. I further explore how Teng’s accounting of the Holy Spirt in response to the charismatic phenomena in Hong Kong formed his unique pneumatology based on the role, work, and power of the Spirit for mission and formation.

Introduction The rise of the Pentecostal Movement in the early 1960s through the ministry of Kong Duen-yee 江端儀 had considerable influence on the church in I would like to thank Dr. K. Y. Cheung Teng, Rev. Bill Teng, and Dr. Chloë Starr for their

valuable contributions to this article.

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Hong Kong.1 While the movement was marginalized within mainline denominational churches, it penetrated some larger Christian communities and attracted many followers, including in Southeast Asia. Its essential characteristic was an emphasis on speaking in tongues (also known as glossolalia) as a sign that a person has received or is filled with the Holy Spirit. Tongues-speaking evoked controversy among Christians and caused a heated debate between Kong and her greatest opponent, Elisha Wu, which continued until Kong’s death.2 Two opposing reactions—rejection and advocacy—to the movement also caused splits among churches, Christian organizations, and Christian leaders. This painful history burdened mainline church leaders and kept their churches away from any form of Pentecostal faith practice.3 As the third wave of the Charismatic Movement was introduced to Hong Kong by Choi Yuen Wan 蔡元雲 and Liu Tat Fong 劉達芳, influential Christian leaders aiming to renew Christian lives in the face of the sociopolitical and economic crises of the 1980s,4 many people, still scarred from the previous movement, were afraid of what this might bring. Many leaders adopted a cautious approach, at first remaining silent in their disapproval. But after the Power, Renewal, and Evangelism (PRE) meeting in Hong Kong in March 1990 conducted by the well-known British and American Charismatic leaders John White and John Wimber, this disapproval became public.5 Patrick So 蘇穎智 and Lau Siu Hong 劉少康, evangelical and Baptist pastors in Hong Kong, declared that charismata had ceased, and that focusing on healing and tongues rather than on preaching the Gospel was counterproductive, as God’s word should always be prioritized.6 Liu Tat Fong, the organizer of the PRE meeting, responded by claiming that charismatic gifts continued and 1 Arnold Yeung 楊牧谷, 狂飙後的微聲—靈恩與事奉 [Charisma and Diakonia] (Hong

Kong: Excellence Book House, 1991): 53.

2 Elisha Wu 吳恩溥, 辨別聖靈與邪靈 [Discerning of Spirits] (Taibei: Shengwen Press,

1992): 126–33.

3 Yeung Hing Kau 楊慶球, 靈風起舞: 聖靈教義與靈恩現象剖析 [Holy Spirit, Please

Come: Studies on the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the Phenomena of Charismatic Movement in 20th Century] (Hong Kong: China Alliance Press, 2007): 111. 4 Enoch Choy 蔡滋忠, 震撼生命的動力—聖靈的權能與香港教會更新 “The Power Stirring Life—The Power of the Holy Spirit and the Renewal of the Church in Hong Kong,” Christian Times 134 (March 25, 1990): 1. 5 Lee Siu Yin 李少燕, 第三波靈恩運動的聖靈觀: 尤以神蹟醫治為討論焦點 “The Pneumatology of the Third Wave: Focusing on Divine Healing,” [「第三波靈恩運動」的聖靈 觀] (christianstudy.com) (accessed May 3, 2023). 6 Patrick So 蘇穎智 and Lau Siu Hong 劉少康, 第三波靈恩運動探究之二 “Exploring the Third Wave of the Charismatic Movement,” Christian Times 142 (May 20, 1990): 1–2. 196

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emphasized the Spirit’s power to renew Christians with spiritual gifts central to the mission of the church—as the church rapidly grew and successfully developed its challenging ministries to sex workers, drug dealers, and the outcast.7 As the debate continued, two distinct theological positions and spiritual ­practices—the cessationist stance and the continuationist stance—became more apparent, and the division among Christians increased. In the context of past experience with the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement, Hong Kong church leaders and theologians were very much aware that they could not afford to ignore the movement. They found it necessary to engage in apologetics in order to convince critics and congregations to avoid a schism. However, this engagement somehow caused the schism to widen. To consolidate the non-Charismatic position and illustrate how the movement posed a danger to the church, mainline church leaders invited historians and theologians from overseas to address issues such as tongues-speaking, gifts of healing, and teaching, in a series of lectures, debates, and publications.8 In contrast, the Charismatic advocates insisted that these miraculous powers played out in their ministries and served as vivid testimony to the prophetic authority of their churches. It seemed that both sides had their legitimate arguments and evidence to warrant their positions, but the dispute painted an overly simplified black-and-white picture of the movement that made it difficult for either side to negotiate with the other in terms of the work of the Spirit. This left some church leaders who were sympathetic to the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement such as Choi Yuen Wan and Philip Teng to ponder whether there was another way to reconcile the dispute, or offer a more balanced view by admitting the movement’s contribution to evangelization in the world while agreeing to consider some supernatural signs as divine. Within this debate, Teng took a position that avoided the dichotomous assumptions.9 He offered a new biblical set of insights to understand and appreciate the positive perimeters of the movement, while disregarding its focus on pursuing supernatural wonders and signs that sometimes stretched into the fantastical. His insights grew out of his personal spiritual experience and A. B. 7 Liu Tat Fong 劉達芳, “香港所需要的權能” [The Power of the Holy Spirit Needed in

Hong Kong] Christian Times 152 ( July 29, 1990): 7.

8 Yeung, Charisma and Diakonia, 65–66. 9 Philip Teng 滕近輝, 一份禮物—給事奉的人 [To Those in God’s Service: A Present]

(Hong Kong: China Graduate School of Theology, 1989): 92–93. 197

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Simpson’s accounting of the Spirit, which offered an authentic recognition of the work and role of the Holy Spirit in empowering Christians in their conversion, sanctification, and evangelization. Teng’s personal spiritual experience also provided evidence for arguing that pursuing outward signs—such as speaking in tongues—to confirm one’s faith was unnecessary. To ensure the Alliance church could stand firm on the biblical teaching of the Spirit and avoid the pitfalls of the movement, Teng wrote a twelve-principle approach to distinguishing Charismatic Christianity, which became crucial guidance for the Alliance church in Hong Kong in navigating the Charismatic discussion. Teng’s significant pneumatology and responses to the movement distinguished him from other scholars in Hong Kong, and a critical survey of his life, calling, and experiences sets the scene for discussion of his unique approach and its relevance today.

Life, Calling, and Spiritual Experiences Unlike many indigenous church leaders of his time, Teng found himself mostly in harmonious relationship and fellowship with Western missionaries, and his Christian faith was nurtured through interactions with them. His Christian life was also deeply impacted by the Chinese revivalists as he had significant familial connections within this group, and he recognized Jonathan Goforth and Song Shangjie as the most important revivalists in the history of the Chinese church revival. His status as an insider in both camps allowed him to embrace Western and Chinese spiritual traditions to discern the role and work of the Holy Spirit when constructing a pneumatology for the Alliance church in Hong Kong. Teng was born into a Christian family: his grandfather was an elder of a Presbyterian church in Shandong, where the Northern American Presbyterian Mission established a majority of the churches from 1861 to 1949;10 Teng’s father graduated from Shantung Christian University (山東省長老會廣文大學神學院) and became a pastor, dedicating his life to preaching in response to a call by the revival evangelist, Ding Limei 丁立美.11 This Presbyterian background ensured Teng was familiar with the profound impact of early revival ministries led by the

10 Philip Teng, 都是恩典—滕近輝回憶錄 [All Is Grace—Memoir of Philip Teng] (Hong

Kong: China Alliance Press, 2009): 2–3. 11 Teng, All Is Grace, 3–5; Philip Teng, “God Bless You,” in The Deeper Life: An Anthology of

English Sermons, Studies, and Poems by Philip Teng, eds. K. Y. Cheung Teng 滕張佳音 and Josephine L. Teng 滕愛橋 (Korea: East-West for MRD, 2020): 436. 198

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Canadian Jonathan Goforth,12 whose experience of miracles and dependence on the Spirit always reminded Teng that the Spirit was the driving force behind the revival and Goforth’s missionary work. Given his family’s connections with Western agencies, Teng’s Christian life was partially cultivated by Western missionaries, where “a cloud of missionaries nurtured Philip’s spiritual growth.”13 In middle school, Teng was invited to an American home to learn how to recite English Bible verses every Sunday and to study the Bible in English,14 while in college, Rev. Paul A. Contento, Teng’s English professor, and his wife, Maida Contento, “became Teng’s spiritual mentors and were instrumental in his call to full-vocational ministry.”15 To strengthen Teng’s Christian faith, Maida Contento even accompanied him from Shandong to Chongqing to attend Christian Summer Camps for college students with the keynote speaker Zhao Junying 趙君影. This is where Teng profoundly experienced personal spiritual revival and witnessed the power and work of the Spirit that prompted Chinese college students—himself included— to devote their lives to evangelization.16 He also confirmed this calling to commit himself to serving God, so the Contentos recommended and sponsored Teng’s enrollment at the University of Edinburgh and arranged for him to stay with a missionary family there.17 Teng’s positive experiences with Western Christians built lifelong friendships and trust, which lay the foundation for him to work closely with Western Alliance missionaries in Hong Kong. For instance, William C. Newbern, the president of the Alliance Bible Seminary (ABS), appointed Teng as a lecturer at the seminary and had worked with Teng closely.18 With Newbern set to retire, the Western Society decided to entrust the Alliance Bible Seminary, founded by Western missionaries, to the Chinese church in Hong Kong and unanimously agreed to appoint Teng in Newbern’s place.19 Teng 12 Philip Teng, 在聖靈中長進:從以弗所書中學習 [Growing in the Holy Spirit] (Hong

Kong: China Alliance Press, 1996): 9. 13 K. Y. Cheung Teng, “Rev. Dr. Philip Teng’s Passion for World Missions,” in The Deeper Life,

eds. K.Y. Cheung Teng and Josephine L. Teng, 17.

14 Teng, All Is Grace, 10; K. Y. Cheung Teng, “Rev. Dr. Philip Teng’s Passion for World Mis 15 16 17 18 19

sions,” 16. K. Y. Cheung Teng, “Rev. Dr. Philip Teng’s Passion for World Missions,” 17. Teng, All Is Grace, 21; Philip Teng, Growing in the Holy Spirit, 12. Teng, All Is Grace, 21–22. Teng, All Is Grace, 34–35. See Tsang Lap Wah 曾立華’s interview with Philip Teng, “滕近輝牧師談教牧健康心理 與事奉態度,” [Philip Teng’s Views on Pastoral Mental Health and Cultivating the Serving Mentality] Pastoral Journal, Alliance Bible Seminary, Issue 1 (April 1996): 118. 199

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therefore became the first Chinese president of the ABS, and the first chair of the executive committee of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) Church Union of Hong Kong.20 Beside missionaries, Teng’s spiritual life was also considerably influenced by earlier Chinese revivalists, which shaped his acknowledgment of the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in Chinese churches. At a young age, Teng attended revival meetings led by Wang Mingdao 王明道 and Song Shangjie ( John Sung, 宋尚節). Song’s fiery sermons and healing practices through earnest prayer had a positive impact on Teng. What impressed Teng the most was that while Song did not hesitate to practice physical healing, he rejected following Pentecostal and Charismatic beliefs to pursue speaking in tongues.21 Instead, Song emphasized that to seek physical healing was first to seek personal confession, healing of the soul, and spiritual revival. Likewise, Song encouraged believers to be filled with the Spirit to love the Lord and people deeply, strive to spread the Gospel, and live holy lives.22 Song’s view of the Spirit was affirmed in Teng’s personal experience, particularly the significant point that tongues-speaking was not a necessary sign that one had received the Spirit, as the Pentecostal-Charismatic church had stressed.23 Song’s teachings of the Spirit find harmony in A. B. Simpson’s (founder of the C&MA) accounting of the Spirit in terms of conversion, regeneration, and holiness. Integrating their teachings and rooted in Scripture, Teng constructed a pneumatology based on the role, work, and power of the Spirit for mission and formation.

Being Spirit-Filled for Evangelization: Addressing the Controversial Issue of Speaking in Tongues Perhaps the practice that most characterizes Pentecostals is speaking in tongues, which they believe is the primary sign of someone who has received the Spirit.24 The practice of tongues-speaking became the most controversial issue in the Teng and Teng, The Deeper Life, 362, 369, 438. Teng, Growing in the Holy Spirit, 11. Teng, All Is Grace, 7–8. Teng stated that he had experienced being filled with the Spirit at a particular point, as evidenced by being full of joy and continuing in private prayer—without speaking in tongues or experiencing other miracles. Teng, Growing in the Holy Spirit, 13. 24 Neil Hudson, “Dealing with the Fire: Early Pentecostal Responses to the Practices of Speaking in Tongues and Spoken Prophecy,” The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, vol. 28, Issue 2 (October 2008): 146. 20 21 22 23

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Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement in Hong Kong, and tackling the link between tongues-speaking and the work of the Spirit became an urgent and primary task facing the non–Pentecostal or Charismatic church. There were two schools of thought on glossolalia among the church leaders in Hong Kong: the cessationists believed that sign gifts such as speaking in tongues and prophecy terminated with the Apostolic Age when the canon was completed,25 while the continuationists were convinced that charismata, glossolalia included, never ceased.26 Teng attempted to balance the two views: he first acknowledged the necessity of encounters with spiritual powers as part of ministry to groups with supernatural worldviews, and that the supernatural phenomenon of receiving the Spirit accompanied with tongues-speaking occurred on occasion, as described in church history, and still occurred in the present day. Teng therefore had no hesitation in encouraging Christians to pursue the power of the Spirit for their ministries.27 However, he disagreed that speaking in tongues and being Spirit-filled were necessarily connected. By associating his personal experiences with those of renowned figures such as John Wesley, Dwight Lyman Moody, and Song Shangjie, Teng provided counterexamples to illustrate that a person can be filled with the Spirit without experiencing glossolalia.28 Teng also warned against mistaking the voice of one’s own feelings and imaginations for the witness of the spirit of God, and called on Christians to distinguish the voice of the Spirit from the delusion of evil.29 His Reformed background informed him that only God’s Word has the authority to testify to supernatural signs. The key characteristic of the Reformed tradition is to measure everything by the Word—every experience must measure up with the Scripture. Referencing the book of Acts, Teng provided biblical evidence that significant figures—Peter, Paul, and other disciples—were filled with the Spirit without speaking in tongues. Certainly, there was a specific phenomenon that some new believers spoke in tongues when the Spirit came upon them during Peter’s preaching at Cornelius’s house, but Teng interpreted this as a unique 25 So and Lau, “Exploring the Third Wave of the Charismatic Movement,” 1–2. 26 Liu, “The Power of the Holy Spirit Needed in Hong Kong,” 7. 27 A. B. Simpson, 能力的澆灌 [The Holy Spirit: Power from on High], trans. Philip Teng

(Hong Kong: China Alliance Press, 1975): 2. 28 Philip Teng, 路標 [Paths to Spirituality] (Hong Kong: China Alliance Press, 1971):

187–89. 29 Teng, Paths to Spirituality, 194. 201

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case—these Spirit recipients were new believers, unlike Peter and Paul, and they had not yet been cleansed by God before the Spirit came upon them. In this instance, a supernatural sign was necessary: God gave them the Spirit to reveal Him, but this event would have no universal application.30 Importantly, Scripture depicting the phenomenon of tongues-speaking in Acts uses the phrase, “the Spirit came upon them,” rather than “the Spirit filled them,” indicating it was the first time that those believers received the Spirit, and the supernatural sign of tongues-speaking carried a meaning only for their particular conversion.31 Due to its infrequent occurrence, Paul was inclined to list the gift of tongues-speaking last among all spiritual gifts, as a minor gift. Additionally, Paul held that it was God, the Author, who granted it to believers, and not everyone could gain it through their own abilities.32 In other words, tongues-speaking as one of the spiritual gifts is not universal for all Christians. The tongues-speaking dispute was hardly settled, however. Some Pentecostal Christians pushed back with the argument that generally, speaking in tongues may not necessarily mean one is filled with the Spirit, but is still a telling sign of a significant spiritual gift.33 Responding to the argument that when a person is filled with the Spirit, they are able to speak in tongues where they had not before, due to the deep spiritual connection that is happening in that moment, Teng pointed out that there is no biblical evidence to warrant this logic. If tonguesspeaking is considered a spiritual gift, from a practical perspective there is no convincing way to identify when tongues-speaking is such a gift and when it is the result of being filled with the Spirit.34 Most importantly, Acts 8:15–17 reveals that when Peter and John pray for the new believer in Samaria, the Holy Spirit comes upon them without tongues-speaking. Here, prayer and the Spirit are intricately interwoven—it is prayer that engages the Spirit, and through prayer, gifts and power from the Spirit nourish believers. Simply put, prayer is the spiritual environment within which the Spirit is bestowed; prayer is the prelude to all new works of God, and the basic condition of the spiritual movement.35 When it comes to tongues-speaking, this boils down to Christians using Teng, Paths to Spirituality, 190–91. Teng, Paths to Spirituality, 191. Teng, Paths to Spirituality, 192–93. Ng Cho Kwong 吳主光, “被聖靈充滿的正解” [An Analysis of What it Means to be Filled with the Spirit], Golden Lampstand Journal 金燈臺活頁刊 (accessed on May 17, 2023, goldenlampstand.org). 34 Teng, Paths to Spirituality, 193. 35 Teng, Growing in the Holy Spirit, 101. 30 31 32 33

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their hearts to discern how the work of the Spirit leads people to faith in Christ, rather than tongues-speaking itself. In line with this argument, Teng holds that Christians should not pursue supernatural signs, wonders, and emotion-driven experiences or promote physical manifestations of the Spirit, such as laughter, shaking, and unusual experiences by claiming that these are equal in importance to the Bible. In doing so, Christians lose the ability to receive grace and listen to God’s voice in ­tranquility—and might even create opportunities for Satan to bring harm to the church.36 For Teng, while Christians acknowledge the possibility and existence of supernatural signs (including tongues-speaking), they should not let signs trump doctrine and form the foundation for their faith.37 To distinguish Charismatic Christianity from the Alliance denominational tradition and guide the Alliance church in its awareness of supernatural signs, Teng wrote his twelve-principle approach, which addresses: exalting and glorifying Christ; pursuing the unity of the church; conducting guided worship rather than services filled with the fantasy actions of its members; focusing on evangelization; using the Word of God to guide believers’ lives; leading believers to love God; bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit; leading a more Christlike life, dealing with sin and pursuing holiness; trusting the Word of God over experience; finding a way to worship God in Spirit and truth; deviating from the way of the cross as leading to a wrong “power encounter theology;” holding critical differences in doctrine in pursuit of church unity, amid the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in Catholic and Protestant theology. Teng felt empathetic toward those who desired to dive into deeper spiritual lives through the work of the Spirit but who got lost in the pursuit of supernatural signs.38 He did not publicly condemn their exercise of the gift of tongues; rather, he pointed them toward the biblical understanding of the work of the Spirit by defining the critical concept of being filled with the Spirit. He articulated how a life filled with the Spirit meant one’s body, soul, and spirit had come under full governance and guidance of the Spirit.39 The fullness of the Spirit should remind believers to be concerned with the needs of others, to become thoughtful of the furtherance of the Gospel, and to give their lives for the salvation of souls around them rather than pursue tongues-speaking per se. In sum, for Teng being filled 36 37 38 39

Teng, Growing in the Holy Spirit, 124–26, 132. Teng, Paths to Spirituality, 193–94. Teng, Paths to Spirituality, 187. Teng, Paths to Spirituality, 43, 81–82. 203

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with the Spirit meant empowering believers to live a Christian life and to equip them for the Christian mission. Given Teng’s view of glossolalia, Teng tried to strike a balance between the cessationist and continuationist views by taking a more holistic approach towards miraculous gifts, neither rejecting supernatural signs nor accepting all charismata. Contrary to Patrick So, Teng believed miraculous events continued to take place even in the present day, for instance, the healing of disease as a miracle resulting from prayer. I would argue that Teng takes a missiological stance to reconcile cessationism and continuationism in order to bring them together for evangelization. As he stated, charismatic manifestations and being filled with the Spirit primarily served as a means of evangelization and the affirmation of God’s work through the Spirit. For instance, Peter was full of the Spirit, and his preaching converted three thousand souls; the Wesleyan church, under the power of the Spirit, had brought Christian revival and influenced both community and society in England.40 The powerful work of the Spirit through the centuries continued in the present and promotes Gospel expansion across the world. By emphasizing the Spirit’s work toward evangelization, Teng pointed out that in its nature, tongues-speaking is a human language rather than the indecipherable language depicted in Acts; it enabled the early disciples to communicate the Gospel with those who spoke different languages. Based on Teng’s biblical interpretation, tongues-speaking “was itself a clear and divinely appointed indication that the coming of the Holy Spirit was going to send the Gospel to all races and nations where different ‘tongues’ are spoken.”41 In this manner, speaking with tongues “was a supernatural sign of assurance that God graciously gave to His Church at the outset of their task of worldwide evangelism,” and was, moreover, “still the greatest encouragement to those who are engaged in evangelism and missions today.”42 In opposition to the Pentecostal and Charismatic proposition that tongues-speaking represented a sign that one has received the Spirit and is regarded as one of the most important pieces of evidence for one’s salvation, Teng engaged his biblical interpretation to present a different view: tongues-speaking as an antidote to the confusion of languages that happened at the building of the 40 Philip Teng, “The Great Commission,” in The Deeper Life, eds. K. Y. Cheung Teng and

J­osephine L. Teng, 426; Philip Teng, “The Basis for Missions in Acts: The Holy Spirit and Missions,” in The Deeper Life, eds. K. Y. Cheung Teng and Josephine L. Teng, 69–70. 41 Teng, “The Basis for Missions in Acts,” 69. 42 Teng, “Crises in the Apostolic Church,” in The Deeper Life, eds. K. Y. Cheung Teng and ­Josephine L. Teng,170–71. 204

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Tower of Babel—the chaos caused by the sin of self-exaltation of human beings against God.43 Teng’s interpretation seems to echo Genesis 1:2 where the Spirit is depicted as a force that establishes order in the very creation of the world, the principle of righteousness as opposed to immoral being.44 To deliver people from the consequence of the confusion of languages—which created moral, religious, and social chaos—God sent the Spirit into the world to bring redeemed people from all nations and ages into one bond of love in Christ, as symbolized by the supernatural phenomenon of speaking in tongues: all tongues united in praising and proclaiming God and God’s great works.45

The Spirit’s Role and Divine Power for Missions Having rejected the view that tongues-speaking is closely linked to receiving the Spirit, Teng rooted his arguments in biblical evidence to state that the ultimate goal of receiving the Spirit is to carry out the Great Commission. The biblical basis of evangelization is that the Spirit enabled Jesus Christ to fulfill his mission, and the Spirit enabled Jesus Christ’s early disciples and present followers to carry on the same mission. Given the correlation between Jesus Christ’s sending the Spirit to the early disciples and the Spirit’s empowering them for mission, the missiological implication is that the Spirit’s descent begins with mission, and mission work is connected with the leading of the Spirit. Teng therefore primarily focused on the role and work of the Spirit within the framework of God’s mission (the missio Dei). Considering the importance of correlating receiving the Spirit and mission, it is essential to identify the similarities and differences between Teng’s and Liu Tat Fong’s approaches. Both Teng and Liu underscored the intrinsic relationship of the Spirit and mission, but they did not approach the Spirit’s role in mission from a dogmatic perspective because the missional challenge called for more realworld applications. However, the difference is that Liu’s Charismatic model emphasized that being filled with the spirit endowed followers with supernatural powers to cast out evil and liberate marginalized communities such as sex workers, drug dealers, and the outcast. For this community, according to Liu, their spirituality consisted of mystical, supernatural, and magical notions, and 43 Teng, “Crises in the Apostolic Church,” 171. 44 F. B. Denio, “The Scriptural Teaching Respecting the Holy Spirit,” Journal of Biblical Litera-

ture, vol. 15, no. 1 (1896): 135.

45 Teng, “Crises in the Apostolic Church,” 171. 205

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the marginalized community believed that in order to comprehend and implement the gospel, they had to manifest supernatural power.46 The biblical model led Teng, by contrast, to stress the encounter with the Spirit as a two-way interaction between the receiver and mission. A person receiving the Spirit first experienced life transformation and did not merely receive supernatural power; it is the life-transformation and dwelling in the Spirit that empowered them to enter mission fields to proclaim the Gospel. While receiving the Spirit for Liu meant to receive supernatural power for mission; for Teng, it led toward a deeper commitment with the God of Jesus Christ to fulfill the Great Commission, so supernatural power is not the center of the experience. Moreover, the Spirit was a necessary divine power in inspiring the disciples to initiate mission work. Teng argued that Jesus Christ forbade the disciples to start mission work before they were equipped with the divine supply and commanded them to wait until the Spirit came to them; early disciples needed to receive supernatural power to defend against a supernatural enemy, which only the Spirit could supply.47 Regarding biblical depictions of enemies and evil, it is worth noting that Pentecostals and Charismatics seem to be more inclined to believe in the existence of good and evil spirits than other Christians.48 The concept of good and evil spirits are perhaps foreign to Western culture but are familiar to Chinese from local folk beliefs and practices. The good or evil spirit refers to a ghost (鬼) which is the spirit form of a person who has passed away.49 To differentiate themselves from Pentecostals and Charismatics, other Christians in Hong Kong are less likely to mention the dangers of dark powers at work in this world; their churches tend to interpret the evil spirit as a symbol of Satan’s power or presence, but not as a living entity when it comes to Scriptures related to Satan and evil spirits. However, Teng rejected these rational and cultural views of Satan’s work and never shied away from asserting that there are spirits of darkness at work in this world.50 For him, the powers of darkness were manifest in superstition and sin, ruling over human hearts and causing people to refuse God.51 Admitting to 46 Liu, “The Power of the Holy Spirit Needed in Hong Kong,” 7. 47 Teng, “The Basis for Missions in Acts,” 67–68; Philip Teng, “The Great Commission,” in The

Deeper Life, eds. K. Y. Cheung Teng and Josephine L. Teng, 425.

48 Yeung Hing Kau, Holy Spirit, Please Come, 113, 115, 118. 49 Marjorie Topley and Jean DeBernardi, Cantonese Society in Hong Kong and Singapore: Gender,

Religion, Medicine and Money (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011): 375–77.

50 Teng, “Crises in the Apostolic Church,” 173. 51 Teng, “The Basis for Missions in Acts,” 75.

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supernatural evil powers, Teng encouraged Christians to seek a new and more biblical orientation toward God’s supernatural power—that is, to seek to receive the supernatural power of the Spirit rather than the signs thereof and to show the power and fruits of the Spirit in their lives and service.52 Understanding supernatural evil power in this way, Teng put little emphasis on the specific display of God’s divine power through wonders and signs. He knew that locals’ close ties to other religions could shape how Cantonese Christians understood mysterious experiences.53 Christian converts from local folk religions in particular may connect to supernatural powers that are most familiar to them. Rather than stressing divine signs, Teng located the inspirational work of the Spirit within Christian faith practice. He focused on the biblical orientation of spiritual empowerment to form a distinct missiological perspective of the Spirit’s role and provide the Alliance church in Hong Kong with a helpful rubric. His biblical interpretation of the Spirit’s role created a suitable platform for the practical aspects of the Spirit’s work in Christian mission in light of his understanding of God, the world, and mission. While Teng followed the traditional exegetical method of moving biblical text to context, he also took the importance of the local church and its special religious experiences into consideration in the interpretive and practical mission work. Based on the Spirit’s initiative and active involvement in mission, Teng portrayed the Spirit as, first of all, the author and completer of missions. The coming of the Spirit inspired the disciples to go out into a hostile world and testify to the story of Jesus Christ to all people.54 Considering the explicit commitment to scriptural interpretation as a missional undertaking in challenging mission fields, Teng presents a contribution to a conservative evangelical hermeneutical circle in two ways: Teng’s thought explains the relative absence of the Spirit’s interpretive role in the local evangelical methodologies of biblical interpretation, and it encourages both action and attempt to recover the practice of biblical interpretation concerning the Spirit’s role and its relation to mission. The Spirit was, secondly, the promoter of missions. The Spirit took a leading part in every movement of the early Church—for example, prompting the disciples to reach out to the first gentile family in the city of Caesarea and establishing 52 Teng, “Crises in the Apostolic Church,” 172–74. 53 Kim Kwong Chan, “Multi-Faith Dynamics in Hong Kong: From Pluralism to Politicization,”

Review of Faith & International Affairs, vol. 12, Issue 1, ( January 2021): 29–31; Marjorie Topley and Jean DeBernardi, Cantonese Society in Hong Kong and Singapore, 374–77. 54 Teng, “The Basis for Missions in Acts,” 67. 207

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the mission-minded church at Antioch. Thirdly, the Spirit is the divine power for missions. The Spirit works in two ways, infilling and outpouring, and both infilling and outpouring work together to bring missions to fruition. Teng’s interpretation of the Spirit’s infilling power is similar to Calvin’s doctrine of divine illumination. Both doctrines tackle the incapacity of the human to overcome sin, but through the Spirit’s illuminative or infilling work, they are enabled to do so. In Reformed tradition, although the Word of God is sufficient to produce faith, faith in God to renew sinners’ status has no effect without the illuminative (or infilling) work of the Spirit. Both concepts of divine illumination and infilling power display the redemptive role of the Spirit. The Spirit is the strategist of missions, whose strategies were evident in the early Church and continue to inspire the present church. The primary task of the church was to evangelize the world, but the Spirit also called on the early Church to initiate mercy ministries to congregations. Teng highlighted and extended this practice beyond the Christian fellowship—under his leadership and encouragement, North Point Alliance Church undertook voluntary or service work, including charity work, prison ministry, and medical fellowships to benefit others and align with local social changes. In addition to mercy ministries, Teng was also impelled by his understanding of the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace to encourage Christians to pursue the unity of the church (Ephesians 4:3). He had the insight to expound that the unity of Christians could produce the power to convince the world of the reality of the Gospel. Where there was unity in the church, the work of the Spirit would be more evident, the church more blessed, and God’s glory better manifest.55 Finally, the Spirit supplies missions in multiple ways. In the biblical accounts, it was the Spirit who called and recruited volunteers for mission fields—calling workers for definite service that God had prepared for them; the Spirit called the best—the Antioch church had reason to keep Barnabas and Paul at home, but the Spirit sent them away.56 The Spirit’s supply was not limited to workers but extended to financial giving to support missionaries. The Macedonian churches set an example—they not only provided financial support for mission work, they also gave themselves to God to answer the Spirit’s calling. With this depiction of the Spirit’s role, Teng’s pneumatology is informed and formed by his biblical and missional approach. This type of pneumatology tends to prioritize and 55 Teng, Growing in the Holy Spirit, 70. 56 Teng, “The Basis for Missions in Acts,” 82–83; Philip Teng, Paths to Spirituality, 258–59. 208

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demonstrate the practical aspects of the work of the Spirit in a missional context, rather than focusing on an abstract theoretical analysis of the Spirit’s role and nature. The significance of the Spirit as the third person in trinity, based on Teng’s trinitarian approach to mission, lies in the practical emphasis he gave to the Spirit as an agent of the missio Dei to make Jesus Christ known to the world.

Seeking Deeper Life for Mission through the Power of the Holy Spirit Teng’s understanding of the role and power of the Spirit guided Chinese Christians to follow the leadership of the Spirit to expand their own churches and achieve a new revival of the Chinese church.57 Teng believed an expanded and revived Chinese church would require Christians to form deeper spiritual lives through the power of the Spirit, a belief that grew out of Teng’s own spiritual experiences as he was impacted by the Christian revival movement in China. It also derived from his diagnosis of the impact of secularism on the church in his time and his eschatological view of the world. Teng believed our time was one of waning faith, rising antagonism toward religion, and preoccupation with materialism. Philosophical sophistication and humanistic reasoning had usurped the seat of theology and altered its makeup beyond recognition.58 The traditional values and beliefs that Christians once held firm were lost, and Christian heritage was collapsing. Christians seemed more inclined to imitate this world than to follow Jesus Christ, and biblical teachings on godliness and sanctification had become unwelcome.59 As a result, Christians had lost the power of the Christian faith and failed to preach Christ and live for Christ. From Teng’s perspective, the remedy for Christians to overcome this worldly life and restore the image of God was to rely on God and the power of the Spirit to live a deeper life. Teng’s focus on deeper life was influenced by A. B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA). Living a deeper life has always been a part of the spiritual heritage of the C&MA denomination, and is shared by all national churches in the Alliance family worldwide.60 The concept of 57 Teng, 靈力剖視 [Analysis of Spiritual Power] (Hong Kong: Tien Dao Publishing House,

1979): 97. 58 Teng, “God’s Messengers for Such a Time as This,” in The Deeper Life, eds. Teng and Teng,

370.

59 Teng, “God’s Messengers for Such a Time as This,” 371. 60 Teng, “The Deeper Life,” in The Deeper Life, eds. Teng and Teng, 388. 209

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deeper life in the denomination covers the biblical-theological elements that Simpson emphasized—regeneration (second conversion),61 sanctification, and union with Jesus Christ—which were equally stressed and further developed by Teng to strengthen the Alliance church.62 According to Teng, “regeneration” is the result of justification by faith and refers to the supernatural work of the Spirit—leading sinners to confess and repent, and uniting the sinner with Jesus Christ.63 In other words, it is the Spirit who empowers the individual to respond faithfully to the saving acts of the Triune God, a response that consists of forgiveness, regeneration, cleansing, and incorporation into the people of God. Jesus Christ attributes regeneration to the Spirit, as Jesus tells Nicodemus that no one may enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit ( John 3:5). Here, Jesus echoes imagery from Ezekiel (36: 25, 27), where God sprinkles clean water on his people to cleanse them from their uncleanness and put his Spirit within them. This means, Teng notes, that regeneration is not the work of human beings but of God alone.64 Drawing on Simpson’s theological legacy, Teng described how sanctification follows after justification, regeneration, and a gradual process to journey with God; believers thus should continue to anticipate the ongoing destruction of sinful nature and transformation into the image of Christ by the Spirit. Sanctification and transformation arise as the Spirit convicts a person of sin; it is the Spirit’s work to bring believers to Christ and provide them with the power to be faithful to Christ. Sanctification is thus regarded as an essential part of salvation because Christians are saved from sin through Jesus Christ’s forgiveness and justification, rather than through effort of the self.65 Given this significance, Christians are not sanctified apart from the Spirit’s work, but only as they abide in the Spirit continually and live under the Spirit’s power. This doctrine of sanctification is closely linked to the doctrine of salvation through Christ and the work of the Spirit, and Teng’s treatment of the doctrine of sanctification is similar to that of Simpson. However, the language Simpson adopted to express 61 In Simpson’s work, the two terms regeneration and second conversion are interchangeable. 62 Wong Choi Lin 黃彩蓮, 宣信博士、滕近輝牧師與宣道會的聖靈觀 “A. B. Simpson’s

and Philip Teng’s Views of the Holy Spirit,” in 滕近輝牧師的事奉、思想與人生: 華人教 牧學術研討會專輯 [The Life, Ministry and Thought of Rev. Philip Teng: Collected Essays of Chinese Ministers Colloquium] ed. John Wai-on Chan 陳韋安 (Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 2016): 260. 63 Teng, Growing in the Holy Spirit, 19–20. 64 Teng, Growing in the Holy Spirit, 20–21. 65 Teng, Growing in the Holy Spirit, 82–88, 131. 210

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his view is slightly different, explaining that Christians’ mystical union with Christ is the key to sanctification,66 and the baptism and indwelling of the Spirit within Christians would deliver and keep them from the power of self.67 The Methodist legacy of the doctrine of sanctification can be found in the work of both Simpson and Teng. While both had a Presbyterian background and maintained a more Reformed doctrine of sin—accounting of sin as the total depravity of humankind, they affirmed a Wesleyan optimism without critique of Wesley’s doctrine of sin when it came to the possibility of sanctification. In Wesley’s theology, love is the kernel of sanctification and of all Christian life. In contrast, Simpson and Teng spread the idea that although sanctification stems from regeneration, union with Jesus Christ under the guidance of the Spirit remains the essence of sanctification.68 Despite the fact that Wesley and Simpson were influenced by the eighteenth-century Revival movement and its related historical materials, for Simpson, the doctrine of sanctification originally grew out of his own spiritual experiences and his interpretation of the Bible, focusing on Christ rather than sin.69 Following the Alliance tradition, Teng continued Simpson’s views of sanctification in his own preaching, where sanctification came through union with Christ by building an intimate relationship with God and receiving the Spirit to dwell within believers.70 Unlike Wesley’s gradual sanctification, Simpson proposed instantaneous sanctification to describe the believer’s spiritual quickening and deeper life. Simpson illustrated that sanctification was not personal character slowly attained, but to receive the Spirit to dwell within believers and lift them up to all the heights of grace and glory that Christ has attained.71 Most importantly, union with God for both Simpson and Teng meant living a Christian life committed to evangelization that was grounded in God’s ultimate purpose in mission. 66 According to A. E. Thompson, “this mystic union with Christ appears in every phase of

67 68 69 70 71

[Simpson’s] teaching,” The Life of A. B. Simpson (New York: The Christian and Missionary Alliance Publishing Company, 1920): 177. A. B. Simpson, A Larger Christian Life (accessed on August 10, 2022), http://www.archive. org/details/. A. B. Simpson, The Gentle Love of The Holy Spirit. Jan Ching 湛清, trans., 在聖靈裏的更新 (Hong Kong: China Alliance Press, 2014): 31, 46, 51, 54. Matthew Friedman, Union with God in Christ: Early Christian and Wesleyan Spirituality as an Approach to Islamic Mysticism, (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2017): 70. A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Christian Publications, Inc., 1980): 22–23. Simpson, The Christ Life, 22–23. 211

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Simpson’s and Teng’s notion of sanctification linked to Jesus Christ and the Spirit is reflected in the faith statement of the C&MA church. Its logo contains symbols—the cross, pitcher, laver, and crown—representing the fourfold gospel of the sufficiency of Christ, and illustrating the C&MA’s core belief that Jesus Christ is the Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King. The laver represents ­sanctification—the daily cleansing from sin by the power of the indwelling Spirit.72 The Coming King represents the principal element of Christian eschatology, that is, the coming of Jesus Christ in glory at the end of time. Given the doctrine of sanctification, the hope of Christ’s return, and his command to evangelize to the utmost under the power of the Spirit, Teng encouraged Christians to live a deeper life for mission and for witnessing to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. One early root of Teng’s ideas of deeper life is found in a popular book by Presbyterian minister William Boardman, The Christian Higher Life, which became a major catalyst of Keswick spirituality.73 As a Keswick speaker in 1975 in New Zealand and in 1977 in the United Kingdom, Teng appreciated Boardman’s teaching that Christians who are open to the work of the Spirit can live a more holy and less sinful life.74 However, Teng constructed his own version of the Christian deeper life, with infusions of the teachings of Boardman and Simpson; both of which carry the legacy of the Wesleyan-Holiness movement but differ from traditional Wesleyan-Holiness theology and spirituality of Christian perfection. For Teng, living a deeper life was seeking union with Jesus Christ: “Christ living in me is the real origin of the deeper life.”75 The deeper life was never an “ingrown” life but rather an outreaching life in order to save and bless others; a self-negating life, and one that could be multiplied in two ways—living it to its fullest possibilities and reproducing it in the lives of others; the deeper life was a healing life with its healing power rooted in the cross of Christ.76 The deeper life was, furthermore, a vitalizing life, in that once a Christian’s spiritual life was vitalized they could live more abundantly; and a fruitful life, not just blessing the self but influencing and molding many others to revive the work of God; the 72 English Ministry | Vancouver Chinese Alliance Church (vcac.ca) (accessed on August 10,

2022). 73 R. Brown, “Higher-life Theology,” in New Dictionary of Theology, eds. Sinclair B. Ferguson, J.

I. Packer, and David F. Wright (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988): 301.

74 Teng, “The Deeper Life,” 440–41. 75 Teng, “The Deeper Life,” 389. 76 Teng, “The Deeper Life,” 389–92. 212

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deeper life was a uniting life, flowing out of union with Christ to become a part of a movement of blessing to heal and transform people.77 Teng’s fundamental goal by emphasizing the deeper life was to address the Charismatic movement’s focus on glossolalia as evidence of being filled with the Spirit, and essentially encouraging the Alliance church to maintain a fuller focus on Christ and the Spirit’s work in mission.

Conclusion Chinese theology in highly educated, professional Christian circles often focuses more on Christology and ecclesiology than on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, teaching on the Spirit is rare in both fundamentalist and liberal Chinese pulpits, outside of Pentecostal or Charismatic churches. A turning point came in Hong Kong with the rise of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement in the 1990s, and churches’ approaches had to change. Shifting to an emphasis on the role and power of the Spirit for mission, ministries, and formation required church leaders and scholars to engage with the movement. One significant element that sets Philip Teng apart from other leaders is that he did not publicly declare all Pentecostal-Charismatic churches to be false, and worked with them on certain missions and ministries. Even so, Teng still attempted to bring the theological focus back to the biblical description of the Spirit’s work and instructed on how to reform these churches so that the true form of the Spirit-filled church would be restored. Teng’s approach to pneumatology provided a mediating and balanced—biblical and theological—response to the heated debate and the pitfalls of the movement. His pneumatology remains largely scriptural in foundation, articulating how the Spirit functions as God’s agent to empower Christians for missions and formation. Teng’s approach was in dialogue with his context and time, merging early indigenous revivalist experiences with those of his own to offer a more positive prospect for constructive engagement with the Pentecostal movement, while embracing the Spirit’s supernatural power for mission work. His pneumatology has its particular place within the cultural matrix, and it enriches pneumatological exploration today in the Chinese church beyond Hong Kong. Significantly, Teng’s account of the Spirit also brings a non-Western voice into a wider theological conversation on the topic. 77 Teng, “The Deeper Life,” 393–95. 213

Chapter 11

THE QUEER THEOLOGY ACADEMY A Praxis Community for Chinese Queer Theologies Hung Shin-Fung, Duke University Introduction Henry and Edgar are a gay couple from Hong Kong. I met them at a meeting of queer-affirming Christian groups when I interned at the Queer Theology Academy (性神學社, QTA) back in the Summer of 2017.1 They were representatives of Compassion—HK LGBTQ Catholics Union (摯情同行—香港天 主教同志小組)—Edgar was born a Catholic and has been a devout member of the church. They married in the United Kingdom later that year, as homosexual marriage is not legal in Hong Kong. Upon return, they conducted a marriage blessing ceremony under Rev. Grace Bok, the only openly lesbian minister in the city. When the news reached the Catholic Cardinal Tong, he condemned their marriage and removed Edgar from the Diocesan Vocation Commission. Around the same time, the couple found that Henry could not legally live in the apartment under Edgar’s name as the Housing Authority did not recognize their marriage. In 2019, Edgar filed a judicial review to challenge the Authority’s position. Abandoned by the church, burdened by the lawsuit, and experiencing marriage problems, the deeply depressed Edgar committed suicide and died I would like to thank the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University for sponsoring

and Dr. Chloë Starr for hosting the Chinese Theologies Conference and including the voices of Chinese queer Christians. I am also indebted to Rose Wu, Pearl Wong, and Erica Ridderman for reading and discussing with me earlier drafts of this chapter and offering their valuable feedback. 1 Unless otherwise indicated, “queer” is used as an umbrella term in this chapter to refer to people with diverse genders and sexualities, including but not limited to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, queer and/or questioning, intersex, asexual, two-spirit, and other affirmative ways that people choose to identify themselves.

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in December 2020. Henry, not legally recognized as Edgar’s husband in Hong Kong, could not even bring Edgar’s body from the hospital. In 2021, Henry filed another judicial review urging the government to recognize him as Edgar’s surviving spouse. While they won both lawsuits, the government appealed, and the case may take years to settle.2 Such is the life of a well-educated and middleclass Christian gay couple in Hong Kong. Compared with most others in the queer community in the city, they were already in an advantaged position: many others could not even contemplate marriage, or have the resources to marry and have a home. Living in a city where queer rights are largely unguaranteed and Chinese Christian communities are mostly unfriendly to queer people, queer Christians in Hong Kong are marginalized by society and the church.3 For them, doing queer theology is a matter of survival and salvation. This chapter does not claim to represent the rich and diverse experiences and theologizing efforts of the Chinese queer Christian community; instead, it focuses on one major stream—the Queer Theological Academy (QTA) and its theological praxes. The QTA is a Hong Kong–based theological community founded in 2009 by the feminist and queer theologian Rose Wu and her students. It has pioneered the embodying and incubating of queer theologies, first in the local context of Hong Kong, then gradually in Sinophone contexts. The QTA embraces local queer bodily and social experiences as important theologizing resources. Drawing from worldwide liberation, feminist, and queer theologies, the QTA refuses to be the authoritative expert that theologizes others’ experiences. Instead, it invites oppressed sexual minorities to engage in journeys in which they try to narrate their own stories theologically, resulting in mutual empowerment and life transformations. The QTA theologizes from a position of “triple marginality”—as queers and Christians, it stands at the margin of Chinese societies; as Chinese and queers, it stands at the margin of the global Christian community; as Chinese and Christians, it stands at the margin of the worldwide queer circle. However, it is from these margins that the QTA has made significant contributions. First, it is a pioneering and model community 2 Wong Kin-Long 黃健朗, “遲來的平權勝訴 陸地上的傷痕隨亡夫骨灰落入大海 男

同志：他走了，我不為他做，有誰做？” [A Delayed Affirmative Victory/ Wounds Washed into the Sea with the Ashes of the Late Husband/ Gay Man: He Is Gone, If I Do Not Do This for Him, Who Will?], CitizenNews, November 28, 2021, https://www.hkcnews.com/article/48194. 3 “Chinese” in this article refers to ethnic Chinese, including those who do not identify themselves with the People’s Republic of China. 216

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among Chinese and Asian queer Christians. By providing queer Christian resources in Chinese, it incubates Chinese queer theologies and nurtures young Chinese queer Christian leaders worldwide. Moreover, its queer theological praxes provide a clear Christian voice in local and regional queer movements, especially against the Chinese Christian Right, which is strongly influenced by its American counterparts and supported by an extensive network of local evangelical churches.4 This chapter argues that the QTA’s theologies are praxis-oriented and communal; aside from writing papers, it does theology through community building and mutual nourishment. Furthermore, embodying yet constantly queering its fluid and hybrid Chinese, queer, and Christian identities, the QTA engages the interrelated and overlapping methods of queering Chinese theologies, contextualizing queer theologies, and theologizing Chinese queers in doing theology.5 More specifically, this chapter investigates the QTA’s methods of queering mainstream Chinese Christian sexual ethics, contextualizing queer theologies into Chinese contexts, and theologizing Chinese queer bodily and social experiences. In the following sections, this chapter first tells the story of the QTA’s establishment under the inspiration and nurturing of Rose Wu. It outlines the QTA’s key ministries, then discusses their praxis and communal natures and how the QTA’s understanding of queer, Chinese, and Christian identities have continuously evolved. A critical analysis of its three interrelated theological methods will follow, with examples from their various applications. The chapter concludes by exploring future directions in incubating Chinese queer theologies.

Rose Wu and the Incubation of the QTA The Queer Theology Academy began in 2009 as part of the ongoing theological praxes of Dr. Rose Wu (胡露茜) and her students at the Divinity School of 4 See Ching Yau 游靜, “香港基督教右派運動的論述建構與發展軌跡：以明光社及香

港性文化學會為案例” [“The Hong Kong ‘Christian Right’: Discursive Formation of The Society for Truth and Light and Hong Kong Sex Culture Society”], Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies 93 (2013): 131–81, and Li Hsuan-Ping 黎璿萍, “守護誰的家？初探 台灣『護家運動』的反同策略與論述” [“Guarding Whose Home? A Preliminary Study of the Taiwanese Pro-family Movement”] (Master’s thesis, Soochow University, 2018). 5 Although by “contextualizing” I mainly mean contextualizing into the Chinese context, I avoid the term “Sinicization” as it is ambiguous and sometimes used in relation to endeavors that promote Chinese state nationalist agendas. See for instance, Fangyi Cheng, “The Evolution of ‘Sinicisation,’ ” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 31, no. 2 (2021): 321–42. 217

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Chung Chi College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Wu, a feminist and queer theologian and a social activist in Hong Kong, firmly believes in praxis and engaged pedagogy. Upon graduating from Chung Chi with a Bachelor of Divinity in 1988, she founded the Hong Kong Women Christian Council. In 1989, she became the only female among the founders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. In 1998, she began her Doctor of Ministry, studying feminist and queer theology under Carter Heyward, an Episcopal priest and lesbian feminist theologian. In 2000, Wu assumed the General Secretaryship of the Hong Kong Christian Institute. In 2002, she cofounded and became the first convener of the Civil Human Rights Front, an alliance of nongovernment organizations that organized the July 1, 2003 protest in which over 500,000 people of Hong Kong marched to oppose the enactment of the National Security Law in Hong Kong. For Wu, theology is not only done and learned from books but, more importantly, in actions. Wu’s activism and theologizing go hand-in-hand. In 2002, she started to teach at Chung Chi and the Hong Kong Lutheran Seminary. Over the years, her courses have included “Hong Kong’s Social Ministries,” “Christianity and Feminism,” “Church and Women’s Ministry,” and “Ethics, the Church, and Sexuality.” In terms of her teaching philosophy, she notes that: “As a feminist and queer theologian, I always believe that teaching requires a political commitment because we are constantly countering patriarchal and heterosexist hegemonic assumptions that women and sexual minorities are genetically inferior.”6 Drawing upon Paulo Freire’s pedagogical insights and Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz’s and Yolanda Tarango’s liberation models, Wu adopts the hermeneutical spiral that involves four interwoven and interfacing movements: story sharing, analyzing, liturgizing, and strategizing.7 She sees this spiral as “an ongoing process of conscientization—a critical reflection on action—within the faith community.”8 And this ongoing process involves a critical attempt to reveal reality, placing the stories of the oppressed at the center, making the connections between the personal and the political, analyzing the interconnections of different forms of

6 Rose Wu, “A Pedagogy to Empower Queer Voices in Hong Kong,” In God’s Image 34, no. 2

(December 2015): 29.

7 Wu, “A Pedagogy to Empower,” 29. 8 Wu, “A Pedagogy to Empower,” 29. 218

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oppression, creating sacred space for communal celebration and life-­ affirming spirituality, and formulating concrete strategies and actions.9 Wu’s theological praxes and pedagogy incubated the QTA and became its guiding spirit if not its DNA. These themes will reappear in the following narrative of the QTA’s establishment and its theological praxes. In 2009, Wu gathered a group of Chung Chi students and formed the “Queer Theology Study Group” (性神研究小組). In the same year, the Blessed Minority Christian Fellowship (基恩之家, BMCF), by then still the only queer-affirming church in Hong Kong, invited Wu to preach at their first evangelical meeting. She turned this into an opportunity to empower BMCF members and put the Study Group into practice. Wu asked the Group to organize workshops for BMCF members so that members of the group and the church could jointly theologize their queer Christian experience. In 2011, members of the Study Group came out together during one of Chung Chi’s weekly services. The following week, they invited lesbian minister Rev. Grace Bok to preach and consecrate the Eucharist. They subsequently formed the Queer Affirming Fellowship (酷兒團契). This coming-out act was a radical theological praxis to “reveal reality,” which placed “the stories of the oppressed at the center” and transformed personal and communal relationships. In 2013, when most of the core members of the fellowship were about to graduate, Wu encouraged them to establish an organization outside the school to continue their ministries. Pearl Wong (黃寶珠), a bisexual graduate, responded to the call and became the QTA’s founder and executive director.

The QTA as a Praxis Community The core ministries of the QTA include publishing, advocacy, organizing workshops and conferences on queer theologies, as well as providing pastoral counseling and spiritual formation. In 2013, the year it was incorporated, it published the volume Sexual/Beings II: Who is not Queer? The Exploration on Hong Kong Queer Theology (人．性II—誰不是酷兒？本土酷兒神學初探),10 the first

9 Wu, “A Pedagogy to Empower,” 29. 10 Ming-Yee Mak 麥明儀, ed., 人．性II—誰不是酷兒？本土酷兒神學初探 [Sexual/

Beings II: Who is not Queer? The Exploration on Hong Kong Queer Theology] (Hong Kong: Queer Theology Academy & Hong Kong Christian Institute, 2013). 219

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book on queer theology ever published in Chinese.11 In 2016, it published the Chinese version of New York priest Patrick S. Cheng’s Radical Love: Introduction to Queer Theology. In 2018, it published its second edited volume on queer theologies: Sexual/Beings III: Queering Hermeneutics in Asian Chinese Contexts (人．性III—酷兒「釋」經).12 Besides publishing, the QTA has advocated for queer rights in Hong Kong and the Sinophone world, especially against the dominant Christian Right. It also offers theological education; through a series of summer workshops, “Queer Theologies Project for Asian Chinese Christians” (華人酷兒神學暑期工作 坊), held in 2014, 2019, and 2022 (online), the QTA nurtured over a hundred young Chinese queer Christians in Asia and around the world. It even provides scholarships for participants who pursue further theological education. In addition, the QTA addresses pastoral concerns for Chinese queers through workshops like “Seminar on Accompanying Suicidally-Inclined Sexual Minorities.” Furthermore, the Academy creates Chinese meditation and liturgical resources from queer perspectives. For instance, in 2019, it released Walking with Our Queer God: Weekly Reflections 2019, and during Lent, it held “The Queer Stations of the Cross,” which linked the remembrance of local, regional, and global queer suffering with the remembrance of the suffering of Christ on the cross.13 Wu and the QTA, influenced by Latin American liberation and feminist theologians, embrace the praxis model of theology formation, which missiologist Stephen Bevans describes as “faith seeking intelligent action.”14 For QTA 11 The first volume in the series, 人．性—香港教會不能迴避的牧養需要 [Sexual/Beings:

The Inevitable Ministry of Hong Kong Churches], was published in 2009 by Hong Kong Christian Institute, an important ecumenical organization that Rose Wu led as General Secretary from 2000–2007. Wu wrote a preface for the book as a number of the contributors were her students at Chung Chi. The volume includes an article by Davy Wong on queer theology: Davy Wong 黃美鳳, “從酷兒神學角度探討—合乎公義的親密關係” [“Just Intimate Relationships: From the Perspective of Queer Theology”], 人．性—香港教會不能迴避 的牧養需要 [Sexual/Beings: The Inevitable Ministry of Hong Kong Churches], eds. Ming-Yee Mak 麥明儀, Wing-Sze Tong 湯詠詩, Kit-Ying Choi 蔡潔瑩, and Davy Wong 黃美鳳 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Christian Institute, 2009): 25–50. 12 Rose Wu 胡露茜, and Vivien Tsang 曾景恒, eds., 人．性III—酷兒「釋」經 [Sexual/ Beings III: Queering Hermeneutics in Asian Chinese Contexts] (Hong Kong: Queer Theology Academy & Hong Kong Christian Institute, 2018). 13 Queer Theology Academy 性神學社, 與酷兒基督同行：每周靈修筆記 2019 [Walking with Our Queer God: Weekly Reflections 2019] (Hong Kong: Queer Theology Academy, 2019). 14 Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002): 73. 220

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members, true theological knowledge and actions are inseparable—theological knowledge is discovered through actions, and actions are, in turn, informed by theological knowledge. This theologizing process is a never-ending spiral. Many QTA members are theologically educated doers. Rose Wu, the honorary advisor, is a feminist/queer/human rights/democratic activist. The executive director Pearl Wong is a bisexual activist. Rev. Grace Bok is a lesbian minister who has pastored One Body in Christ (眾樂教會), a queer-affirming congregation, since 2011. Eric Sin worked at Midnight Blue (午夜藍), and Lai-Kwan Hui founded JJJ Association (姐姐仔會); both organizations advocate for sex workers. These QTA members are queer fighters for queers. Furthermore, while they all contributed to the QTA’s books, writing is just one way that they do this and express their theologies. Bevans accurately captures how theological praxes are enacted: Theology done in this way cannot be conceived in terms of books, essays, or articles. Rather than something concrete, permanent, and printed, theology is conceived more in terms of an activity, a process, a way of living. It is certainly true that there are practitioners of the praxis model . . . who are true scholars, but much more theology is generated in the writing of throwaway leaflets, in unrecorded homilies, group discussions, and in people’s hearts.15 Indeed, apart from publishing books, much of the QTA’s theology is done in workshops, talks, dinner gatherings, WhatsApp messages, phone calls, hugs, touches, eye contact, and every encounter in members’ everyday lives. Praxes like these are by nature impossible to present thoroughly and faithfully in words and analysis. It is with such limitations in mind that this chapter attempts to capture the essence, nature, and methods of the QTA’s theological praxes. QTA does not limit its practice among Christian circles. Seeing God as the Lord of the world and not only of the church, the QTA actively participates in civil society as a pioneering queer Christian group and cooperates with religious and nonreligious organizations. For instance, in 2017, the QTA joined other human rights groups to protest against the appointment of an anti-queer person to the board of the Equal Opportunity Commission. In 2018, in response to the removal of queer-friendly children’s books from Hong Kong’s public libraries, 15 Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, 74. 221

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the QTA cofounded the United Front for Open Libraries to defend the freedom to read. And in 2019, the QTA asked the Hong Kong court for permission to join as an interested party to a case that urged the government to recognize queer civil unions. The QTA also cofounded and has been an active member of the “Covenant of the Rainbow: Campaign toward a Truly Inclusive Church” (彩 虹之約—共建同志友善教會行動), a coalition established by eleven queer-­ affirming churches and Christian organizations. Moreover, the QTA contributes to the local queer movement by organizing and participating in events such as Pride Parade in Hong Kong, IDAHO Hong Kong, and Pink Dot HK. To show the presence and love of God among queer people, the QTA helped organize outdoor worship and queer couple blessing ceremonies and initiated the “Spiritual Corner” (since 2017) at Pink Dot HK. As such, the QTA has hugely improved queer Christian visibility in Hong Kong and among Chinese societies, which is an encouragement for discreet queer Christians and a confessional act to the world that people can be at the same time Chinese, queer, and Christian. The QTA’s theological praxes are communal. It believes that God is constantly speaking to God’s people and participating in their praxes, and thus everyone is called to theologize. While embracing unique personal experiences, however, it does not generalize or universalize them. The QTA intentionally creates dialogues among multiple voices in the theologizing process and rejects the domination of any single narrative. This practice is crucial among the queer community, as queer voices are diverse and sometimes conflicting. For instance, to include LGBTQIA2S+ voices, the QTA in 2018 invited over sixty Chinese queer Christians from all over Asia to contribute to the queer meditation booklet Walking with Our Queer God. For the 2019 “Queer Stations of the Cross,” the QTA gathered sixteen queer Christians to cowrite the liturgy and asked five queer Christian artists to make icons for each station. To say that everyone is called to theologize means that queer people will be the subject instead of the object of these theologizing efforts. The QTA takes a partnership approach rather than a top-down one where professional theologians do the thinking and preaching, and ministers and theologians are responsible to “midwife the birth of such theologizing.”16 The way Wu invited her students to theologize together with BMCF members is a perfect example of the partnership approach. They gather to eat and drink, they talk about sex, gender, and sexuality, they share their lives and struggles, they read and discuss works on 16 Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, 75–76. 222

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queer theologies, and they pray and weep and celebrate. It was in communities like this that the QTA incubated Sexual/Beings II and III. Contributors brainstormed the contents, structure, and topics of the volumes. The QTA did not just put different voices side by side; instead, it encouraged dialogues by asking the contributors to bring their articles for rounds of discussion and critique before further editing. This communal approach was also adopted when contributors set out to write their articles. Pearl Wong and Joseph Cheung, in “From Polygamy to Polyamory,” present a reading of the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar by a group of Christians exploring polyamory and open relationships.17 In Lai-Kwan Hui’s “Solomon in the eyes of female prostitutes,” Hui invited four female prostitutes to study with her I Kings 3: 16–28, the story of King Solomon judging between prostitutes.18 In “Establishing a Queer Exegetical Community: Methodology and Experience,” Jennifer Chan shares how she built an ongoing community to read the Bible through queer eyes.19 These communities were created to encourage queers to theologize collectively and dialectically with their bodily and social experiences. The QTA has eagerly shared this communal spirit with the broader Chinese queer Christian circle. Since 2014, it has held three large-scale Chinese queer theology summer workshops, where hundreds of Chinese queer Christians from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and different cities in Mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and the West gathered. Here they not only learned queer theologies but also connected and shared their situations, struggles, and community-building experiences. Apart from equipping and empowering community organizers, the QTA serves as a model community for these organizers and a community for them to fall back to and seek help when needed. Although the QTA recognizes itself as a Chinese queer Christian group, it has always shown an openness to explore and queer these labels through encountering “others.” The “Chinese” label has been troubling, especially in the past decade when political tension grew between Hongkongers and Beijing 17 Pearl Wong 黃寶珠, and Joseph Cheung 張恒光, “從一夫多妻制 (Polygamy) 到多元

愛關係 (Polyamory)—走出框框，再思婚姻關係的常規” [“From Polygamy to Polyamory: Stepping out of the Box and Rethinking the Conventions of Marriage”], Sexual/ Beings III, 256–74. 18 Hui Lai-Kwan 許勵君, “姐姐仔眼中的所羅門” [“Solomon in the Eyes of Female Prostitutes”], Sexual/Beings III, 207–24. 19 Jennifer Chan 陳幗晶, “建立酷兒釋經的群體、方法與經驗分享” [“Establishing a Queer Exegetical Community: Methodology and Experience”], Sexual/Beings III, 309–20. 223

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and across the Taiwan Strait, with many Hongkongers and Taiwanese people refusing to be called “Chinese.” In academia, there have been explorations of replacing “Chinese” with “Sinophone.”20 The QTA does not see “Chinese” as a representational identity—it does not claim to represent all queer Chinese. Instead of defining, it narrates the experiences and contexts of oppression shared by queer Chinese Christians caused by traditional Confucian patriarchy and heteronormativity. The QTA, therefore, transgresses political boundaries to address oppression against queer people. Through frequent visits between Hong Kong, mainland China, and Taiwan, and holding summer workshops to connect with Chinese queer Christians living in different localities, the theological horizon of the QTA expanded. For instance, while all the authors in Sexual/ Beings II are Hongkongers, contributors to Sexual/Beings III include four Taiwanese and two Mainlanders. This expansion is also reflected in the subtitles of the volumes. While Sexual/Beings II focuses on exploring “Hong Kong Queer Theology,” Sexual/Beings III considers not only the Hong Kong context but the “Asian Chinese Contexts.” With such inclusivity, the QTA builds connections and bonding amid rising hostility among different Chinese people groups. The name “Queer Theology Academy” indicates that the QTA is not content with only doing gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender theologies but is committed to doing queer theology. This direction is taken partly because Rose Wu, a feminist and queer theologian, inspired and led the community. However, naming is only the beginning. Stirred by Indecent Theology, the QTA continues to encounter queer people on the margins of the margins. As such, they witness to what Henri Nouwen calls the “downward mobility of Jesus” and discover new understandings of the saving gospel.21 The QTA keeps transgressing its epistemological and experiential boundaries on gender and sexuality. In Sexual/Beings II, the QTA theologizes on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as well as sex workers, disabled people, and issues like masturbation. After five more years of encounter and reflection, in Sexual/Beings III, the QTA brings in the additional voices of intersex people and addresses issues of polyamory and open relationships, the sex of unhoused people, and animal ethics from a queer perspective.

20 See, for instance, Shu-Mei Shih, “The Concept of the Sinophone,” PMLA 126, no. 3 (2011):

709–18.

21 Jurjen Beumer, Henri Nouwen: A Restless Seeking for God (New York: The Crossroad Pub-

lishing Company, 1999): 130–31.

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Furthermore, the QTA continuously queers the boundary of Christian spirituality through interfaith dialogue. It has built valuable friendships with practitioners of different faith traditions, including the Taiwanese Buddhist nun Ven. Shih Chao-Hwei (釋昭慧) and the Catholic Fr. Thomas Kwan (關俊棠). The QTA also tries to appreciate spiritual practices from other faith traditions. For instance, in Sexual/Beings II, Davy Wong shares the “Queer Service Liturgy” that she cocreated and led together with a local Buddhist LGBTQ group Samma-Kammanta (同．自在), in which they included both the Buddhist “Chant of Metta” (慈經) and Christian prayers to pray for mercy and justice for queers and reconciliation in society on queer issues.22

Three Theological Methods of the QTA The queer, Chinese, and Christian identities of the Queer Theology Academy point to its three overlapping theological methods. First, it queers mainstream Chinese Christian sexual ethics, shaped mainly by traditional Chinese culture and Western Christian sexual ethics. Second, it contextualizes worldwide queer theologies into Chinese contexts. Third, it theologizes Chinese queer bodily and social experiences. This section critically analyzes these three interrelated methods with examples from the QTA’s various praxes.

Queering Mainstream Chinese Christian Sexual Ethics Queering stems from the definition of “queer” as boundary erasing; as Patrick Cheng states, it is a theological method that “is rooted in queer theory and that critiques the binary categories of sexuality (that is, female vs. male) as socially constructed.”23 The QTA queers mainstream Chinese Christian sexual ethics. It considers them conservative, patriarchal, and oppressive to sexual minorities because they uphold heteronormative hegemony. Taking a postcolonial perspective, the QTA blames both traditional Chinese (Confucian) culture and conservative Western Christian sexual ethics for shaping this mainstream Chinese Christian sexual ethics. For example, Lai-Kwan Hui criticizes the strong patriarchal mentality deeply rooted in both “Chinese culture and traditional Western Christianity” for causing discrimination and oppression against sex workers in 22 Davy Wong 黃美鳳, “酷兒崇拜禮儀” [“Queer Service Liturgy”], Sexual/Beings II, 273–84. 23 Patrick S. Cheng, Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology (New York: Seabury

Books, 2011): 10.

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Hong Kong.24 Indeed, under British colonial rule, some of these sexual ethics that are oppressive to queer people were introduced, institutionalized, and codified. As Kwok Pui-Lan acutely observes: “Colonial domination depends not only on political and military might, but also on the control of sexuality and the repatterning of desire.”25 Such influence from the West continues even after state colonialism ends; in this era of globalization, the Chinese Christian Right continues to absorb anti-queer theological discourses and mobilizing strategies from its Western, mainly American, counterparts. Through queering mainstream Chinese Christian sexual ethics, the QTA lets the church and society hear the suppressed alternative voices among Chinese Christians. It speaks to those who embrace such conservative sexual ethics and those who find it troubling and oppressing but do not have a language or theology to object to it. For instance, as Taiwan debated legalizing same-sex marriage, to demonstrate that Christianity should not be generalized as an anti-same-sex marriage religion, Yin-An Chen, in “Did God Create Monogamy in the Beginning?” queers the Christian Right argument that monogamy has been a core Christian value for two thousand years by revealing how the “Family-Guarding Christianity” (護家基督教) in Taiwan reinterpreted and appropriated Christian resources to establish this myth.26 More specifically, the QTA queers conventional understandings of theological themes central to mainstream Chinese Christian sexual ethics; one such theme is “sin.” Mainstream Chinese Christians often consider nonbinary genders and non-heterosexualities as unbiblical and thus sinful or as a result of original sin.27 Such a definition has hurt queers spiritually, psychologically, and even 24 Hui Lai-Kwan 許勵君, “從不雅神學看性工作婦女踰越之路” [“Understanding the

Transgressing Path of Female Sex Workers in Light of Indecent Theology”], Sexual/Beings II, 160. 25 Kwok Pui-Lan, Postcolonial Politics and Theology: Unraveling Empire for a Global World (­Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021), 54. 26 Chen Yin-An 陳胤安, “上帝從起初創造一夫一妻嗎？ （上）—從《創世記》到早 期教會的「成為一體」” [“Did God Create Monogamy in the Beginning? (I): From Genesis to ‘Becoming One Flesh’ in the Early Church”], Sexual/Beings III, 41. 27 See, for example, Kwan Kai-Man 關啟文, 是非、曲直：對人權、同性戀的倫理反思 [Ethical Reflections on Human Rights and Homosexuality] (Hong Kong: China Alliance Press, 2007); Executive Committee of the General Conference of the Methodist Church in Malaysia 馬來西亞基督教衛理公會總議會執行理事會, “馬來西亞基督教衛理公會對同 性戀及同性婚姻的立場” [“Statement on Homosexuality and Homosexual Marriage by the General Conference of the Methodist Church in Malaysia”] (Public statement, August

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physically. For instance, Christians often use a gender-binary interpretation of the biblical creation story to justify intersex medical interventions. Small Luk, an intersex Christian, used to think that they do not bear God’s image, as the church teaches that God only created male and female and that their body was a result of original sin; Luk even thought that it was they who destroyed God’s image and fell short of God’s glory.28 In their article, integrating personal experience and works by biblical scholars like Michael Carden and the intersex theologian Sally Gross, Luk queers such a bifurcated hermeneutics of the creation story and rediscovers the “canceled” intersex people in it. Concerning the concept of “sin,” in addition to biblical studies, some try to reclaim Christian traditions by rediscovering queerness in them. Responding to the accusation against queers that they are sinners because of their abnormal desire for love, Peng Yin reinterprets Augustine, whose theology of the generational inheritance of original sin through sex is much embraced by mainstream Chinese Christians. According to Augustine, Yin writes, “We commit the biggest sin when we do not pray for the desire for love that God planted in us, and instead think that we can achieve completeness when we become independent from God and our neighbors.”29 For Yin, this Augustinian tradition teaches us that praying for the desire for the queer love that God planted in us is not sinful; instead, it is sinful not to do so. Some writers utilize local theological resources to queer the mainstream understanding of sin. For example, Grace Bok has been repeatedly told that it is sinful to be a practicing lesbian. While rejecting that condemnation, she sees herself as a “sinned against”—a theological construct proposed by the Hong Kong theologian Raymond Fung to call for compassion for those harmed by 24, 2011); Baptist Convention of Hong Kong 香港浸信會聯會, Christian & Missionary ­Alliance Church Union Hong Kong 基督教宣道會香港區聯會, and Evangelical Free Church of China 中國基督教播道會總會, “對婚姻與家庭的立場宣言” [“Statement on Marriage and Family”] (Public statement, June 19, 2013); Presbyterian Church in Taiwan 台灣基督長老教會, “台灣基督長老教會同性婚姻議題牧函” [“Pastoral Letter on the Issue of Homosexual Marriage by the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan”] (Pastoral letter, June 10, 2014). 28 Eric Sin 冼文翰, and Small Luk 細細, “在創世故事中被消失的雙性人” [“The Removed Intersex People in the Creation Story”], Sexual/Beings III, 251. 29 Yin Peng 尹鵬, “不去渴望的罪” [“The Sin of Not Desiring”], in Walking with Our Queer God: Weekly Reflections 2019, ed. Queer Theology Academy (Hong Kong: Queer Theology Academy, 2019): 68.

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oppressive systems—in being forced into heterosexual marriage by societal discrimination and the church’s rejection of her lesbian orientation and life.30 For many queer theologians like Patrick Cheng and Elizabeth Stuart, queering does not stop at erasing boundaries of sexuality and gender identity. Instead, the practice should be extended to “more fundamental boundaries such as life vs. death, and divine vs. human.”31 Although the QTA would agree with this direction, in practice, it has paid most of its attention to categories of sexuality and gender identity. One exception, a pioneering experiment, is Davy Wong’s queer environmental exegesis of Matthew 15:21–28 in “Queer, Dog, and Gentile Woman” in Sexual/Beings III.32

Contextualizing Worldwide Queer Theologies into Chinese Contexts The QTA’s theology-making is postcolonial in that it reveals and challenges colonial legacies on local sexual ethics, practices, and regulations. Nevertheless, as a pioneering queer theological community in Asia and among the Chinese, it finds overseas queer theologians important allies and models on the path to justice. Recognizing that Chinese queers share meaningful bodily and social experiences with queers of other ethnic and cultural backgrounds, the QTA often borrows from and builds upon relevant and inspiring worldwide queer theologies. Translating non-Chinese scholarship, as in the publication of the Chinese version of Patrick Cheng’s Radical Love, is one initial way that the QTA contextualizes. The QTA also selects and summarizes important non-Chinese works relevant to local contexts, translates them into Chinese, and pairs them with local experiences and reflections. For example, in “Queer Christology: Christ and the Liberation of Christian Sex/Sexuality” in Sexual/Beings II,33 Mau-Kwok Lam first points out the need for queer Christologies in Hong Kong—that Hong Kong queer Christians are oppressed by the image of a celibate Christ and a Christology that links sex and sexuality with sins, a connection that the Christian Right strongly advocates.34 He then introduces the queer Christologies of 30 Bok, “Whose Wife,” 234. 31 Cheng, Radical Love, 10. 32 Davy Wong 黃美鳳, “酷兒、小狗、外邦女” [“Queer, Dog, and Gentile Woman”], Sexual/

Beings III, 288–308.

33 Lam Mau-Kwok 林茂國, “酷兒基督論—基督與基督徒的性別解放” [“Queer Christol-

ogy: Christ and the Liberation of Christian Sexuality”], Sexual/Beings II, 77–90.

34 Lam, “Queer Christology,” 81.

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Carter Heyward, Robert E. Goss, and Marcella Althaus-Reid, before concluding the article with Hong Kong lesbian pastor Grace Bok’s story and his own reflections on how queer Christologies could inspire local queer Christians.35 As the QTA develops, it moves beyond the translation model of contextualization to deepen its contextualizing efforts by increasingly engaging local resources; this can be observed by comparing the three queer liturgies included in Sexual/Beings II. While the 2010 “Coming Out Liturgy”36 mainly involved cutting, pasting, and translating, the 2011 “Queer Service Liturgy” mindfully incorporated Buddhist practices.37 And the third liturgy, the 2013 “Gender Inclusive Worship Liturgy,”38 shows an even deeper dialogue with local queer issues by asking participants to reflect upon them during the service; such issues included the lawsuit by transgender woman Miss Wappeal to fight for equal rights to marriage in Hong Kong.39 While the QTA borrows from non-Chinese queer theologies, I assert that its use of non-Chinese queer theological scholarship is pragmatic and strategic. As a pioneering Chinese queer Christian community, the QTA has little institutional support and resources. Unlike its Western counterparts, it is almost impossible for any Chinese divinity school or seminary to hire a full-time queer faculty member to teach and develop queer theologies. In this early stage of incubating local queer theologies, I consider the introduction and translation of non-­Chinese scholarship pragmatic and essential. Strategically speaking, as the Chinese Christian Right borrows theological discourses and mobilizing strategies from their Western counterparts, progressive queer theologies that began in the West, which have been developed to challenge the Western Christian Right, are the most readily available tools for the QTA’s battle against local oppressors. The QTA is not uncritical of Western scholarship when it contextualizes them. For instance, in Hannah Chen’s article “From the exegetical controversy of the castrated to the construction of queer theology—From ‘Lady Yu Bids Her

35 Lam, “Queer Christology,” 82–89. 36 Mak Ming-Yee 麥明儀, “站出來崇拜禮儀” [“Coming Out Liturgy”], Sexual/Beings II,

265–72.

37 Wong, “Queer Service Liturgy,” 275–76. 38 AMPLIFY 2013 Gender Inclusive Service Preparation Committee 性別共融崇拜籌備小

組, “性別包容崇拜禮儀” [“Gender Inclusive Worship Liturgy”], Sexual/Beings II, 290–91.

39 AMPLIFY 2013 Gender Inclusive Service Preparation Committee, “Gender Inclusive Wor-

ship Liturgy,” 295.

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Hegemon-King Farewell’ to ‘Eunuch Bids the Disciple Farewell,’ ”40 she not only deeply engages with Chinese culture, history, and literature, but also challenges some Western scholars’ approach of trying to reconstruct queer-affirming narratives from certain Biblical scriptures that she deems irredeemable.41

Theologizing Chinese Queer Experiences While contextualizing queer theologies begins with existing queer theologies developed overseas, theologizing Chinese queer experiences starts from local queers and the oppressions that they face daily. It asks local questions, gives local answers, and develops local agendas. It is a form of self-theologizing, which David Bosch suggests as the “fourth self ” to be added to the classic “Three-self ” mission formula.42 It claims subjectivity by considering the whole self, not only the spiritual self but also the bodily self; in fact, the holy/profane divide between the spiritual and the bodily is queered and transgressed. Stefanie Knauss and Carlos Mendoza-Álvare state that queer theologies put “emphasis on concrete, embodied experience as a source of theology.”43 Indeed, the QTA strives to include these experiences, which are often intentionally rejected or unintentionally ignored. The silencing of such experiences forced the QTA to do their own theologies. As a strategy toward making the silenced heard, the QTA begins its first edited volume, Sexual/Beings II, with several coming out stories, including that of the lesbian Pastor Grace Bok, the transgender man Kaspar Wan, and the transgender woman Joanne Leung. In the words of Knauss and Mendoza-­Álvarez, who also starts Queer Theologies with three testimonials of individuals, such narratives constitute important “performative influences” for the queer community and beyond.44 And in Sexual/Beings III, we see that Eric Sin and Small Luk, in “The Removed Intersex People in the Creation Story,” try to rediscover from Genesis the presence of bisexual people, which has long been excluded from traditional exegesis.45 40 Chen, “From the Exegetical Controversy of the Castrated,” 153. 41 Chen, “From the Exegetical Controversy of the Castrated,” 141. 42 David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY:

Orbis Books, 2011): 462.

43 Stefanie Knauss and Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez, “Editorial,” in Queer Theologies: Becoming the

Queer Body of Christ (London: SCM Press, 2019): 8.

44 Knauss and Mendoza-Álvarez, “Editorial,” 8. 45 Sin and Luk, “The Removed Intersex People in the Creation Story,” 263. 230

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Queer embodied experiences are both physical and social. Mimi Wong, a transgender woman in Hong Kong, in her entry in the meditation booklet Walking with Our Queer God, retells the parable of the prodigal son in the Gospel of Luke alongside her own story in a genderfucked narrative. Wong sees herself leaving home as a prodigal son and returning as a prodigal daughter. Just as the prodigal son was rejected by his brother, she was rejected by her wife and son when they discovered her cross-dressing behavior. She hid from her mother for fear of further rejection. However, when she eventually came out to her mother, she was received with unconditional love and support: “The prodigal daughter is home; how glad the mother is! . . . Like the Lord, she shows me full acceptance, complete love, and unlimited understanding.”46 She becomes an embodied witness to both queer sufferings and the healing power of the Christian gospel for queers. Furthermore, the QTA theologizes both personal and communal experiences. This can be seen in “The Queer Stations of the Cross.” To commemorate forerunning queers and important dates in queer history and encourage queers to face current hardships and suffering through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the QTA initiated the project and invited queer Christians to write reflections and prayers and create icons for each station.47 The event was held on April 19, 2019, at the queer-affirming Kowloon Union Church in Hong Kong, with about thirty in attendance. Table 1 shows the stations, and the specific queer groups and events that each station remembers. Table 1 shows that the QTA has included ten queer events in Hong Kong and seven in Taiwan in the liturgy. In this way, it invites participants to meditate and reflect upon how Jesus Christ participates in their suffering, the suffering of the broader queer community, and how queers participate in Jesus Christ’s passion and resurrection.

Concluding Remarks This chapter has surveyed the founding of the Queer Theology Academy under the inspiration and leadership of Rose Wu and explored the praxis and communal natures of its theologies. It has examined how Chinese, queer, and Christian 46 Mimi Wong 黃欣琴, “我的媽媽” [“My Mother”], Walking with Our Queer God, 27. 47 Sunny Leung, Facebook post, accessed November 13, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/

Sunny886123. 231

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Table 1. “The Queer Stations of the Cross”

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-04-07 01:50 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

Stations

Queer Groups

Queer Events

1

Jesus is condemned — to death

Stonewall Riots (1969, US)

2

Jesus carries his cross

Gays

Suicide of gay policeman John MacLennan (1980, Hong Kong)

3

Jesus falls the first time

Intersex people

Surgeries on intersex infants were banned (2018, Taiwan)

4

Jesus meets his mother

Parents of Queers

“Project Touch (性向無限計劃)” (and the subsequent “LGBT Parent Support Service” (同志家長支援 小組)) was launched by The Boys’ & Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong (2007, Hong Kong)

5

Simon helps Jesus carry his cross

Allies

Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association (同志諮詢熱線) was founded (1998, Taiwan)

6

Veronica wipes the face of Jesus

Allies (Media)

“Tongzhi Media Awards” (同志議題 報導獎) began (2000, Hong Kong)

7

Jesus falls the second time

Transgenders

The court ruled that sex reassignment surgery is necessary for transgender people to have their sex legally changed (2019, Hong Kong)

8

Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

Lesbians

The first lesbian couple registered in Yilan welcomed their baby through artificial insemination (2016, Taiwan); scientific breakthrough towards creating sperm from stem cells (2018, UK)

9

Jesus falls the third time

Bisexuals/ Pansexuals

Bi the Way (拜坊), the first bisexual organization in Taiwan, was founded (2007, Taiwan); Red Cross in Hong Kong allowed gays and bisexuals to donate blood (2017, Hong Kong) 232

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10 Jesus is stripped of his garments

Survivors of sexual violence

RainLily (風雨蘭) released “The Living Evidence of Sexual Violence Against Women in Hong Kong: A Retrospective Study of RainLily’s Crisis Services 2000–2018” (2019, Hong Kong)

11 Jesus is nailed to the cross

People with HIV/AIDS

Against the rising HIV/AIDS infection rate, the church’s awareness of the issue decreased (2014, Hong Kong)

12 Jesus dies on the cross

—

The legislature failed to enact antisexual orientation discrimination law (1994, Hong Kong); suicidal cases among and bullying against queer people increased after the antisame-sex marriage referendum was passed (2018, Taiwan)

13 The body of Jesus Sex workers is taken down from the cross

The serial killing of sex workers (2008, Hong Kong)

14 The body of Jesus is laid in the tomb

Disabled+Queer (殘酷兒) was established to serve disabled queer people (2008, Taiwan)

Queer people with disability

15 The resurrection of — Jesus

The Covenant of the Rainbow: Campaign toward a Truly Inclusive Church was established (2013, Hong Kong); same-sex marriage was legalized (2019, Taiwan)

identities influence the QTA’s theology-making and how the QTA constantly queers these identities, and demonstrated how the QTA uses three interrelated and overlapping theological methods: queering mainstream Chinese Christian sexual ethics, contextualizing worldwide queer theologies into Chinese contexts, and theologizing Chinese queer bodily and social experiences. In the future, I would hope to see the QTA consider moving from adapting to enriching and challenging overseas queer theories and theologies. As a pioneer 233

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in Asia and among the Chinese, it is inevitable that previous QTA writings have mostly cited and dialogued with Western counterparts. However, as Asian and Chinese queer research and literature grow, the QTA might further theologize with these multiple Chinese queer experiences to contribute to the global study of queer theology; for example, the study by Kitty Choi et al. on Hong Kong gays’ experiences of using dating apps for hookups may shed light on the doing of pastoral theologies and sexual ethics of Hong Kong queer Christians.48 Methodologically, while the present QTA praxis is mostly Christian theology-based, more interdisciplinary studies are needed, especially taking the developing queer theories and queer studies in Hong Kong and East Asia more seriously as conversation partners. For instance, instead of putting most of the effort into critiquing the Western Christian tradition for bringing about the patriarchal ecclesiastical structure and theology in Hong Kong, and only blaming Chinese traditional culture in a broad-brush manner, the QTA might study in greater depth how Confucian culture has influenced Chinese Christians’ understanding of sex and gender as well as ecclesial setting. It is not coincidental that the QTA began in Hong Kong rather than in Taiwan or mainland China. Hong Kong used to enjoy a relatively high freedom of speech and academy, in a vibrant civil society that is well-connected regionally and internationally. Furthermore, since 1949, Hong Kong has grown into a central hub for ecumenical Christianity among the Chinese, which embraces more progressive values, including promoting queer inclusion.49 On this soil, under the leadership and commitment of Rose Wu and her queer students, the QTA budded in Hong Kong. Today’s Hong Kong, however, is no longer the same as when the QTA began in 2009. The factors above have been rapidly eroded in the last decade. Some QTA members, like many other Hongkongers, have left the city they love. The QTA is thus entering a diasporic phase that is reshaping its theologizing contexts 48 Kitty W. Y. Choi, Edmond P. H. Choi, Eric P. F. Chow, Eric Y. F. Wan, William C. W. Wong,

Janet Y. H. Wong, & Daniel Y. T. Fong, “The Experience of Using Dating Applications for Sexual Hook-Ups: A Qualitative Exploration among HIV-Negative Men Who Have Sex with Men in Hong Kong,” The Journal of Sex Research 58, no. 6 (2021): 785–94, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2021.1886227. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ful l/10.1080/00224499.2021.1886227. 49 While Taiwan society seems to be more open to queer people, Taiwanese Christianity, including the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, one of the major denominations which controls most theological seminaries on the island, is largely mobilized into anti-queer movements, making the environment very hostile for Taiwanese queer Christians. 234

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and contents. For instance, Chinese queers in the West are gazed at very differently than when they are in Chinese societies and part of the racial majority; theologizing on such new embodied experiences will inevitably lead to the making of new forms of Chinese queer theologies. What will remain unchanged will be the QTA’s dedication to being an alternative community and reforming the Christian faith into one that embraces and is embraced by Chinese queers in Hong Kong and around the world.

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Chapter 12

THE “LIFESCAPE THEOLOGY” OF THOMAS IN-SING LEUNG Han Siyi 韓思藝, Institute of Religious Studies, Minzu University of China During his formative years, Leung In-sing (Thomas In-sing Leung 梁燕城) studied Chinese philosophy under several New-Confucian scholars. He was deeply influenced by the philosophy of realms of Tang Chun-I (Tang Junyi), and gained considerable experience in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. After converting to Christianity, he studied Bonaventure’s thought on different spiritual states of life. In his first monograph, Spiritual Adventures in the Realm of Wisdom, Leung employed the philosophy of realms to connect and integrate spiritual experiences from both Chinese and Western traditions.1 In a later book, Mutual Understanding and Transformation,2 he proposed using human experiences in different realms (or “lifescapes”) to connect and integrate Christianity and Confucianism. In recent years, Leung has developed his thought system of “Lifescape Theology” that interprets Christians’ religious journeys using the concept of realms (jingjie 境界) in Chinese culture, and in dialogue with Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and the Yijing (I-ching, Book of Changes). By examining Leung’s intellectual development from the philosophy of realms to Lifescape Theology, we can understand the distinctive features of his theological thought. Translated by Huang Yu-huei. 1 Leung In-sing 梁燕城, Huijing shenyou 慧境神遊: 漫遊東西哲學諸境界 [Spiritual

adventures in the realm of wisdom: leisurely travel through the realms of Eastern and Western philosophy] (Taipei: Yuzhouguang, 1982). 2 Cai Renhou 蔡仁厚, Zhou Lianhua 周聯華, Liang Yancheng 梁燕城 (Leung In-sing), Huitong yu zhuanhua: Jidujiao yu xin rujia de duihua 會通與轉化 : 基督教與新儒家的對 話 [Mutual Understanding and Transformation: Dialogue between Christianity and New Confucianism] (Taipei: Yuzhouguang, 1986).

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Introduction Dr. Thomas In-Sing Leung was born in Hong Kong in 1951 and is a Canadian Chinese. As a teenager, he read extensively both Chinese and Western works on philosophy and religion, and experienced deeply the spirituality of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. During his college years, Leung converted to Christianity and dedicated himself to studying interreligious dialogue between Christianity and Chinese religions. In the 1980s, he pursued a PhD in Chinese philosophy at the University of Hawaii, studying philosophical hermeneutics under Cheng Chung-ying and completing a dissertation on “The Method and Methodology of Confucian Philosophy.” After graduation, Leung taught as an adjunct professor at several institutions, founded the Culture Regeneration Research Society, and served as a columnist and critic for various newspapers and radio stations. He was also a social activist, traveling between rural areas and cities in China to listen to the appeals of the poor and offer consultative proposals to the Chinese government. For over forty years, Leung has been studying the dialogue between Christianity and Chinese culture; in seeking to develop his system of Chinese theology he has published more than thirty academic and popular books, over one hundred scholarly essays, thousands of short articles, and produced dozens of audio-visual materials. The most distinctive and critical concept in Leung’s theology is the notion of “realms” or “lifescapes.” This essay discusses the features of Leung’s Chinese theology by analyzing his idea of realm or lifescape and his Lifescape Theology.

The Concept of Realms in Interreligious Dialogue During one interreligious dialogue session between Christianity and Confucianism in the 1980s, New Confucianism scholar Cai Renhou proposed that “the truth of religion is one, but the forms of religion are many. Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Christianity are nothing more than different forms of religion.” This notion prompted Leung to ponder whether the uniqueness of each religion necessarily implies exclusivity. If we oppose exclusivity and emphasize the uniqueness of each religion, will this inevitably lead to religious pluralism?3 To address the dilemma between exclusivity and pluralism that arises from 3 Cai et al., Huitong yu zhuanhua, 216.

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emphasizing the uniqueness of each religion in interreligious dialogue, Leung raised the question of how Chinese thought would perceive and react to the realm of Christianity.4 After conducting a comparative study of the ways of thinking in Eastern and Western philosophy, Leung suggests that traditional Western theology has a tendency to externalize, transcendentalize, materialize, and objectify God, whereas Chinese theology ought to start out from the concept of relationship. According to Leung, when the starting point is relationship, the opposition between subject and object is eliminated, and God and humans are mutually present and open to each other. When humans open themselves to God through faith, they enter into each other, contain and absorb each other, achieving a realm of mutual indwelling where they may be one, just as “you are in me and I am in you” ( John 17). This mutually indwelling divine-human relationship inevitably brings God into encounter and interaction with humans in their life history, resulting in a Christian notion of realms. By comparing the personal fellowship between God and humanity in Christianity, the Confucian sense of humaneness and love (ren’ai 仁愛), and the Buddhist idea of sunyata (空 emptiness), Leung connects and integrates Christianity with the humaneness (ren 仁) of Confucianism and the sunyata of Buddhism, revealing a deeper realm of Christian faith. (The Buddhist worldview begins in relationship, and proceeds through its understanding of relationship to dismantle the notion of essence and reach the state of emptiness.)5 In Mutual Understanding and Transformation, Leung believes that the concept of “realm” (jingjie) stems from the concept of relationship. He writes, The term ‘realm’ (jingjie), itself carries the meaning of ‘relatedness.’ When one’s heart and soul relate to the world, to oneself, and to ultimate truth, one attains an authentic experience. This experience is the ‘jing,’ and the scope of this experience is the ‘jie.’ Different experiences can result in different realms, jingjie. Moreover, there can be paths that connect different realms; a person’s heart and soul can transition from one experience to another.6 4 Cai et al., Huitong yu zhuanhua, 183. 5 Cai et al., Huitong yu zhuanhua, 198–201. 6 Cai et al., Huitong yu zhuanhua, 217.

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In Mutual Understanding and Transformation, Leung outlines the realm of Christianity, as well as those of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. He explains how each religion understands the other’s realm from its own perspective and how they can initiate conversations with one another. Leung argues that a religion’s realm is not equivalent to its form. Instead, the realm refers to a particular experience of truth, which does not preclude other experiences of truth. For example, in Confucianism, one can experience the morality of humanity; in Buddhism, the sunyata of self and dharma; and in Daoism, the profound and mysterious understanding of nothingness (wu 無). Each of these experiences has its own truth and differs from the realm of salvation in Christianity; they can coexist peacefully within their respective realms without conflict. Moreover, Christians can understand from the Bible the ontological status of morality and the illusory nature of the world, which allow them to appreciate to some extent the Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist realms. Similarly, Confucian nobles (junzi 君子), Buddhist monks, and Daoist adepts can gain an unbounded spiritual awareness within their respective realms and come to apprehend the sentiment of the Perfect One of heaven and earth. If Chinese Christians refuse to learn about Chinese culture, it is fair to say that they are being overly exclusive: they gain the depth of salvation but lose sight of the breadth of the kingdom. Likewise, adherents of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism can also be deemed arrogant, self-­ centered, and too exclusive if they are content only with the realms of their own religion and are unwilling to learn about other realms of experience, or even dismiss other religions outright by labeling them “foreign religions.” Leung further emphasizes that Christians sincerely invite all the wise and virtuous people of other religions to open themselves to God with a broad and deep faith, receive the realm of justification and sanctification, and work toward a harmonious life that is both refined and subtle in its details, yet vast and profound in its scope.7 To better understand the origin and uniqueness of Leung In-sing’s concept of “realm,” we need to briefly explore the notion of “realm” in Chinese culture. Then, through comparative study, we can reveal the distinctive characteristics of his “Lifescape Theology.” 7 Cai et al., Huitong yu zhuanhua, 217–20.

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From the Philosophy of Realms to Lifescape Theology According to the etymological dictionary Ciyuan, the term “realm” (jingjie) has two meanings: one is “boundary,” and the other refers to the spiritual state achieved through Buddhist practice. The concept of realms as a philosophical idea was first proposed by philosopher Feng Youlan (Fung Yu-lan, 馮友蘭, 1895–1990). In his doctoral dissertation, “Philosophy of Life,” Feng posited the question of heaven and humanity (tianren 天人) as the fundamental issue in philosophy, and believed that by overcoming and transcending the boundary between human and heaven, as well as between oneself and others, one could attain a certain “spiritual realm.”8 Later, in his New Inquiry into Humanity (新原人9), one of his Six Books Enquiring into the Origin (貞元六書), Feng presented a comprehensive theory of realms, interpreting life and its meaning via the concept of “understanding and awareness” (juejie 覺解) and differentiating various realms of life based on an individual’s understanding and awareness of life’s meaning. Feng categorized human realms into four levels according to the degree of understanding and awareness: the realm of nature, the realm of self-interest, the realm of morality, and the realm of the universe. Among these four realms, the highest is the realm of the universe, which Feng calls “the realm of sages (shengren 聖人),” a state where “the human and the universe are one” (天人合一). In this realm, an individual is not only a personal being but also a social and cosmic being.10 In the realm of the universe, a person views their life from the all-encompassing perspective of the cosmos, eternity, and infinity, and pursues the realization of infinity and eternity. This is a religious realm.11 The most significant influence on Leung’s philosophy of realms was Tang Chun-i’s realm theory. In his book, The Existence of Life and Spiritual Realms,12 8 Feng Youlan 馮友蘭, Rensheng zhexue 人生哲學 [Philosophy of life] (Shanghai: The Com-

mercial Press, 1926), 206, quoted in Meng Pei-yuan, “Ping Feng Youlan de jingjie shuo” [Evaluating Feng Youlan’s theory of realms], Xueshu yuekan, no. 5 (1991): 1–8, 28. 9 Feng Youlan, Xin yuan ren 新原人 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1946). 10 Feng Youlan, San song tang zixu 三松堂自序 [Autobiography of the Hall of Three Pines] (Beijing: Peking University Press, 1984), 264–67. 11 Feng Youlan, Zhongguo zhexueshi xin bian 中國哲學史新編 [A new history of Chinese philosophy], vol. 7 in San song tang quanji [Complete works of the Hall of Three Pines], book 10 (Zhengzhou: Henan Renmin, 2000), 653. 12 Tang Junyi 唐君毅, Shengming cunzai yu xinling jingjie 生命存在與心靈境界 (Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 1977).

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Tang argues that all philosophies, thought, academic and cultural activities, moral behavior, and teaching meant to help a person transcend their life are realms effectuated or communed by13 the existence of life and human mental and spiritual activities. According to Tang, there are nine philosophical realms achieved by philosophers across the ages and across nations. These realms can be divided into three categories based on three types of affective communion: subjective, objective, and beyond subjective and objective. (1) Objective realms: these realms are formed by the human mind through observing and reflecting on objective things, and include “the realm of manifold disparate individuals” (萬物散殊境), “the realm of transformation according to classes” (依類成化 境), and “the realm of functioning in sequence” (功能序運境). (2) Subjective realms: these realms are formed by the human mind through introspection on its own activities, including “the realm of inter-perception” (感覺互攝境), “the realm of pure meaning” (觀照凌虛境), and “the realm of moral practice” (道 德實踐境). (3) Transcendent realms beyond subject-object: these realms are formed by the mind through the pursuit of infinite and eternal transcendence, and include “the realm of returning to monotheism” (歸向一神境), “the realm of the dual-emptiness of the self and the dharma” (我法二空境), and “the realm of the manifestation of ‘Heavenly Virtue’ ” (天德流行境). Tang Chun-i’s theory of the nine spiritual realms extensively synthesizes the main substance of Eastern and Western philosophy, and, using the Buddhist method of classifying the Buddha’s teaching (pan jiao 判教), absorbs and integrates knowledge from science, philosophy, religion, ethics, and other areas both East and West. It incorporates as much as possible all branches of knowledge and fundamental concepts from China, the West, and India into an ultimate system of critical inquiry, and uses this system to manifest the diverse activities of the human spirit. Leung was deeply influenced in his early years by Tang’s theory of spiritual realms. In his first book, Spiritual Adventures in the Realm of Wisdom, Leung attempted to incorporate philosophies from all ages and countries into his “Lifescape theology” through the Christian faith. He also advanced upon Tang’s methodology: while Tang began with human rationality and the heart-mind, exploring the philosophy of existence and spiritual realms ranging from objective 13 Ed. note: that is, moved into existence; as a noun below, “empathy” or “affective communion”

(gantong 感通). King Pong Chiu, who translates this as “empathic penetration,” discusses the term in his thesis “Thomé H. Fang, Tang Junyi and the Appropriation of Huayan Thought” (PhD Diss., University of Manchester, 2014): 134. Elsewhere Leung himself translates gantong as “rapport.” 242

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to subjective, to those that transcend both, Leung believed that the human heartmind originates from an infinite, benevolent, and gracious God, thus viewing God as the beginning and end of Lifescape Theology. Leung suggests that through God’s grace, people would gradually turn from the life-world to the knowledge of God. Moreover, he considered the realm where people meet with God through sanctification to be the highest realm. Some years later, he revised Spiritual Adventures in the Realm of Wisdom to make it more academic and comprehensive, resulting in another book, Reconstruction of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學的重構). In this book, Leung took life-world and the capacity of the human mind to perceive things as the foundation through which to analyze how people develop their understanding of the world and comprehend the essence of things. He described the sixfold realms that the human heart-mind can manifest as the realm of reason, the realm of beauty and goodness, the realm of sunyata, the realm of Dao, the realm of heavenly virtue, and the realm of God, and in doing so established a system of realm philosophy that interprets human beings’ perception of truth, goodness, and beauty, as well as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism from the perspective of different realms. Tang Chun-i’s insight was to incorporate Eastern and Western philosophy through the concept of realms, while Leung In-sing’s innovation was to employ the concept to expound theology. Leung critically examined Eastern and Western philosophy through the lens of realm philosophy and subsequently drew from Western theological traditions to develop Lifescape Theology based on his philosophy of realms. Leung’s idea of Lifescape Theology took shape shortly after his conversion to Christianity, influenced by Western theology. In his master’s thesis, “The Hierarchical Concept in Bonaventure’s Theology,” Leung studied the hierarchical approach of Bonaventure (1221–1274) to categorizing humanity’s ways of approaching God. He points out that there are basically three approaches in medieval philosophy concerning how humans come to know God: through reason, through faith, or by integrating both. Bonaventure’s hierarchical thought serves as a prime example of the third approach, and one where the convergence of Eastern and Western philosophy can be seen. Leung posits that there are six realms in Bonaventure’s thought regarding people’s journey toward God: (1) discovery of order in nature, (2) perception of the universe through the senses, (3) grasp of the inner knowledge of one’s mind through reason, (4) intuition of eternal truth gained from faith in God, (5) understanding the divine attributes of God, and finally, (6) reaching the mystery of the Trinity and the mind’s ultimate purification and union with God. Leung believes that 243

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the subjectivity of faith in Bonaventure’s thought aligns well with the Chinese philosophical tradition that emphasizes the subject’s self-cultivation. God is not merely an external and infinite entity to be pursued as eternal truth, as in traditional Western theology; rather, God can also be manifest within the human mind, allowing human beings to approach the divine, ascending level by level, until they achieve oneness with God. Leung spent many years developing Lifescape Theology from realm philosophy. Because he felt that his academic attainment and personal experience in Christianity were not yet rich or profound enough, he was uncertain about how to construct a theological system from the perspective of realms to discuss the existence of God and the possibility of revelation. Later, while working in Canada, he experienced what John of the Cross called a “dark night of the soul,” which enriched and elevated his spirituality. Leung later shared that when he encountered the wiles and schemes of others, leading to feelings of resentment and distress, he realized that faith is a form of steadfast perseverance. Amidst the boundless darkness and seeming endless hardship of the soul’s wilderness, faith offered hope that an oasis lay at the desert’s end and that dawn would follow the dark night, and opened up a spiritual space that gradually emerged in the depths of the heart to become an inner haven, unshaken by stormy reality, and brought a great measure of stability to the spirit. Leung no longer merely contemplated God through reason, but transcended knowledge, focusing his will on entering the mystery of God’s love and uniting with God through affective communion, being seen as righteous by God, with the divine righteousness of God manifest in his heart, and experiencing again the presence of God in the depths of his soul. In the “divine light that perfectly unites with God’s love,” he was able to love his enemies and forgive them. He later wrote Contemplating the Beatitudes (八福 的沉思), discussing the eightfold realm of spiritual devotion, which marked the beginning of his construction of Lifescape Theology.14

The Basics of Lifescape Theology Scholars have often understood Leung’s realm theory within the context of Chinese culture and philosophy, overlooking the distinctive Christian meaning 14 Paulos Huang 黃保羅 and Leung In-sing, “從繁星、良知到宇宙感通恩情—關於二十

五年學思歷程的對話” [trans. as “From the Stars, the Conscience to the Synesthesia of the Universe: An Interview with Professor Paulos Huang of Finland on the Academic Experience of In-sing Leung”], 文化中國 [Cultural China] 100, no. 1 ( June 2019): 4–11. 244

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in his Lifescape Theology. Meanwhile, scholars of Christianity tend to perceive Lifescape Theology with its Chinese cultural characteristics as Leung’s attempt to artificially associate Christianity with Chinese culture, viewing it as an evangelistic strategy—and failing to recognize that the innovative and Chinesestyle systematic theology in Lifescape Theology stands apart from traditional Western theology. In my opinion, the Lifescape Theology established by Leung is similar to the Western theology established by early Church Fathers and medieval theologians in their integration of Greek culture and Christian faith: both, in the context of linguistic and cultural communication, seek to integrate and synthesize the ways of thinking, daily practices, and spiritual disciplines of each side, and form a process for new Christian and Western cultural traditions. To clarify and elaborate on the differences and connections between his realm philosophy and Lifescape Theology, Leung wrote the book Chinese Philosophy and Theology of “Lifescape” (中國境界哲學與境界神學), which is briefly discussed in the following section.15 In Chinese Philosophy and Theology of “Lifescape,” Leung begins by stating that the concept of “realm” (which he suggests can be translated into English as “lifescape”) originates from two basic universal concepts: the “life-world” and the “original state of mind” (xinling de lingdian 心靈的零點).16 In daily life, a person inevitably interacts with others and objects, which is a fundamental given. In my opinion, Leung’s insight regarding “realm” is that it is not merely an individual’s intuitive spiritual experience; rather, individuals are already situated within certain relationships before engaging in mental or spiritual activities. Only after this comes the awareness of mind and spirit, as well as the realm resulting from such mental activities. Leung thus believes that the diversity of the lifeworld gives rise to a variety of perceptions within one’s mind and spirit, forming different realms (jing 境) with distinct boundaries (jie 界). Leung refers to these realms as jingjie (境界): “A realm (jingjie) is the result of direct observation of the life-world through genuine intuition of the mind. Each individual’s fate, life circumstances, and paths of self-cultivation form their boundaries of awareness 15 Leung In-sing, Zhongguo Jingjie zhexue yu jingjie shenxue 中國境界哲學與境界神學 [Chi-

nese Philosophy and Theology of “Lifescape”] (Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua, 2019).

16 Ed. note: The latter is translated as “zero point spirit” in the published Chinese version, see

Leung In-sing, “中國境界哲學到境界神學 [The Philosophy of China Lifescape: Lifeworld and the Zero Point Spirit] Cultural China 98, no. 3 (September 2018): 103–12. 245

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and understanding, which in turn give rise to various realms. Through the approach of self-cultivation, a person comprehends a certain universal truth in the life-world from a certain angle, while different forms of self-cultivation lead to different realms.”17 Leung believes that through self-cultivation, individuals can attain the realm where they perceive the benevolent and loving nature of heaven and the knowledge of God. This understanding is grounded in God’s wordless revelation, and is not a realm achieved only by the human mind or spirit alone; this type of revelation is universal and may be attained by all. This realm is a philosophical realm, and because Chinese philosophy is attained through an individual’s self-reflection and self-cultivation, it belongs to this realm. Christianity belongs to the realm of special revelation: it is the encounter between God and humanity where God takes the initiative to reveal Godself to them, a spiritual realm that emerges after God and humans meet and their personhoods interact. This is not a philosophical realm but a theological one, and so the theology that arises from this realm is Lifescape Theology: “The key to studying Lifescape Theology is that human beings experience God’s manifestation to them. This manifestation brings about a particular experience in the depths of their souls, from which they come to understand God, the cosmos, and the truth of life. In the days that follow, they continue to deepen their experience of God’s manifestation through spiritual cultivation; they realize that God’s affective communion with them can bring them to different realms and continuously elevate their lives, and that the various realms one attains after having faith in God are all theological realms.”18 As people encounter God, converse with God, and have affective communion (gantong) with God throughout their life journey, they experience the realm in which God manifests Godself to them, a realm that arises from God’s interaction with humans and which cannot be achieved solely through self-­cultivation. In these God-human interactions, people strive to attain harmony between humans, between humans and nature, and humans and God, eventually reaching 17 Leung, “The Philosophy of China Lifescape.” 18 Leung, “The Philosophy of China Lifescape.” 246

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the ultimate harmonious realm in which “the conditions of great harmony are preserved in unity” (bao he tai he 保合太和). This is the realm of theology, and the study of this realm can be referred to as Lifescape Theology.19 Leung believes that Chinese Christians can also experience God’s manifestation through faith. Specifically, this involves continuously engaging in dialogue with scholars or philosophers from different faiths or realms while living with God and walking with God; by seeking to understand God’s special revelation in other religions and cultures they will develop distinctive “Lifescape Theologies.” When an individual encounters God in a specific realm and welcomes God into their heart, they transition from the realm of philosophy to the realm of theology. When Christians experience and understand God within a particular culture and express their Christian faith within that cultural tradition, they construct their “Lifescape Theology” in their own context. Leung refers to this theological realm as “the realm manifested by God,” believing that this realm is not limited to the special revelation of the Bible and can be experienced by believers in their lives across generations. It is the realm in which humans and God mutually connect (gantong) and mutually indwell.20 Using this as a starting point, let us briefly introduce Leung’s concept of Lifescape Theology.

The System of Lifescape Theology In recent years, Leung has written a dozen academic essays on Chinese theology, which have been published in the journal Cultural China.21 In my opinion, it is appropriate to consider Leung’s Chinese theology as theology because his theological thinking is grounded in the God revealed in the Bible, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the divine attributes of the different persons of God. Leung returns to the Chinese cultural tradition and explores the universal truths of general revelation implicitly contained within Chinese culture through the lens of special revelation, and also endeavors to establish a Chinese theological system by seeking to understand Chinese culture. At the same time, these provide an opportunity for the renewal and development of Chinese culture. 19 Leung, “The Philosophy of China Lifescape.” 20 Leung, “The Philosophy of China Lifescape.” 21 Ed. note: Published in Chinese by the Culture Regeneration Research Society in Canada,

Leung is the Editor-in-Chief of this quarterly journal, which began in 1994; Han Siyi is a deputy editor. 247

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A Theology that “Inwardly Forms the Sage and Outwardly the King” Leung believes that in constructing theology within Chinese culture, the truths of Christianity should be interpreted using the particular cultural consciousness and spiritual realms of the Chinese people. Theological reflection should focus on issues arising from the Chinese mind and spirit, seeking answers from the Bible to construct a Chinese theological system.22 For Leung, the starting point of Chinese theology should involve walking with God in China’s cultural traditions and society while continuously addressing the fundamental questions raised by Chinese people. He points out that Greek philosophy originated from astonishment at the universe and the existence of everything, with its fundamental question being the origin of the cosmos and the truth about existence, while Chinese philosophy originated in the pursuit of beauty and goodness in human life, with its fundamental question being the Dao (the Way, 道) that “inwardly forms the sage and outwardly the king” (nei sheng wai wang 內聖外王).23 As for “inwardly forming the sage,” Leung explains the Beatitudes from the perspective of Chinese Lifescape Theology, based on his own spiritual devotion.24 As for “outwardly forming the king,” Leung himself is not merely a scholar who conducts theological studies in an ivory tower but a social activist who cares for society with enthusiasm and actively participates in cultural and charity campaigns. Leung writes, “In the impoverished world of rural farmers and urban migrant workers in China, I put forth my deepest philosophical and theological reflections.”25

A Theology of Coexistence with the Other According to Leung, the life-world depicted in Chinese culture is one in which “people coexist with the Other.” Contemporary Western philosophers like Martin Buber and Emmanuel Lévinas have extensively explored this topic. Drawing inspiration from Buber’s concept of “eternal Thou” and Lévinas’ idea 22 Leung In-sing, “內聖外王：從中國哲學基源問題探索中華神學” [The Dao Inwardly

Forms the Sage and Externally the Emperor], Cultural China 103, no. 2 ( June 2020): 76–83.

23 Leung, “The Dao Inwardly Forms the Sage.” 24 Leung In-sing, “深度靈性境界—中國境界神學論八福 (上、下)” [trans. as “Deep

Spiritual Realm: Chinese Realm Theology of the Eight Beatitudes (I)”] Cultural China 99, no. 4 (December 2018): 86–94; and Leung In-sing, “Deep Spiritual Realm: Chinese Realm Theology of the Eight Beatitudes (II),” Cultural China 100, no. 1 (March 2019): 92–104. 25 Leung In-Sing ed., Huitong yu zhuanhua 會通與轉化, revised and expanded edition (Hong Kong: Cultural Regeneration Research Society, 2019): 240. 248

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of “the infinity of the Other,” Leung asserts that Chinese culture should also embrace the infinity of the Other while entering the life of the Other, sharing with the Other, and feasting with the Other. This represents the realm of “relational theology.”26

A Theology of Manifold Affective Communion Drawing from the doctrine of the Trinity, Leung reflects on the realm of Zhuangzi, where “above, he seeks delight in the Maker; below, he has a friendly regard to those who consider life and death as having neither beginning nor end.”27 He suggests that the ultimate “Maker” who creates all things resembles the Father. The earthly figure who regards “life and death as having neither beginning nor end” and can befriend others is akin to the Son. The pervasive “spirit-like operation of heaven and earth” (tiandi jingshen 天地精神) that communes (gantong) with people and creates and operates all things is like the Spirit. Chinese theology emphasizes encountering God in daily life and establishing relationship marked by familial affection, a relationship of affective communion between God and human beings whose basic theological categories are “relationship” and “affective communion.”28 A theology of manifold affective communion is primarily based on the triune God, who encompasses multiple forms of communion between the divine persons. Drawing inspiration from the thought of John of Damascus (ca. 652–750), Leung describes the relationship within the Holy Trinity using the concept of God’s three hypostases interconnecting and traversing each other. He believes that this description of the Trinity closely aligns with the idea of “an unlimited non-polar Oneness with three interfusing personalities in rapport” (一體無極無礙, 三性融攝感通; the three personalities 三性 here refer to “the trio of heaven-earth-human” in the Yijing) found in Chinese culture, representing a realm in which Chinese and Western philosophy share similarities. Leung points out that the three persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit maintain a relationship of both perichoresis (xiangji xiangru 相即相入) and being distinct but inseparable (bu li bu za 不離不雜) within one eternal and infinite essence, 26 Leung In-sing, “中華神學之起點：關係與感通” [The Starting Point of Chinese The-

ology: Relationship and Rapport] Wenhua Zhonguo [Cultural China] 106, no. 1 (March 2021): 51–61. 27 “上與造物者遊，而下與外死生、無終始者為友” Translation from James Legge, The Sacred Books of China, The Texts of Tâoism Part II (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1891): 228. 28 Leung, “The Starting Point of Chinese Theology.” 249

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which demonstrates that the nature of God involves relationship and affective communion. The inner relationship within the triune God forms the basis for coexistence between people and the Other because every human, bearing the image of God, is a relational being and can maintain a relationship with others that is both “perichoretic” and “distinct but inseparable.” This lays the theological foundation for interreligious dialogue.29 The Book of Documents states, “Heaven and Earth is the parent of all creatures; and of all creatures humanity is the most highly endowed” (惟天地, 萬物父母；惟人，萬物之靈).30 Leung believes that this saying indicates that the universe as a whole is characterized by familial relationships, and only humans possess the spiritual nature to connect with the essence of the cosmos and all things within this familial relationship network. The Trinitarian God is the essence of this relationship of affective communion, and created human beings in the image and likeness of this relationship of affective communion. As the creature endowed with spirit, humans have attributes that reflect the image and likeness of God, and so relate to God, to other humans, and to all things. On this basis, the theological anthropology of Chinese theology can be constructed: humans are beings of affective communion who live in relationship. Humans have fellowship with God in affective communion, and have dominion over all things in affective communion with all things.31

A Profound and Mysterious Theology To express the profundity and mystery of the world’s origin, Laozi employs expressions like “how deep and unfathomable it is!” (yuan xi 淵兮) and the Dao “has no name” (wuming 無名), while the Bible exclaims “O, the depth,” “how unsearchable,” and “how inscrutable!” From the perspective of Daoism, God is the deepest Mystery (xuan zhi you xuan 玄之又玄), which represents a point of intersection between Daoist philosophy and Christian theology. One concept of mystery in Chinese philosophy is the idea of shen (神 divine, god, spirit) in the Commentary on the Book of Changes. The meanings of shen include: (1) the 29 Leung In-sing, “中華三一圓教思路” [trans. as “The Chinese Perfect Teaching of Three-in-

One Thinking”] Cultural China 107, no. 2 ( June 2021): 34–46.

30 English translation from James Legge, amended, see https://ctext.org/shang-shu/great-­

declaration-i. 31 Leung In-sing, “人為萬物之靈：中華神學論人” [trans. as “Chinese Theology on Man:

Man is the Spirit of All Things”] Cultural China 109, no. 4 (December 2021): 43–53. 250

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domain of mystery, as in “that which is unfathomable in [the movement of ] the inactive (yin 陰) and active (yang 陽) operations is [the presence of ] a spiritual [power] (shen),”32 (2) the one who arranges and operates all things, as “when we speak of Spirit (shen), we mean the subtle [presence and operation of God] with all things,”33 (3) the ultimate mysterious one who transcends all things and has its own personality, as “the spirits (shen) are intelligent, correct, and impartial,”34 and (4) the one who originates and initiates heaven, earth, and all things, as “Spiritual power (shen) is the basis of heaven and earth and the origin of all things in the natural world.”35 This is the point of intersection between the study of Yijing and Christian theology.36

A Theology of the Sanctification of Humans Drawing inspiration from the deification thought of Maximus the Confessor (580–662), Leung points out that the Eastern Church Fathers’ concept of deification emphasizes the incarnated Word. The perfect human nature of the Son can assimilate those who are being saved and elevate and transform them. Correspondingly, in Chinese philosophy, the foundation of human sanctification (chengsheng 成聖) is considered to lie in the human nature of the sage (shengren xing 聖人性). Integrating Christian and Chinese philosophical thought, Leung notes that the basis of sanctification is the essential nature of human existence as originally created, which is the nature of the Son, bearing the image and likeness of God. This is the foundation of sanctification. Despite the broken nature of humans due to the original sin of Adam and Eve, human beings have not lost their essential nature and still bear the image of God. Only through the sacrifice and salvation of Jesus Christ can the relationship between God and humans be re-established, and the humans’ nature of the Son restored. As such, in affective 32 Ed. note: Quotation from the Yijing (Xi Ci section); see https://ctext.org/book-of-changes/

33 34 35 36

xi-ci-shang. Also verbatim in the Warring States Chinese medical text Huangdi Neijing 黃帝 內經, Tianyuanji dalun section, see https://ctext.org/huangdi-neijing/tian-yuan-ji-da-lun; translation from James Legge. Translation from James Legge, see https://ctext.org/book-of-changes/shuo-gua Ed. note: quotation from the Zuo Zhuan, Zhuanggong section; translation from James Legge, The Chinese Classics. vol. 5 (repr. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), 120. “神靈者，天地之本，而為萬物之始也.” Ed. note: quotation from the Shuo Yuan of Liu Xiang, Xiu wen section, see https://ctext.org/shuo-yuan/xiu-wen. Leung In-sing, “道之奧秘—中華神學論中國哲學的道、玄、神” [trans. as “The Mysteries of Tao—Chinese Theology: Tao, Xuan, and Shen in Chinese Philosophy”] Cultural China 108, no. 3 (September 2021): 31–43. 251

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communion between God and humans, human nature can regain the likeness of God, assimilate to Christ’s human nature, share the nature of the Son, which is similar to that of God, and resume its journey of sanctification.37

A Theology of the Harmonious Unity of Emptiness and Love Leung posits that humans have the capacity to perceive the eternal nature of God. In Buddhist terminology, humans possess a “self-purity” (wojing 我凈, atmasubha) nature, and are capable of apprehending that the ultimate destination of the universe and life follows the laws of heaven (tianli 天理) and holds meaning, and that all things may bring delight, or in Buddhist terminology “eternal bliss” (changle 常樂). Solomon says, “for everything there is a season and a time” and God “has also placed eternal life (‘eternity’ in the Hebrew) in their hearts.” Similarly, Buddhism teaches that the truth of “eternal bliss” and “self-purity” is hidden in the illusory and transient universe and human life. In the book of Ecclesiastes, the terms “vanity” and “eternal bliss and self-purity” (changle wojing)38 simultaneously describe two aspects of the same ultimate reality. Here, vanity refers to the “sunyata of dependent origination” (xingkong 性空) and the illusory, transient universe, while the concept of “eternal bliss and self-purity” points to God’s eternity, compassion, and benevolence. God’s eternal realm of “eternal bliss and self-purity” resides within the phantasmagoria of sunyata.39

A Theology of Tathagata-garbha Leung posits that the fundamental question of later Mahayana Buddhism is the tathagata-garbha, also known as “the mind of tathagata storehouse” (rulai cang xin 如來藏心), referring to the innate, inherently pure mind possessed by all sentient beings. This mind has two aspects: one is “the aspect of mind in terms of the absolute (tathata; suchness)” (心真如門), and the other is “the aspect of mind in terms of phenomena (samsara; birth and death or arising and ceasing)” (心生滅 門). The mind in terms of the absolute enables individuals to actualize enlightenment and attain nirvana. The mind in terms of phenomena acknowledges that although the absolute (tathata) is distinct from all illusions, all things originate from the absolute. The unborn and imperishable mind in terms of the absolute, 37 Leung In-sing, “成聖之學與人的神聖化” [The Study of Sanctification and the Theosis of

Humanity], Yanjiu jibao 6, no. 1 ( January 2021): 10–28.

38 Ed. note: This term does not appear verbatim in Chinese editions of Ecclesiastes. 39 Leung, “Chengsheng zhi xue yu ren de shensheng hua.” 252

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despite experiencing the arising and ceasing of causes and conditions, maintains its formless nature. Leung contends that the theology of the cross in Christianity and the thought system of tathagata-garbha share similar wisdom and can offer mutual inspiration and understanding. Due to the “harmonious unity of emptiness and love,” God’s infinite love is displayed through complete self-emptying (kenosis), a self-emptying which embraces all defilement (fannao 煩惱), pain (ku 苦), and sin (zui 罪). In embracing these, the Son suffered and died on the cross, revealing simultaneously through infinite love the glory of resurrection. Unlike the concept of “one mind, two aspects” in Mahayana Buddhist tathagata-­ garbha thought, the revelation of God is “one essence, three aspects” (一體開 三門). The three persons of the godhead provide three approaches by which humans can attain the truth: (1) the Father’s covenant with human beings, (2) the Son’s transformation of pain and sin, and (3) the Holy Spirit’s indwelling and renewal. People come to know God through God’s revelation, receive salvation by faith, and restore their affective communion with God. The triune God connects with human beings in mutual affection and intimate exchange, eventually leading them into God’s world of ultimate beauty and goodness.40

Conclusion In sum, Leung In-Sing’s Lifescape Theology is a theology that has emerged out of Christian faith within Chinese cultural traditions, and a theological system constructed through dialogue with traditional Confucian, Buddhist, Daoist, and Yijing cultures, as well as contemporary Chinese society and culture. Leung initially employed the concept of jingjie (realm or “lifescape” in his own translation) to discuss Christian faith in order to address issues of religious exclusivity and plurality arising from the dialogue between Christianity and Chinese culture. Leung asserts that religious realms are not equivalent to religious forms; rather, they represent specific experiences of truth. A particular religious realm does not prevent individuals of different faiths from experiencing truth in their own ways, and various faiths can understand each other’s realms and engage in dialogue with each other within their respective realms. There are two approaches to interreligious dialogue. One is the long-established Chinese method of “classification,” which is grounded in philosophy and fosters mutual 40 Leung In-sing, “三一圓融與如來藏真心” [The Trinity and the tathāgatagarbha], Yanjiu

jibao 8, no. 1 ( July 2022): 14–34.

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understanding between religions through reason. This approach enables practitioners to accommodate different denominations and even other religions within their own religious beliefs and philosophical systems based on mutual understanding. In his early work on the “philosophy of realms,” Leung adopted this approach, drawing inspiration from Tang Chun-i’s realm philosophy and constructing his own Christian philosophy of realms. As Leung’s faith deepened, he developed his Lifescape Theology on the foundation of the philosophy of realms, marking his unique contribution. Lifescape Theology differs from the philosophy of realms in that it is grounded in faith rather than reason. It involves Christian scholars opening up to other religions and cultures and engaging in dialogue with adherents of other religions, while walking with God on their faith journeys, in the midst of a dialogue of affective communion with the triune God. Unlike the philosophy of realms, Lifescape Theology does not aim to build a self-contained philosophical system; instead, it promotes deep learning and mutual understanding among individuals of different faiths in interreligious dialogue. Leung’s Chinese theology is an open theological system built upon the Christian faith within Chinese cultural traditions, engaging in ongoing dialogue with Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and the Yijing. In contrast to the systematic theology of Western tradition (in its theology of God, cosmology, theological anthropology, Christology, ecclesiology and so forth), Lifescape Theology is an open and yet-to-be perfected Chinese theological system, constructed through continuous dialogue with both traditional and modern Chinese culture and contemporary society; a theological system characterized by a familial relationship with other Chinese systems of thought— and so in dialogue with Confucianism in its theology of God, cosmology, anthropology, and ecclesiology; and in dialogue with Daoism in its theology of God, cosmology, anthropology, and ecclesiology, and so forth.

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Part IV

Theological Inquiry in Taiwan and Singapore

Chapter 13

NATURAL LAW AS THE FULFILLMENT OF CHINESE LAW John C. H. Wu’s Critical Reading of Chinese Legal Thought Mao Cheng 程卯, Durham University Introduction John C. H. Wu (Wu Jingxiong 吳經熊 1899–1986) was a prominent Chinese jurist, principal drafter of the 1946 constitution, Bible translator, Catholic intellectual, and a minister to the Vatican in the Republican era. His life’s work spanned law and religion and blended the two seamlessly and naturally. However, scholars usually treat his early legal career and his Catholic faith as two distinct stories, as if they were unrelated to each other. Researchers in Christian studies primarily focus on his later achievements of Bible translation and his synthetical view of Christianity and Chinese culture.1 Legal scholarship is mostly interested in his early thinking on legal positivism, his efforts to modernize China’s legal system and to constitutionalize China, with little attention paid to his ideas on 1 John A. Lindblom,“John C. H. Wu and the Evangelization of China,” Logos: A Journal of Cath-

olic Thought and Culture 8, no. 2 (2005): 137–43, https://doi.org/10.1353/log.2005.0019. Anthony E. Clark, “Finding Our Way: Thomas Merton, John Wu and the Christian Dialogue with Early China,” The Merton Annual 29 (2016): 201–202. Benedicta Ku, John Wu—Totally Catholic, Totally Chinese and Totally Himself (Taipei: Kuangchi Cultural Group, 2006). John A. Lindblom, “ ‘A Chinese Tunic for Christ’: John C. H. Wu’s Incorporation of the Chinese Classics in Translating the Psalms and New Testament” (University of Notre Dame, 2021). Tongxin Lu, “John C. H. Wu: A Prodigy in Synthesizing East and West and a Prophet for the Evangelization of China” (PhD Thesis, Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, 2021).

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natural law after the 1950s.2 Despite the fact that Wu’s later thought had some obvious ruptures from his earlier period, there is a profound internal consistency in his spiritual development.3 Existing literature lacks a holistic perspective and has not been able to explain how the surface rupture and the deep coherence in Wu’s thought were intertwined. This paper takes Wu’s natural law thinking as a holistic perspective to examine his research on Western and Chinese law at different stages of his career. The paper first traces Wu’s early study of jurisprudence and natural law, including his initial exploration of natural law in Western legal philosophy in the 1920s, his temporary suspension of interest in natural law from the late 1920s to 1930s, and his subsequent research on Thomas Aquinas’s natural law after the 1950s. The article then examines Wu’s comments on Chinese legal thought during these decades, and his reinterpretation of ancient Chinese legal history through the lens of natural law. Finally, the paper concludes with a comprehensive and critical evaluation of the contributions and problems of Wu’s approach to natural law.

Wu’s Early study of Jurisprudence and Natural Law “The fundamental and persistent tendency of my mind has been to transcend and harmonize one pair of opposites after another. Just as in the field of epistemology, I have tried to transcend and synthesize the conceptual and perceptual, so on the question of natural law I have tried to transcend and synthesize the immutable and the mutable, the permanent and the changing.”4 As John C. H. Wu acknowledged in his later writing, his early study of juridical philosophy 2 Thomas E. Greift, “The Principle of Human Rights in Nationalist China: John C. H. Wu

and the Ideological Origins of the 1946 Constitution,” The China Quarterly 103 (September 1985): 441–61. Xiaomeng Zhang, “John C. H. Wu and His Comparative Law Pursuit’, International Journal of Legal Information 41, no. 2 (2013): 196–221. Xiuqing Li, “John C. H. Wu at the University of Michigan School of Law,” Journal of Legal Education 58, no. 4 (2008): 545–62. Matthias Christian, Legal Science Between East and West—A Comparative Study of John C.H. Wu’s Early Jurisprudential Philosophy (Beijing: China University of Political Science and Law Publishing House, 2004). William P. Alford and Yuanyuan Shen, ‘ “Law Is My Idol” John C. H. Wu and the Role of Legality and Spirituality in the Effort to “Modernise” China,” in Essays in Honour of Wang Tieya, eds. Tieya Wang and Ronald St J. Macdonald (Boston: M. Nijhoff Publishers, 1994): 43–53. 3 Christian, Legal Science Between East and West, 206. 4 John C. H. Wu, “A Growing Natural Law,” in The Spiritual Source of Joy, ed. and trans. Hong Yuh-Chin (Taipei: Tung Ta Book Company, 1981): 172. 258

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had two starting points: First, it attempted to “reconcile the Holmesian with the Stammlerian in legal thinking, the perceptual with the conceptual, the becoming with the become, the matter with the form, the theory of interests with the theory of justice, the empirical with the rational.”5 Second, from the very beginning of his juristic career, Wu had a strong desire to synthesize the element of permanence and the element of change and adaptability in the notion of natural law.6 He studied the two issues separately, but ultimately failed to combine them in a unified legal philosophy of natural law. In his early years of overseas study, Wu developed a firm friendship with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and the German legal professor Rudolf Stammler, both of whom had written about natural law while distancing themselves from it. As a progressivist and pluralist judge, Justice Holmes objected to the claims of natural law and natural rights because they mistakenly attributed moral or social institutions to a transcendent basis. Meanwhile, after graduation from Michigan Law School, Wu received a scholarship to study international law in Berlin under Professor Rudolf Stammler, a leading figure of the neo-Kantian philosophy of law.7 In contrast to Holmes, Stammler maintained that the nature of law is a rational concept in the human mind, that is, a pure, static and universally valid form independent from the changing circumstances of the world.8 Though recognizing the possibility of “a natural law with changing content,” Stammler insisted that our practical reason should steer clear of metaphysical presuppositions and involvements; in this sense, he refrained from further investigation of theories of natural law and natural rights.9 As a young student, Wu was keenly aware that the traditional concept of natural law needed to be changed. At the time, however, Wu failed to find a corresponding philosophical concept for this kind of natural law. Instead, the 5 John C. H. Wu, “The Juristic Philosophy of Justice Holmes,” Michigan Law Review 21

(1922): 535. John C. H. Wu, Beyond East and West (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018): 98. 6 Wu, “A Growing Natural Law,” 175–76. 7 Zhang, “John C.H. Wu and His Comparative Law Pursuit,” 205. 8 Wu, “A Growing Natural Law,” 165–69. 9 Wu acknowledged that Stammler called attention to the problem of natural law by announcing the desideratum of the “epoch-making” idea of “natural law with a changing content,” but Stammler was not able to solve this problem with proper methodology. See Rudolf Stammler, The Theory of Justice (Macmillan, 1925), 562. Stammler used this expression in the 1896 version of Wirtschaft und Recht as the title of section 33, but in the 1906 version it was replaced by “The possibility of an objectively correct legal content.” See Wu, “A Growing Natural Law,” 165–69. 259

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Biblical description of a vivid, living God gave him an initial vision where all contradictions between the mutability and the immutability of natural law could be reconciled. In one of his earliest letters to Justice Holmes, Wu expressed this vision, endeavoring to “rescue the concept of natural law from the teeth of Holmes’ skepticism.”10 In a few words, Wu boldly put forward his glimpse of the “true natural law”:

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-04-07 01:50 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

“Well, the simple reason is that jurists, in general, are conservative in their use of terms, and they will not yield up their “natural law” unless we show them that they have only visualized the back of Natural Law—as Moses only saw the back of God—and that our vision of Natural law, which, like the face of God, is ever-glowing, vivid, expressive of internal feelings, responsive to external changes, and looking forward to the welfare of Humanity, is a truer vision of Natural Law.”11 Apart from this early vision of natural law, Wu successfully developed a via media between Holmes and Stammler in a relatively complete structure of philosophy. In an article published in 1924, Wu made a remarkable attempt to reconcile the juridical philosophies of Holmes and Stammler,12 which was also an excellent summary of his early philosophy of law. The article argued that the contradictions between the two jurists can be reconciled from a higher point of view where both of them would appear as “branches springing from the unknown root.”13 On the one hand, from Holmes’s epistemology of the perception of law, law is “increasingly changing and perpetually becoming.”14 On the other hand, from Stammler’s philosophy of law, the concept of law is eternal, timeless, and motionless.15 Wu pointed out that both are one-sided and only partial truth: the conception of law represents the form of law, and the perception of law represents the matter of law. Neither of them can stand alone without the presupposition of the substance of law. However, the substance—or the “thing-in-itself ” of law is one of the various forms under which the ultimate “Thing-in-Itself ” appears. 10 11 12 13 14 15

Wu, Beyond East and West, 94–97. Wu, Beyond East and West, 96–97. The article successfully won the approval of both. Wu, “A Growing Natural Law,” 169–72. Wu, “The Juristic Philosophy of Justice Holmes,” 536. Wu, “The Juristic Philosophy of Justice Holmes,” 529, 527. Wu, “The Juristic Philosophy of Justice Holmes,” 527.

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It is the ultimate ground of all Being that constitutes the ultimate ground of law, and law is only one portal that introduces us to the utmost reality that is the living principle in all things (including law) and the hidden harmony of nature and mind.16 Finally, Wu draws on a Neo-Hegelianism expression to summarize his own understanding of this living whole: it is “an organic unity of transparent differences, a self-differentiating, a self-integrating unity, such as seems to be presented to us in pure self-consciousness.”17 As can be seen, in his early legal philosophy Wu adopted a Kantian critical realism and a Neo-Hegelian dynamic ontology to develop his own philosophy of law, in which law is neither an independent, self-contained, static concept nor an ever-changing phenomenon. Rather, the unity and continuity of law can only be revealed in the living process of an external reality. Meanwhile, Wu adopted a symbolic vision of the natural law inspired by the biblical description of the living God. There is, however, a gulf that straddled his legal philosophy in general and his particular vision for the natural law.

Wu and the Sociological School of Law After graduating from Michigan Law School in 1924, Wu returned to China to teach and practice law, and as a legal professor, rapidly became one of the most successful scholars in the country.18 In his fruitful early career, Wu had great confidence in constructing a new legal science, that is, a neo-analytical school of jurisprudence, as a tool to transform Chinese society, to enlighten Chinese minds, and modernize Chinese civilization.19 During this period, Holmes still had a continuing influence on Wu, but Wu began to have more extensive contacts with representative scholars of sociological jurisprudence, such as Rosco Pound and Benjamin N. Cardozo.20 Notwithstanding his previous effort to merge the best of his two principal mentors and his interest in the natural law, Wu’s 16 Wu, “The Juristic Philosophy of Justice Holmes,” 535–41. 17 Wu, “The Juristic Philosophy of Justice Holmes,” 541. 18 Alford and Shen, “ ‘Law Is My Idol’: John C. H. Wu and the Role of Legality and Spirituality

in the Effort to ‘Modernise’ China,” 49. 19 Alford and Shen, ‘“Law Is My Idol,” 47. 20 Billy Kee-Long So, “A Darwinist View of Constitutional Rights: The Genealogy From

Holmes to John C. H. Wu,” in 霍姆斯與百年中西法學 [Justice Oliver Holmes: His Jurisprudence and Century-Long Legacy in the East and West], eds. Billy Kee-Long So, Xingzhong Yu, and Sufumi So (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2022): 143–72.

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thought gave way to this neo-analytical jurisprudence.21 His unrelenting belief in the power of reason and progress held that it could accommodate the methodological advantages of sociological jurisprudence and other schools, overcome the absolutism and monism of traditional jurisprudence and legal philosophy, and finally offer the most promising and practical guidance for the reformation of the legal system in China.22 Regarding the development of Chinese law, Wu found a universal pattern of legal evolution in Pound’s interpretation of legal history. When applied to the Chinese context, this can help us understand the current stage of the Chinese law and foresee its future direction. According to Pound’s sociological interpretation, the progressive evolution of Chinese law involved at least three stages: a primitive stage, a strict law stage, the confusion of law and morality, and a further stage of mature law that was eagerly anticipated in the development of Chinese law. Following this trajectory, Wu seemed to believe that the urgent demand for a modernized, autonomous system of Chinese law could be gradually attained through a measurable process. Furthermore, he described the evolution of law as a spiral process driven by two opposing forces, which closely echoed the prevalent theory of historical dialectics among his Marxist contemporaries.23 Consequently, Wu’s interpretation of legal history turned out to be more mechanical and pragmatic than Pound’s. Overall, Wu’s early reception of Pound tended to be an abstract and mechanical understanding of the direction and stages of the evolution of law without taking into account the important premises of Pound’s interpretation of the legal history. In Wu’s case, the first premise is the historical context of the development of Western law, in which natural law was an inseparable and ongoing element of Western legal history. The second is the metaphysical premise of the idea of God as the sole creator and the supreme sovereign of law, which made natural law a creative element in the progressive growth of law in certain historical periods. Without these considerations, Wu tended to view the evolution of law as the result of the mechanical alternation of two conflicting forces, which closely resembled the materialist historical dialectics of Marxism. 21 Wu, “The Province of Jurisprudence Re-Determined,” 64–68. 22 Wu, 52–68. Kai Duanmu, “A Brief Introduction to China’s New Analytical School of Juris-

prudence,” in The Legal Studies Reader, ed. John C. H. Wu and Maosheng Hua (Beijing: China University of Political Science And Law Press, 2003), 231–45. 23 John C. H. Wu, Legal Philosophy Studies (Tsinghua University Press, 2005), 209, 214. Wu, “The Province of Jurisprudence Re-Determined,” 63. 262

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Wu and St. Thomas’s Natural Law After Wu’s conversion to Catholicism in 1937, his legal research entered a new chapter through studying St. Thomas’s natural law. When invited to teach in the United States in the 1950s, Wu intensively wrote a series of works to interpret the contemporary relevance of Thomas’s natural law to the common law. From his perspective, Thomas’s natural law does not negate his previous legal studies but rather lifts them to a higher level: on the one hand, St. Thomas’s natural law belongs to a multi-structural philosophy of law within a broad teleological view of theology and ethics. It enables Wu to explain the change and stability of natural law from the dynamic unity of the eternal law, the natural law, and the human law. On the other hand, St. Thomas’s natural law brought a fresh perspective to legal history. Focusing on the ontological supremacy of God and God’s eternal law, as well as the embodiment of natural law in the history of common law, Wu developed a better understanding of Pound’s interpretation of legal history. First, Wu adopted St. Thomas’s multi-structure law in which eternal law, natural law, and human law form a continuous series.24 The eternal law is God’s plan of Divine Providence according to which God governs for the good of all. As the whole cosmos is an ordinance of Divine Reason, the eternal law is the fountainhead of both the physical order and the moral order of the universe.25 Being the essence and the end of itself, the eternal law of God is perfect and simple, although we only see it darkly through the mirror of its effect.26 The natural law is an imprint of the eternal law on humanity’s natural reason. All rational beings participate in divine wisdom through their natural reason, but the embodiment of natural law in human reason is finite and imperfect. Inasmuch as natural law is bound up with human reason, natural law gradually grows as human reason advances.27 Finally, all human laws contain natural law principles and positive 24 John C. H. Wu, Fountain of Justice: A Study in the Natural Law (Taipei: Mei Ya Publications,

1971): 25, 219. John C. H. Wu, “A Comparative Study of the Philosophies of Natural Law,” in The Spiritual Source of Joy, ed. and trans. Hong Yuh-Chin (Taipei: Tung Ta Book Company, 1981): 183. Wu, “A Growing Natural Law,” 178. 25 Wu, Fountain of Justice, 12, 13–15. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1911–1925), I–II, 93.1 ad 2. in corp. 26 Wu, Fountain of Justice 16–17, 13. 27 Wu, Fountain of Justice, 16–17, 37. Wu, ‘A Growing Natural Law,” 176. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, 91.2, 91.3 ad 1., 97.1. in corp. 263

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rules in varying proportions.28 They are derived from the natural law as its particular determinations or as concrete conclusions. The principles of the natural law are permanent and comprehensive, but their application through the human law is elastic.29 The human law must adapt itself to the ever-varying conditions of human culture and civilization; in this sense, the positive rules of natural law are subject to change by way of addition or subtraction.30 The distinction among eternal law, natural law, and human law is significant for our knowledge, because it explains the mutable and immutable aspects of natural law that help us avoid unwarranted dogmatism.31 Second, as Wu correctly noted, St. Thomas’s natural law belongs to a general philosophy of law that must be studied within the teleological panorama of theology and ethics.32 In Wu’s view, St. Thomas’s definition of law comprises three aspects: the essence, the end, and the process of the law. The essence of the law is conformity to reason, the end is the common good, and the process consists in gradual realization of its essence through a progressive attainment of the end.33 According to this definition, law is not self-standing but exists as a dynamic, constantly evolutionary progress toward its end.34 Furthermore, in St. Thomas’s framework, law and ethics are mutually complementary toward their common end.35 From a panoramic view, the ultimate purpose of the law— the common good—is threefold: it includes the practice of virtues, friendship between humans, and enjoyment of God.36 The ultimate end of law is immanent to human nature, for all humans, being rational creatures, have been given a natural inclination to live a life peacefully and harmoniously in society, and to know the truth about God:37 “[t]he end of human life and society is God.”38 The teleology of natural law saves us from the pitfalls of a purely utilitarian and 28 Wu, Fountain of Justice, 9. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, 95.2, 109. 3.1 ad 1, in corp. 29 Wu, Fountain of Justice, 9–10, 37. Wu, “A Comparative Study of the Philosophies of Natural

Law,” 190–94. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, 95.2. in corp.

30 Wu, 10, 21–22. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, 94.5. in corp. Wu, “A Comparative Study

of the Philosophies of Natural Law,” 189–90. Wu, ‘A Growing Natural Law,” 177–78. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 16. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 21–22. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 11–12. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, 90.4. in corp. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 15–16. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 221. Wu, Fountain of Justice 33, 149–50. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, 96.2 ad 2, 99.2, 100.6. in corp. 37 Wu, Fountain of Justice 22. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, 94.2. in corp. 38 Wu, Fountain of Justice, 149–50. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, 100.6. in corp. 31 32 33 34 35 36

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pragmatic jurisprudence. It sheds light on the purpose and impetus for the change of human law, for the human law can be only called just and reasonable when it tends to facilitate the ends of humanity.39 Third, the teleology of natural law must be founded on the ontological supremacy of God and God’s eternal law. As stated above, the eternal law is the mysterious plan of God according to which God governs the whole of creation for the good of all.40 For Wu, the underlying foundation of St. Thomas’s natural law is God, “the Creator of cosmos, the sole Lawgiver, the Judge and the King, the eternal and immutable Justice, and the true source where law receives light and clearness, vigor and strength, meaning and content.”41 This transcendental reference is an indispensable starting point of a philosophy of law. Only when we reflect God as the sole Lawgiver and the Ultimate Good can we begin to see the vital distinction and fundamental unity of all kinds of laws.42 For Wu, the ontological distinction between eternal law and other laws is essential to separate immutable truths from mutable legal and moral norms. Furthermore, when applied to the interpretation of legal history, it introduces a penetrating insight to reflecting on legal evolution as the manifestation of the eternal law. In other words, the effect of Divine Providence can be witnessed empirically in the historical development of law.43 As a result of this thinking of Aquinas, Wu introduced new elements to Pound’s interpretation of legal history. Wu identified the historical relevance of Christian faith to law and the creative role of natural law in the formation of the common law, attributing the creativity and mutability of the natural law to the supremacy of God and God’s Providence.44 In his empirical study of common-law history, Wu argued that the development of the common law has gradually assimilated the principles of natural law as a living tradition; in this sense, common law is “founded on justice and rooted in grace.”45 First, common law was a “cradle Christian” in its origin. From the very beginning, clerics and judges continued to infuse natural law principles and Canon Law into the creation of common law. Even today, common-law judges have still imbibed more or less the atmosphere 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Wu, Fountain of Justice, 33–34. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 12. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, 93.1 ad 2. in corp. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 231. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 13–14. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 222. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 222. Wu, Fountain of Justice 65, 70, 228–29. 265

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of a Christian civilization.46 Second, in terms of the underlying legal philosophy of the common law, the absolute supremacy of God above the king and the law was a living water from which many fundamental principles and concrete rules of law are created: the reign of law, the dignity and equality of humankind, the natural duties of the government, democracy, and so on.47 In terms of the common-law idea of “trust,” the meaning of property and distributive justice is illuminated in the light of God’s stewardship: both public and private properties should be held in trust of the ultimate purpose of the law—the well-being of humanity. The state is regarded as a trustee of public property that acts for the common good.48 In contemporary society, Wu argues, common-law judges and offices have not departed very far from this idea of stewardship.49 Overall, the living tradition of the common law develops hand in hand with the natural law.50 The natural law constitutes the source of the creativity and vitality of the common law while it avoids making it an abstract ideal or a rigid system. As can be seen, from the 1950s onwards, Wu’s writings on Aquinas’s natural law integrated and raised his previous work to a higher level. He followed St. Thomas’s multi-structured law within a teleological picture of theology and ethics. In this structure, eternal law, natural law, and human law are distinguished while interconnected, forming a dynamic series of progressive perfection. Its fundamental unity is premised on the ontological supremacy of God, who is the creator of all things, the highest lawgiver and the ultimate end of humanity. From St. Thomas’s natural law, Wu also developed new insight into the evolution of law, seeing the evolution of the common law as the manifestation of God’s eternal plan in human history, with a particular focus on the historical relevance and the creativity of the natural law in the living tradition of the common law. The following sections of the paper examine Wu’s study of traditional Chinese law and legal thought and show that Wu’s view of Catholic natural law penetrated his interpretation of ancient Chinese legal thought. Wu’s attempt is a reinterpretation of the root of indigenous Chinese legal thought, rather than a mechanical transplantation of Western thought: it does not remove and replace the root of traditional Chinese law but enriches and completes it. 46 47 48 49 50

Wu, Fountain of Justice, 59, 228–29. Wu, Fountain of Justice 55–154. Wu, Fountain of Justice 148–49. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 59. Wu, Fountain of Justice, 229. 266

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Wu’s Early Study of Chinese Law In the early years of his return to China, between the 1920s and 1930s, Wu felt obliged to promote the future development of Chinese law to improve the current legal and social situation in China.51 Regrettably, Wu’s interpretation of Chinese legal history was a simple application of the reductive model of Pound’s theory. Primarily concerned with the change and development of Chinese law, he mistakenly reduced the influencing factors of legal evolution to the binary relationship between morality and law, thus tending to evaluate the development of Chinese law from the separation and confusion of law and morality. From this perspective, Legalism represents a higher evolutionary stage than Confucianism, for it maintained a strict separation of law and morality, while Han Confucianism integrated morality and law as two sides of an interdependent philosophy. As Wu attributed the current problems of Chinese law to the imprisoning of law by morality, he advocated a pragmatic approach of a neo-analytical jurisprudence to restore the supremacy and the autonomy of the rule of law. When studying in Ann Arbor, Wu published an article in the Michigan Law Review under the title “Readings from Ancient Chinese Codes and Other Sources of Chinese Law and Legal Ideas.” In the article, Wu attempted to convince the world that the abundant Chinese legal philosophies had prepared the legal mind in China for its transformation to modern sociological jurisprudence, in his earnest hope that “extraterritoriality may be withdrawn from the oldest land of freedom and justice.”52 Although he admitted that there were substantial differences between ancient Chinese jurisprudence and modern Western jurisprudence, Wu believed that the contradictions between the two were not irreconcilable.53 In the article, Wu argued that “In the field of law, ancient China produced a Law of Nature School, with Lao-Tsze [Laozi] as its founder; a Humanistic School, with Confucius at its head, and emperor Wen as its patron, a Positivist School, with Shang Iang [Shang Yang] for its leader; and lastly, the Historical

51 “I tremble before my heavy task. To ennoble, to bring joy to the joyless, to produce minimum

wages for the laborers, to provide human homes for human creatures, to take in hand life and direct it to purer channels—these are some of the problems towards the solution of which I shall contribute my part . . .” (Dated May 15, 1924), Wu, Beyond East and West, 106. 52 John C. H. Wu, “Reading from Ancient Chinese Codes and Other Sources of Chinese Law and Legal Ideas,” Michigan Law Review 19, no. 5 (1921 1920): 503–504. 53 Wu, “The Juristic Philosophy of Justice Holmes,” 534–35. 267

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School, represented by Pan Koo [Ban Gu].”54 The four schools presented four essential elements of legal thought, namely: pure reason, administrative justice, certainty and definiteness, and the idea of historical growth. In Wu’s view, if these elements were wisely reorganized or refactored, it would “bring us very near to the twentieth-century conceptions of law.”55 In other words, although ancient Chinese legal thought was not identical to modern jurisprudence, it fully prepared for the latter. At that time, Wu evaluated the contributions and values of the four schools of law in a balanced way without apparent tendency towards any one or two of them, with an optimistic anticipation that a substantial reconstruction of the elements of Ancient Chinese law would give birth to a modernized legal system and legal philosophy in China. In the 1930s, Wu’s evaluation of ancient Chinese legal thought became more radical. In an article published in 1932, Wu viewed the evolution of Chinese political and legal history as the result of two combative forces, namely, Confucian thought of human government and Legalists’ thought of government by law. In terms of the progressive evolution of law, Legalist thought was evidently more advanced than that of Confucianism.56 Confucianism’s perspective of history, morality, and politics was highly conservative: Confucius was a moral conservatist who tried to extend outdated aristocratic rituals and morality to the common people, advocating that the main purpose of the government was to maintain a preexisting moral order.57 In contrast, Laozi had a much better understanding of the signs of history.58 The Legalists’ view of history 54 Wu, “Reading from Ancient Chinese Codes,” 504. 55 Wu, “Reading from Ancient Chinese Codes,” 504. 56 John C. H. Wu, “The Struggle between Government of Laws and Government of Men in the

History of China, ” China Law Review 5, no. 2 (1932): 53–71. This attitude was not common among Chinese intellectuals at the time. See: Christian, Legal Science Between East and West—A Comparative Study of John C.H. Wu’s Early Jurisprudential Philosophy, 194. Albert Hung-yee Chen, Chinese Traditional Culture and Modern Constitutional Democracy (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 2013): 2–5. 57 Wu, “The Struggle between Government of Laws,” 68. 58 “(Lao Tse) had a better understanding of the signs of the times . . . he hit upon a dialectic of the world-process, somewhat similar to that of Hegel . . . everything is relative, and the root of all troubles is that people regard relative and transient values as absolute and eternal ends. . . . In one word, the remedy which Lao Tse prescribed for the social diseases of his time was to return to nature and to primordial simplicity, not, as with Confucius, to return to the illustrious antiquity, which had already outlived its season,” Wu, “The Struggle between Government of Laws,” 58.

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has many affinities with that of Daoism. They believed in the spontaneity of history and the doctrine of adaptation to change.59 They established the principle of equality and abolished the old system of hierarchy, making the law the only idol.60 Therefore, “[i]t is safe to conclude that the Legists possessed an infinitely better understanding of the task of government than Confucius.”61 In general, the Legalist thought on the rule of law represented a higher stage of development. Legalists, as opponents of Confucianism and representatives of the rule of law, were moving in the right direction and rang “a refreshing note of modernity.”62 Finally, Wu urged a renaissance of legal science in China, in order to emancipate law from the captivity of traditional morality, and to regain the autonomy of the legal institution. He envisioned a new school of law in its process of formation: like the old Legalists, it would idolize the law but not repeat the old rule of law. It would regenerate into a living organism by continuously adapting to changes and evolution, while overcoming the mechanism and materialism of the old Legalist school.63 This concept of a living organism would bear no more ontological significance. Rather, empirical methods would be adopted to absorb widely the outputs of other disciplines and schools for its constant development.64 At this time, the four schools of law mentioned earlier were no longer competing against each other in Wu’s mind. Rather, Wu rebranded the Legalist an ideal representative of his inclusive concept of neo-analytical jurisprudence in China.

Natural Law as the Fulfillment of Chinese Law During the 1950s and 1970s, Wu wrote a series of research papers on natural law and Chinese law while staying in the United States. In a paper on Chinese law, he reexamined ancient Chinese legal thought from the perspective of natural law. Here Wu summarized ancient Chinese legal thought and political philosophy into three aspects: the mandate of heaven, the union of law and morality, 59 60 61 62 63 64

Wu, “The Struggle between Government of Laws,” 60. Wu, “The Struggle between Government of Laws,” 59. Wu, “The Struggle between Government of Laws,” 62. Wu, “The Struggle between Government of Laws,” 61, 65. Wu, “The Struggle between Government of Laws,” 68. Supra note, 33, 34, 35.

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and the idea of harmony.65 His understanding of St. Thomas’s natural law permeated all three aspects, bringing a distinct insight to the interpretation of Chinese legal history. For the Mandate of Heaven, Wu highlighted a transcendent, external, and personal subject as the creator of natural law. To maintain the distinction between law and morality, he emphasized the ontological distance between God, nature, and humanity. Finally, he reinterpreted harmony as a dynamic teleological process toward the realization of social justice and moral transformation through a cosmological uniting power. This idea of harmony enriched the reductive, dialectical view of legal evolution in his previous thinking. Wu emphasized a transcendent and personal notion of Heaven as the supreme sovereign and the sole creator of laws, who ordained the order of government and prescribed human nature as the authority behind the Mandate of Heaven. Premised on the reason and will of this transcendent lawgiver, the mandate of Heaven provided the source of many important legal ideas about government duties and individuality in the ancient Chinese law. In terms of the relation between law and morality, he implied that the distinction between law and morality can only be maintained by a correct understanding of the ontological relation of God, nature, and humanity. Finally, Wu brought a new understanding of harmony as a dynamic process encompassing three aspects: social justice, moral transformation, and cosmology. These three aspects of harmony are integrated in a teleological perspective of natural law. From the perspective of natural law, Wu made a more pertinent evaluation of Legalism and Confucianism. Nevertheless, he believed that the ancient Chinese thought of harmony was not yet true harmony, and the true harmony needed to be fulfilled by Christianity.

The Mandate of Heaven First of all, Wu claimed that the Mandate of Heaven is the real cornerstone of ancient Chinese political and legal thought.66 Remarkably, Wu’s interpretation 65 John C. H. Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” in The Chinese Mind: Essentials

of Chinese Philosophy and Culture, ed. Charles Alexander Moore (Honolulu: University of Hawaii press, 1967): 213–37. Wu summarized six forms of natural law in ancient China, including: (1) the authority of the ancient sage-rulers, (2) the Will of Heaven or God, as with Mozi, (3) the Way of Heaven, as with Laozi, (4) the Canon of the Sacred Scripture, as with the Han Confucians, and (5) Universal Reason or Natural Law, as with the Song and Ming Confucians (6) Mencius view of human nature as instituted by Heaven. Wu, 235. 66 Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 213–14. 270

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of the Mandate of Heaven emphasized a transcendent and external subject who creates the essence of humankind, appoints particular persons or classes, and guides the whole universe toward to its fulfillment. For Wu, this idea of Heaven was perfectly summarized in Mencius’s thought on the Mandate of Heaven.67 For Mencius, “Heaven” is just another name for God. Heaven possesses supreme wisdom and long-range purpose; it is absolutely subjective and personal for having two components of Personality—Intellect and Will.68 The personal and willful characteristics of Heaven shed light on at least three aspects of the Mandate of Heaven. First, the Mandate of Heaven is a particular “appointment” or “design” relating to an individual person or group of persons.69 A second meaning is that of a general “providence,” as when we say that Heaven provides for all, even including the whole creation.70 A third meaning is that of a specific “ordination” or “constitution” or “norm” that Heaven attaches to every class or species of beings as its proper essence. When they spoke of “Tian ming 天命” in connection with the nature of humanity, they referred to the third meaning. This is illustrated by the proposition: “what is ordained by Heaven is called ‘nature.’ ”71 In Wu’s view, these three aspects almost conclude the meanings of the Mandate of Heaven in the entirety of Chinese history. When understood as an appointment or design for a special group of people, the Mandate of Heaven provides that political authority is a trust conferred by Heaven upon the government for the welfare of the people.72 It may be received either as a command or through natural reason. As a godly command, the Mandate of Heaven manifested itself in various ways, including natural calamities and the revolt of the populace.73 When manifested in natural reason, the Mandate of Heaven demanded certain political virtues of the rulers to serve the purpose of Heaven. In this 67 John C. H. Wu, “Mencius’ Philosophy of Human Nature and Natural Law,” in Chinese

Humanism and Christian Spirituality ( Jamaica, NY: St. John’s University Press, 1965), 35.

68 Wu, “Mencius’ Philosophy of Human Nature,” 30. 69 Wu, “Mencius’ Philosophy of Human Nature,” 30. 70 “In the case of man, Heaven gives him life and equips him with a body-soul together with

all the physical and psychical capabilities.” Wu, “Mencius Philosophy of Human Nature and Natural Law, ” 30. 71 Wu, “Mencius’ Philosophy of Human Nature and Natural Law,” 30. 72 Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 214–15. “The Chinese philosophy of political authority may be summed up in a few words. Political authority is a trust conferred by the Mandate of Heaven upon the government for the welfare of the people. The government is created for the people, but the people for the government.” 73 Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 213–14. 271

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respect, both Confucianism and Laozi draw from the Shujing [Book of History] to emphasize the two main qualities of a ruler: humility toward the people and self-denial.74 In the Confucians’ view, a political authority does not have intrinsic nobility; rather, it is merely a transitory and extrinsic means to realize the nobility of Heaven—the essential virtues of humanity.75 Therefore, the noble task of a political authority is to develop personality, humanity, and civilization.76 Speaking of the Mandate of Heaven as a general “providence” or as a special norm or constitution of humankind, the major religious traditions in China all refer to the Mandate of Heaven as a universal law or divinely ordained human nature—which is a higher source than the state’s positive law. It provides the transcendental root of individual freedom for all human laws and the justification to reject the absolutism of the Legalists. For Daoism, it lies in Dao, the Way of Nature or the law of nature. For the Buddhist, the Supreme Law, Buddha-dharma, transcends all the laws of this world. For the Confucianists, natural law derives from Heaven’s wisdom and God-ordained human nature.77 Because everyone receives their nature and nobility from Heaven, a person must be faithful to this God-conferred nature and devote themself to its realization: this is the only way of serving God.78 All laws and policies must also direct people to this end—the full realization of the human nature bestowed by Heaven.79

Law and Morality Next, regarding the relation between law and morality, Wu insisted that the outstanding feature of the old Chinese legal system is the identification of law and morality. As in the previous period, he held that the tragedy of the rule of law in old China started from the Han Confucians’ misleading blending of morality and law.80 However, at this stage, the implication of this historical event has been more clearly elucidated as a remodeling of the ontological basis See Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 215–18. Wu, “Mencius’ Philosophy of Human Nature and Natural Law,” 27. Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 218–19. John C. H. Wu, “The Status of the Individual in the Political and Legal Traditions of Old and New China,” in The Chinese Mind: Essentials of Chinese Philosophy and Culture, ed. Charles Alexander Moore (Honolulu: University of Hawaii press, 1967): 314. 78 Wu, “Mencius’ Philosophy of Human Nature and Natural Law,” 29. 79 Wu, “Mencius’ Philosophy of Human Nature and Natural Law,” 25–29. 80 Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 220. 74 75 76 77

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of natural law. Ever since Dong Zhongshu wedded Confucianism to Yin-Yang philosophy and the mechanical alternation of the Five Elements, the ontology of Confucianism began to degenerate into a half-mystical and half-human cosmogony.81 By moralizing the external universe, this cosmogony also made irrational the interior world of the spirit. Instead of achieving a true synthesis of the two by transcending both, Han and later Confucians have left us a promiscuous blending of humanity and Nature.82 For Wu, the tragedy of ancient Chinese law began when it adopted this cosmogony to make law and morality the yin and yang phrases of the same structure of governance. Morality became a positive side of law, and law became a negative side of morality. This is the legalization of morality, or the moralization of the rule of law.83 Under this form of natural law, the old Chinese rule of law is a system of duties and obligations rather than a system of rights, and under such a compulsive moral system, individual freedom and rights can scarecely be developed.84 From the perspective of natural law, Wu tended to be more alert to the destructive effect of the Legalists’ dismissal of natural law. The Legalists saw the need for the rule of law, but they were radical positivists and materialists who identified the concept of law exclusively with the positive statutes of the State. They did not recognize any authority above the state, nor any law above the positive law of the state. The state was regarded as the end, while the people were merely means to the end.85 They understood law and human nature too narrowly, trying to base law solely on force and fear.86 Through the lens of natural law, Wu gained more appreciation for the characteristics of equilibrium, humanism, and elasticity of Confucianism. He admitted that Confucius’s approach seemed to be the most balanced approach among all schools.87 In general, in contrast to the Legalists’ positivism, the Confucians placed the virtues of humanity and justice above all considerations of utility. Wu 81 Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 226, 233. Wu, “The Status of the Individual in

the Political and Legal Traditions of Old and New China, ” 344. 82 Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 226. 83 Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 224, 226. Wu, “The Status of the Individual in

the Political and Legal Traditions of Old and New China,” 344. 84 Wu, “The Status of the Individual in the Political and Legal Traditions of Old and New

China,” 344–51. 85 Wu, “The Status of the Individual,” 342. 86 Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 223–24. 87 Wu, “The Status of the Individual,” 343. 273

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believed that Mencius’s humanitarian natural law came very close to the Christian thought of natural law.88 Regrettably, when Confucius’s moral teachings were distorted by the Han Confucians, they lost their original rationality, purity, and flexibility, and degenerated into a rigid official system.89

Harmony Finally, Wu claimed that the most fundamental characteristic of and the most deep-rooted desire of the Chinese mind is harmony.90 His interpretation of harmony consists of three aspects: social justice, moral transformation, and a cosmic unifying power. It is a dynamic teleological process that synthesizes the theory of justice and ethics with a cosmic self-moving, self-differentiated and self-unifying power as its cause, its energy, and its end. Wu imagined harmony as a dynamic process of just distribution and adjustment, drawing on the the Shijing [Book of Odes] and and Li Ji [Book of Rites], with its fundamental political ideal of the Grand Harmony (Datong 大同): “When the Great Way prevailed in the world, all humankind worked for the common good. Men of virtue and ability were elected to fill public offices. . . This is called the Age of Grand Harmony.91 When injustice happened to break the universal harmony, the Mandate of Heaven would interfere through the dynamic movement of history to reset the order of justice and restore a peaceful and harmonious status. Justice is an inherent demand of harmony, and the lack of justice means the lack of harmony. Moreover, when it concerns the virtues of individuals, harmony includes a dynamic process of moral transformation from the innermost to the outermost, as seen in the opening passage of the Daxue (Great Learning), which starts with the investigation of things and relationships, then progresses to true knowledge, sincere thought, a pure heart, a perfect personality, an orderly family, a well-­ governed state, and finally the peace of the whole world.92

88 89 90 91 92

Wu, “Mencius’ Philosophy of Human Nature and Natural Law,” 35. Wu, “The Status of the Individual,” 344. Wu, Beyond East and West, 355. Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 228–29. See Li Ji, Da dao zhi xing section. Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 228–29. Daxue: daxue zhi dao; see Legge translation at https://ctext.org/liji/da-xue. 274

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The Chinese idea of ​​harmony also refers to a cosmic self-differentiating and self-unifying power that manifests itself through the dialectical movement of history. Like the cosmic breath described by Zhuangzi, it contains the utmost openness and unbiased universality, so that the diversities of sounds in the universe can have their fullest expressions. This power is immanent in a dialectical process of history that consists of a series of endless, undulating cycles.93 Finally, Wu did not omit pointing out that the harmony as understood by the Chinese mind is not yet the true natural law, for true harmony transcends the opposition between harmony and disharmony. The Chinese thinking on harmony tends to be too exclusive in terms of concord or a succession of concords, while disharmony is rarely seen as an opportunity to rise to a new harmony. Confucius prefers to prevent any conflict of interest from arising, rather than to resolve actual conflicts through just procedures.94 In contrast, the West is more skilled in the art of resolving dissonance. Therefore, the Chinese can learn how to resolve discord from the West, and the West can learn from China about the norm of harmony. This leads him to his final conclusion: true harmony needs to be fulfilled by Christian faith: “The present crisis of the world in general and of China in particular calls for a revival of faith in the super-eminent justice and humanity of God as against the belief in the stars and the blind operations of dialectical ­materialism. . . . Christian thought tended to transcend once and for all, the old themes of eternal repetition, just as it had undertaken to transcend all the other archaic viewpoints by revealing the importance of the religious experience of faith and that of the value of the human personality.”95 As can be seen, in his later articles on Chinese law, Wu’s understanding of St. Thomas’s natural law permeates his interpretation of Chinese legal history. Drawing lightly from St. Thomas’s natural law, Wu reinterpreted the Mandate of Heaven, the relationship between law and morality, and the idea of harmony in the ancient legal tradition. Regarding the Mandate of Heaven, he emphasized 93 Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 232. Zhuangzi, Inner Chapters, Qiwu lun. 94 “When he says that in hearing litigations he is no better than other people, but that the

important thing is to cause litigations to cease, it is very plain that he prefers social harmony, which would prevent any conflicts of interest from arising, to a just resolution of actual conflicts.” Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 227. 95 Wu, “Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy,” 232, 233. 275

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a transcendent, external, and personal Heaven as the supreme lawgiver. In terms of the relationship between law and morality, he emphasized the ontological distinction between God, nature, and humanity as the basis for separating law and morality. Regarding the idea of harmony, he provided a dynamic teleological process of natural law in which social justice and moral transformation are integrated through a cosmic self-differentiated and self-uniting power. Overall, St. Thomas’s natural law enhanced his understanding of Chinese law, giving him a panoramic view of both the unifying and the changing, revolutionary elements in Chinese legal history.

Conclusion and Comment In Wu’s later study of St. Thomas’s natural law, he explained the variable and invariable aspects of natural law through its dynamic unity with eternal law and human law. From the panoramic view of St. Thomas’s teleological framework of theology and ethics, he drew on law as a continuous progress toward its perpetual end—the ultimate common good. For Wu, this process must be founded on the ontological supremacy of God and God’s eternal law, that is, the mysterious plan of Divine Providence. From this perspective of natural law, Wu found a via media to overcome the contradiction of Holmes’s empiricism and Stammler’s rationalism, but also developed a more profound and critical understanding of Pound’s interpretation of Western legal history As shown, Wu’s view of St. Thomas’s natural law permeated his subsequent interpretation of Chinese legal history. In his legal studies after the 1950s, Wu no longer understood the evolution of law in terms of a binary relationship between morality and law. Rather, through the lens of natural law, he developed a more holistic and comprehensive view on the interpretation of Chinese legal history as well as a more balanced assessment of Chinese legal thought. Regarding three dominant ideas in Chinese legal tradition—namely, the Mandate of Heaven, the monism of law and morality, and the idea of harmony—he identified natural law as a substantially creative element and a universally unifying power in these ideas. Nevertheless, some limitations and ambivalence can still be found in this approach. Wu’s reworking of the Mandate of Heaven, the relationship between law and morality, and the idea of harmony was bold and imaginative, yet in some aspects it seems selective, and veered from historical authenticity. For example, Wu’s interpretation of the Mandate of Heaven presupposes a transcendent subject 276

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who creates human nature and political authority for its own purposes, despite the fact that the concept of a transcendent, personal creator is rarely mainstream in Chinese philosophy.96 As some scholars have noted, in ancient Chinese legal thought, “nature” usually refers to a natural philosophy that conceived of humanity, society, nature, and the universe as an organic totality. There is a state of primordial harmony in the universe, which is meant to be automatically and spontaneously perfect and beautiful, leaving no place for gods; for this reason some argue that natural law in ancient China should be translated as “spontaneous law.”97 Stemming from the pantheist ontology of this spontaneous law, the tension between ritual or morality and law in ancient China is far less radical than the tension between natural law and positive law in the West.98 Consequently, in ancient China, natural law did not constitute such a critical and reformative element to positive law as it did in the West. Second, Wu’s interpretation of Chinese legal history and legal thought seems to be a Thomasization of Chinese legal thought. To varying degrees, his selected texts and concepts are disguised in translations that resemble Thomas’s conception of natural law. This both exaggerated the parallels between Chinese and Western legal thought and purposefully softened and lessened the conflict between the two systems. Paradoxically, this makes Wu’s final argument—that Chinese law needs to be fulfilled by the Christian spirit—seem rather insufficient and unconvincing, since many key notions of St. Thomas’s natural law have been embedded in his reading of Chinese law. Overall, Wu’s later legal thought on natural law not only synthesizes and transcends his earlier thinking, but also brings a more holistic and in-depth insight to the development of common law and Chinese law. Despite the above problems in Wu’s readings of Chinese legal history, his attempts are extremely creative and worthy of further research.

96 Liang Zhiping, 梁治平, 尋求自然秩序中的和諧 [Seeking Harmony in Natural Order]

(Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2022): 329–52. 97 Liang, Seeking Harmony in Natural Order, 329–52. 98 Liang, Seeking Harmony in Natural Order, 329–52. 277

Chapter 14

A NEW “HOMELAND” THEOLOGY? Remembering George Leslie Mackay amid the Continued Surge of Nationalism in Taiwan Liu Ya-chun, University of Leeds This article investigates the ongoing interaction between Taiwan’s sociopolitical climate and its local Protestant theological landscape. Its main focus is on how the concept of “homeland” has been appropriated in public and practical theological discourses in contemporary Taiwan. The cases featured in this article are theological narratives surrounding the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Scottish-Canadian Presbyterian missionary George Leslie Mackay (1844–1901) in Taiwan, which took place in 2022. This is a timely exploration since the celebration is still ongoing at the time of writing. Without any assumptions that it is possible to make any conclusive statements at this stage, this article offers an incentive to continue exploring the concept and connotations of “homeland” in contemporary Taiwanese theological discourses. The article is divided into three sections. In the first section, I trace the evolution of Taiwan Homeland Theology as a theological paradigm that emerged against the backdrop of Taiwanese nationalism and nativism over the past several decades. This tracing provides the foundation for understanding the local, contextual theological movements in Taiwan and the legacy they have left on the present-day Taiwanese theological landscape. In the second section, I look at digital materials published in commemoration of Mackay upon the 150th anniversary of his arrival in Taiwan. By closely analyzing different narratives, I examine the meaning-making behind the remembrance of Mackay as a foreign

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missionary who treated Taiwan as his “Final Resting Place.”1 While introducing Mackay’s Scottish ancestry and tracing the Scottish roots of Taiwanese Protestantism with an emphasis on the influence of the Free Church of Scotland, some Taiwanese theologians have drawn attention to the implications of “freedom” and “independence” for today’s Taiwanese Protestant churches, particularly the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (hereafter referred to as PCT). However, the PCT is not the only church that celebrates the legacy of Mackay. There are other non-PCT Christian groups that celebrate Mackay’s legacy in Taiwan through various means. A comparative study of different materials reveals the homeland-centered rhetoric prevalent in Taiwan churches nowadays, which is discussed further in the third section of this article. This is particularly striking when the subject under discussion is Christian mission. I argue that such a seemingly inward-looking narrative is a product of Taiwan’s surging nationalism.

Taiwan Homeland Theology Taiwan Homeland Theology is sometimes identified as Taiwanese Nationalist Theology or Taiwanese Independence Theology.2 The English term is normally used to refer to the xiangtu shenxue (鄉土神學; homeland, native soil theology) proposed by the Taiwanese theologian Wang Hsien-chih 王憲治 (Wang Xianzhi) in the late 1970s. However, in this article, Homeland Theology is treated more as a paradigm than a specific theology proposed by a particular theologian. This section aims to delineate how Homeland Theology as a contextual theological paradigm has evolved over the past few decades in Taiwan. Such delineation offers a glimpse into how nationalistic sentiment has continuously been integrated into Taiwan’s theological discourses. An important figure to start with is Shoki Coe 黃彰輝 (Ng Chiong-hui, 1914–1988), widely recognized as a pioneering proponent of contextual theology. Growing up in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, Coe had personal colonial encounters that led to his wrestling with identity and contributed to his 1 George Leslie Mackay, “My Final Resting Place” quoted in “Remembering George Les-

lie Mackay,” written by Chang Chiung-fang, Taiwan Panorama, May 2001. https://www. taiwanpanorama.com.tw/en/Articles/Details?Guid=8cb3bcf1-1d7c-4cb7-87bd162776c 5ca1e&langId=3&CatId=11&postname=Remembering%20George%20Leslie%20 Mackay. 2 Cheng-tian Kuo, “One Heavenly Kingdom, Two Governments: Mainland China and Taiwan,” International Journal of Public Theology 11 (2017): 422–23. 280

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theological formation. The political oppression Coe experienced on both personal and structural levels when Taiwan was under Guomindang dictatorship led to the strengthening of his theological and missional conviction that it is necessary to provide space for “contextualization as a continual interplay between the transcendent text of Scripture and the ever-changing context.”3 Coe’s method of contextualization created space for the decolonization of theology, and his leadership as the director of the Theological Educational Fund of the World Council of Churches enabled theological voices from Asia, Africa, and Latin America to be heard.4 As a “political witness of faith,” Coe famously coined the term “fourth world” to refer to his homeland of Taiwan, by which he meant a place where personhood was neglected and human rights were denied. Treating Taiwan as his context, Coe integrated his reading of the text (i.e., Scripture) and developed his own theological response to the political struggles Taiwan was facing.5 Coe’s theological engagement in politics has had enormous impact on Taiwanese theologians in the later twentieth century whose works are concerned with Taiwan’s identity and self-determination. Key theologians and their main theological contributions within the framework of Homeland Theology are introduced below, in chronological order. Song Choan-Seng 宋泉盛 (Song Quansheng), commonly known as C. S. Song, has been regarded in Taiwan as a major inheritor of the theological legacy of Coe in his proposals for an Asian Theology. Song’s theology speaks of the need to construct an Asian theology that is liberated from the dominance of Western theology.6 In his 1976 article “From Israel to Asia: a Theological Leap,” Song is quite straightforward when he writes “the norms and concepts which have a time-honoured place in the traditions of western theology have very limited use in Asia today.”7 Song’s theology has been described by Chen Nan-Jou 陳南州 (Chen Nanzhou) and Chan Shun-Hing 陳慎慶 as difficult 3 Ray Wheeler, “The Legacy of Shoki Coe,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26,

issue 2 (April 2002): 78.

4 M. P. Joseph, “Introduction: Context, Discernment, and Contextualization: Theology of

Shoki Coe, the Prophet from the Fourth World,” in Wrestling with God in Context: Revisiting the Theology and Social Vision of Shoki Coe, eds. M. P. Joseph, Po Ho Huang, and Victor Hsu (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2018), 2–3. 5 Joseph, “Introduction,” 6–7. 6 Kenneth Fleming, “Chapter 4 Choan-Seng Song,” in Asian Christian Theologians in Dialogue with Buddhism (Bern: Peter Lang, 2002), 134–35. 7 Choan-Seng Song, “From Israel to Asia: A Theological Leap,” The Ecumenical Review 28, no. 3 (March 1976): 263. 281

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to identify systematically, but it involves various means of drawing local wisdom, cultural motifs, and folk tales into Christian thought.8 Succeeding Shoki Coe as the Principal of Tainan Theological College and Seminary, Song in his 1965 inaugural address introduced daocheng roushen de shenxue 道成肉身的神學 (literally a “theology of incarnation”), created through “urgent, pressing dialogues between the Word of God and the world of human beings.”9 Song further proposed that the center of this incarnational theology should be fuyin de tuzhu hua 福音的土著化 (“the indigenisation of the Gospel”), meaning “to discover how Taiwan’s history and culture bear the resurrected life as well as the characteristics and meanings of salvation.”10 This focus on the “reflection on faith in non-Christian cultural worlds” can be seen in Song’s various theological practices, such as his Third-Eye Theology that seeks to contextualize theology from an Asian perspective by enabling the interaction between biblical messages and non-Christian elements.11 The name xiangtu shenxue 鄉土神學 (Homeland Theology) came into existence in Taiwan’s theological landscape when Wang Hsien-chih proposed it as a theological response to political crisis, namely the international isolation Taiwan was facing in the 1970s. Its literary counterpart is xiangtu wenxue 鄉土文學, often translated into English as “Taiwan nativist literature.” Both xiangtu shenxue and xiangtu wenxue concern Taiwan as the native land, or the 8 Chen Nan-Jou 陳南州, “Cong Song Quansheng de xuanjiao shenxue xing si jinri Taiwan

jiaohui de xuanjiao 從宋泉盛的宣教神學省思今日台灣教會的宣教 [Reflecting on Taiwan churches’ mission works through Song Choan-Seng’s mission theology],” “Xuanjiao shenxue de dianfan zhuanyi” yantao hui「宣教神學的典範轉移」研討會 (“Paradigm Shifts in Mission Theology” Conference), Christian Theological and Religious Research Center, China Evangelical Seminary, March 26, 2001; available at https://resource.iyp.tw/ static.iyp.tw/26459/files/70d62f4f-efa0-4149-8d7c-30494c5414ca.pdf, 17. Chan ShunHing 陳慎慶, “Cong daocheng roushen dao wenhua rentong—Song Quansheng shenxue sixiang chutan 從道成肉身到文化認同—宋泉盛神學思想初探” [From incarnation to cultural identification—An exploration of C. S. Song’s theological thoughts], Ching Feng 景風 83, (1985), 1. 9 Choan-Seng Song, Jiaohui de fanxing yu shiming 教會的反省與使命 [Reflection and Mission of the Church] (Tainan: Taiwan Church Press, 1970), 92–93, quoted in Chen, “Cong Song Quansheng de xuanjiao shenxue,” 2. 10 Song Choan-Seng, “Daocheng roushen de fuyin—fuyin tuzhu hua de jiti yanjiu fang’an 道成肉身的福音—福音土著化的集體研究方案 [The Gospel of Incarnation—A Collective Research Project on the Indigenization of the Gospel],” Shenxue yu jiaohui 神學與教 會 (Theology and the Church) 8, no. 2 (1969), 4, quoted in Chen, “Cong Song Quansheng de xuanjiao shenxue,” 3. 11 Chen, “Cong Song Quansheng de xuanjiao shenxue,” 11. 282

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homeland, and both speak on behalf of the local Taiwanese as well as challenge the then-­authoritarian Guomindang dictatorship. Wang drew a parallel between the Israelites in Exodus and the Taiwanese people and argued for self-determination among the Taiwanese.12 In 1988 Wang outlined his xiangtu shenxue as comprising four themes: people, land, power, and God. By placing “people” (as opposed to “rulers”) at the forefront of his theological discourse, Wang regards the biblical stories as a series of liberation stories in which God liberated the oppressed people, became a human being in Jesus Christ, and suffered with people. For Wang, in the Taiwanese context, such “liberation from slavery” can only take place when Taiwanese people become aware of the oppression they have experienced throughout history and come to know the image of God in them. Wang distinguishes xiangtu shenxue from Latin American liberation theology and South Korea’s Minjung theology by emphasizing the need for Taiwanese people to identify with their own “land.” Through xiangtu shenxue Wang encourages people to understand “power” in the Christian sense and approach it by challenging the abuse of authority and reclaiming their own power. Wang argues that Taiwanese people can only gain right perspectives on life by departing from the values taught by Taiwanese folk religions, which tend to focus on personal blessings, fatalism, and inadequate moral teachings that do not equip people with the ability to critically examine power and human rights issues. Wang thus stresses the importance of “a correct view of God” in xiangtu shenxue.13 The political nature of Taiwan’s contextual theology became even more manifest in Po Ho Huang 黃伯和 (Huang Bohe)’s theology of self-determination, 12 Kwok Pui-Lan, “Doing Contextual Theology: Feminist and Postcolonial Perspectives,” in

Wrestling with God in Context, 69–70. Chuang Ya-Tang 莊雅棠, “Taiwan xiangtu shenxue de kaituo zhe—wang xianzhi mushi 台灣鄉土神學的開拓者—王憲治牧師 [The Pioneer of Taiwan Homeland Theology—Rev. Wang Hsien-chih],” The New Messenger 新使者雜 誌, December 10, 1997; available at http://www.laijohn.com/archives/pc/Ong/Ong,HTi/ theology/Chng,Ngt.htm. 13 Wang Hsien-Chih 王憲治, ed., Taiwan xiangtu shenxue lunwen ji 台灣鄉土神學論文集 [Anthology of Essays on Taiwan Homeland Theology] (Tainan: Taiwan Church Press, 1988), 20–22, quoted in Chiu Kai-li 邱凱莉, “Cong renmin zijue dao duli jianguo: Yi houzhimin guandian fenxi Taiwan jidu zhanglao jiaohui zhengzhi shenxue jieyan hou sanshi nian fazhan 從人民自決到獨立建國：以後殖民觀點分析台灣基督長老教會政治 神學解嚴後三十年發展” [From people’s self-determination to independent nation-building: An analysis of the political theology of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan within the 30 years after the lifting of martial law from a post-colonial perspective],” Furen zongjiao yanjiu 輔仁宗教研究 (Fujen Religious Studies), 42 (2021): 129–30. 283

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“Chhut-thau-thin theology” 出頭天神學. “Chhut-thau-thin,” literally “raising the head above the sky” in Taiwanese Hokkien, means “overcoming obstacles and coming out on top.” However, Huang’s definition of “Chhut-thau-thin” goes beyond the conventional definition that centers around personal success. Huang redefines “Chhut-thau-thin” in a theological sense as attaining ultimate liberation by reaching the sky. Such theological adaptation of the term alludes to the Formosan Christians for Self Determination movement 台灣人民自決 運動, whose magazine was entitled 出頭天 “Chhut-thau-thin” in Chinese and “Self-determination” in English.14 This movement was launched by Taiwanese Christian leaders, including Shoki Coe and C. S. Song, in 1973, in response to the PCT’s “Statement on Our National Fate” issued in December 1971 against the backdrop of US President Richard Nixon’s upcoming visit to the Chinese Mainland and the threats to Taiwan’s autonomy foreseen after the People’s Republic of China was admitted to the United Nations in October 1971.15 However, as Chiu Kai-li 邱凱莉 (Qiu Kaili) comments, Huang’s Chhut-thauthin theology does not suggest that people set their hopes on any secular regime. Rather, it advocates for the establishment of people’s autonomy through Christian values.16 To distinguish Chhut-thau-thin theology from Xiangtu Shenxue that also responded to the political oppression the PCT experienced since the 1970s, Huang highlights the dynamic interaction between theology and missional practices in the Taiwanese context. For him, “Chhut-thau-thin” as a theological theme points toward three aspects: the potential of local Taiwanese idioms in theological conceptualization, the hope for “chhut-thau-thin” as a promise for Taiwanese people’s salvation, and the contextualization of the hope for “chhut-thau-thin” within Taiwan’s history and culture, according to God’s plan of salvation.17

14 Po Ho Huang 黃伯和, Dao-zijue chutou tian: Shenxue de daocheng roushen 道·自決出頭天:

神學的道成肉身 [Self-determination: Incarnating Theology in the Contest of Taiwan] (Tainan: Grace Foundation, 2022), 60. 15 The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, “Statement On Our National Fate By The Presbyterian Church In Taiwan,” The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, December 29, 1971, http://english. pct.org.tw/Article/enArticle_public_19711229.html. 16 Chiu, “Cong renmin zijue dao duli jianguo,” 135. 17 Luo Chuan-ciao 羅傳樵, “Guanyu huangbohe mushi de sixiang—chutou tian shenxue 關於 黃伯和牧師的思想—「出頭天神學」[Introduction: Rev. Po Ho Huang’s thoughts— Chhut-thau-thin Theology],” in Dao-zijue chutou tian: Shenxue de daocheng roushen, 5–8.

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These different theologies all respond directly to Taiwan’s sociopolitical complexity in the twentieth century, while their proponents adopt different approaches to evangelism and interreligious components. The four theologies under the umbrella of Taiwan’s contextual theology are mostly associated with the PCT, which issued three significant public statements declaring its stance on human rights and supporting the Taiwanese right to self-determination in the 1970s.18 Although all four theologians discussed here were affiliated with Tainan Theological College and Seminary during their careers, they did not necessarily serve with the PCT (Wang Hsien-chih, for example, was ordained by the Taiwan Episcopal Church). As will be shown, such an interdenominational characteristic can also be observed in this year’s celebration of Mackay’s arrival.

Mackay, Free Church, and Taiwan George Mackay is one of the best known and frequently studied missionaries in Taiwanese church history. Mackay was born and brought up in Canada to a family that emigrated from Scotland, part of the Evangelical Presbyterian community originating in the Scottish Highlands.19 As the first Presbyterian missionary to northern Formosa, Mackay is remembered for his itinerant dental practice, his church planting efforts, and his contributions to education and medical systems in Taiwan. What distinguished Mackay from many of his contemporary missionaries was his belief in the importance of establishing a self-sustaining system for the church in North Formosa.20 Mackay’s emphasis on theological education for locals led him to establish the predecessor to the current Taiwan Graduate School of Theology 台灣神學研究學院, a theological education institution affiliated with the PCT. Mackay has been commemorated 18 These include “Public Statement on Our National Fate” (1971), “Our Appeal” (1975) and

“Declaration on Human Rights” (1977), see Murray A. Rubinstein, “The Presbyterian Church in the Formation of Taiwan’s Democratic Society, 1945–2004,” in Religious Organizations and Democratization: Case Studies from Contemporary Asia, eds. Cheng Tun-Jen and Deborah Brown (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2006): 120–24. 19 Michael Stainton, “George Leslie Mackay: Most Famous Son of Zorra,” Oxford Historical Society, September 3, 2020, https://www.oxfordhistoricalsociety.ca/george-leslie-mackaymost-famous-son-of-zorra/. 20 Magdaléna Rychetská, “Thirty Years of Mission in Taiwan: The Case of Presbyterian Missionary George Leslie Mackay,” Religions 12, no. 3 (2021): 190, https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel12030190.

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in Taiwan in various ways: apart from having hospitals and educational institutions named after him, his story has been turned into documentary films and various theatrical performances. The sesquicentennial celebrations of Mackay’s arrival in 2022 involved a series of events held by different Christian groups. This article mainly focuses on narratives or cases that mirror the native Taiwan consciousness in line with the contextual theologies introduced in the previous section. I shall start with materials published by Christianity Studies Think Tank 基督教研究智庫 (hereafter the CSTT), a think tank established in 2018 in Taiwan. The importance of the CSTT is that it is a cross-denominational network set up by theologians and church leaders from different denominations in Taiwan. According to the CSTT’s website, it aims to serve as a Christian platform where faith, knowledge, and thought are integrated and engage comprehensively with society.21 There are five key words in its mission statement: Research, Edification, Education, Connection, and Action.22 The main media platforms the CSTT uses to disseminate its materials are Facebook and YouTube. It would be reasonable to say that the CSTT is a source where one can turn to find out what Christian public intellectuals say in contemporary Taiwan. Although the CSTT is a cross-denominational organization, it is closely linked to the PCT through its founder and director Lin Hong-hsin 林鴻信 (Lin Hongxin). Lin is a theology professor and prolific author who previously served as the President of the Taiwan Theological College and Seminary 台灣 神學院 (now called Taiwan Graduate School of Theology after being accredited by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education). The CSTT led by Lin has been the main driver in the celebration of Mackay’s mission to Taiwan. It has published a number of articles, organized several events (including a fortnightly reading group “Reading Mackay” held online for three months), and released two songs surrounding Mackay’s mission in Taiwan. One of the songs is based on Lin’s poem “Sailing with Mackay on Tamsui River” 與馬偕同遊淡水, and the other one is a rap song called “Mackay DNA” 馬偕 DNA. Unlike the Taiwanese theologians above, Lin and his theological thought are normally not studied in the field of political theology in Taiwan. Lin is mostly known for his works on systematic theology. Lin maintains that church leaders 21 “Homepage,” Christianity Studies Think Tank, accessed August 26, 2022, https://cstt.tw. 22 Christianity Studies Think Tank, “ABOUT,” Facebook, accessed August 26, 2022, https://

www.facebook.com/CSTTNET/. 286

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should focus on their pastoral calling and avoid openly supporting certain political parties, since this would potentially distance them from congregation members who hold different political views. For Lin, it is important for church leaders to demonstrate that one’s identity as a Christian precedes any political identity.23 Such an attitude toward politics is reflected in Lin’s recent article “The Free Church of Formosa” 福爾摩沙的自由教會 published in the Taiwan Church News Network 台灣教會公報, which is owned by the PCT, in February 2022. The article was later shared by the CSTT on its Facebook page. In the short article, Lin traces the Scottish roots of Mackay’s home church in Canada, the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and introduces the history behind the establishment of the Free Church of Scotland as an objection to state interference in the appointment of ministers within the Church of Scotland. This event that split Scotland’s national church into two in 1843 later came to be known as the Disruption. Lin comments that what the Free Church of Scotland sought was “the freedom rooted in the recognition that only Jesus Christ is the Lord,” and mentions that many missionaries who worked in Taiwan after the mid-­ nineteenth century were affiliated with the Free Church of Scotland. These missionaries included James Laidlaw Maxwell, William Campbell, Thomas Barclay, Campbell Moody, and David Landsborough, all of whom contributed to the establishment of the PCT. Lin further quotes James Rohrer, a historian who has published much on Mackay: “Mackay devoted his life to establishing an independent local church, a ‘Free Church of Formosa,’ which belonged to the local Christians in Taiwan, rather than the Presbyterian Church in Canada.”24 For Lin, the freedom that comes from surrendering only to Jesus and not to any other kind of authority is the heritage passed on to Taiwan church via Mackay. 23 Lin Tzu-chien 林子騫, “Wulin chafang: Lin Hong-hsin mushi ti chuancheng san yaodian 武

林茶房》林鴻信牧師提傳承三要點 [Wulin Tea Room: Rev. Lin proposes three major points for passing down a spiritual legacy],” Christian Daily 基督教今日報, June 18, 2020, https://cdn-news.org/News.aspx?EntityID=News&PK=0000000000652e596241a67 8c5f68240b5f06ebaba0bfac3. Lin Hong-hsin, “Wulin chafang 7 Lin Hong-hsin jiaoshou x Yeh Chi-Hsiang mushi 武林茶房 7 林鴻信教授 x 葉啟祥牧師 [Wulin Tea Room 7 Professor Lin Hong-hsin and Rev. Yeh Chi-hsiang],” interview by Chuang Yu-ming 莊育銘 and Sai Song 松慕強, TamKang Church, November 5, 2020, YouTube video, 41:16–42:29, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUse-ReuSxY. 24 This is a back translation of Lin’s quote from Rohrer’s Young Mackay: The Roots of His Ministry in Taiwan. At the time of writing, the book is only available in Chinese translation (Qingnian ma jie: Zai tai xuanjiao de gen di 青年馬偕：在台宣教的根柢, Taipei: Lord Way Press, 2022), since the original English version has not yet been published. 287

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In the conclusion of his article, Lin urges the PCT to attest to the true freedom in Christ and become the Free Church of Formosa.25 Lin apparently speaks from an evangelical perspective. To approach Lin’s concluding statement, one should consider the role the PCT has played in Taiwan’s sociopolitical history. As noted earlier, the PCT was actively involved in pro-democracy and anti-authoritarian movements against the Guomindang regime in the 1970s and 1980s, and was one of the few Christian bodies to take this stance, for which it paid a heavy price at the time.26 The PCT has since been widely identified as being closely connected with the Democratic Progressive Party (hereafter the DPP), which was formed in 1986 by a group of people involved in the dangwai (黨外, ‘outside the party’, that is, outside the Guomindang) movement, and is the current ruling party of Taiwan.27 “Freedom,” for the PCT affiliates who advocated for the Taiwanese people’s right to self-­ determination in the past, mostly meant being liberated from the Guomindang’s

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-04-07 01:50 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

25 Lin Hong-hsin, “Fuermosha de ziyou jiaohui 福爾摩沙的自由教會 [The Free Church

of Formosa],” Taiwan Church News Network, February 16, 2022, https://tcnn.org.tw/ archives/105468. 26 Examples include surveillance and oppression after the PCT’s issuance of the three public statements in support of human rights and local autonomy in the 1970s, harrassment for using materials printed in romanized local languages, arrest and imprisonment of Presbyterian leaders who were involved in the 1979 pro-human rights Kaohsiung Incident, etc. See Christine L. Lin, “The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and the Advocacy of Local Autonomy,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 92 ( Janury, 1999): 69–94. 27 One of the recent incidents that manifests the PCT’s general support for the DPP is the PCT’s separation from the organizing committee for Taiwan’s Twentieth National Prayer Breakfast in 2020. The dispute started with the committee’s dissatisfaction with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s support for the LGBT community and request for an envoy to represent the President to attend the Prayer Breakfast. The Presidential Office then declined to attend the event. The General Assembly of the PCT later issued a public statement, announcing the PCT’s decision to withdraw from the organizing committee for the 2020 National Prayer Breakfast. In the statement, the PCT acknowledged the Tsai administration’s achievements in Covid-19 containment, its resistance towards China’s military threats, its contribution to the nation’s economic growth, etc., while expressing disagreement about the committee’s decision and stating that the aim of the Prayer Breakfast would be unfulfilled without having the President present at the event. See Taipei Times staff writer, “Prayer breakfast canceled after Tsai’s LGBT post,” Taipei Times, Oct 31, 2020, https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/ taiwan/archives/2020/10/31/2003746109. The 65th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, “Taiwan jidu zhanglao jiaohui tuichu di 20 jie guojia qidao zaocanhui shengming 台灣基督長老教會退出「第20屆國家祈禱早餐會」聲明 [Statement: The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan withdraws from the 20th National Prayer Breakfast],” Taiwan Church News Network, October 29, 2020, https://tcnn.org.tw/archives/77710. 288

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authoritarian rule, but such “freedom” for today’s PCT in a democratic Taiwan may bear different meanings. Nowadays the PCT’s official website states that it firmly believes that “the sovereignty of Taiwan does not belong to China.”28 Freedom in such circumstances could mean freedom from the threats from Communist China. The PCT’s pro-independence statement is in line with the DPP’s political ideology. After the DPP won victory in Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections in January 2016, the PCT General Assembly published “May Taiwan become a country blessed by God: A Message on the General Election of 16 January 2016,” which begins with “The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (PCT) offers thanksgiving to God that the people of Taiwan have written a brand new chapter in the history of Taiwan through the expression of their democratic right.”29 Following the release of this message, Lu Chun-yi 盧俊義 (Lu Junyi), a retired PCT pastor and former chief editor of the Taiwan Church News, published an opinion article “The Presbyterian Church Should Not Become A Subgroup of the Democratic Progressive Party” in Apple Daily. Lu mainly criticizes the PCT General Assembly’s “misuse of Bible verses,” such as Romans 13:1 “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.” For Lu, this verse is misappropriated in the message not only because of decontextualisation but also due to the fact that many have used this particular verse to legitimate political oppressors’ actions and tell Christians to simply obey. Lu notes that beginning in the 1970s “most leaders of Mandarin churches” would quote this verse to challenge the PCT for not being subject to the Guomindang government. Lu urges the PCT to keep some distance from the DPP, which had then become the dominant political party, and lead the PCT according to biblical values.30 28 The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, “背景 [Background],” The Presbyterian Church in Tai-

wan, n.d., accessed on June 1, 2023, https://www.pct.org.tw/aboutus.aspx. 29 The 60th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, “An Occasional News-

letter from the General Secretary, Rev. Lyim Hong-Tiong,” The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan General Secretary’s Newsletter, Issue 004, January 20, 2016, http://english.pct.org.tw/ preview.aspx?IssueID=133. 30 Rev. Lu Chun-yi’s Column 盧俊義牧師專欄, “寫給長老教會總會的一封公開信 [An Open Letter to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church],” Facebook, accessed 3 June, 2023, https://www.facebook.com/814925291867466/posts/1250486561644668/? locale=zh_TW. The post was originally published as “Zhanglao jiaohui buneng chengwei min jin dang ci tuanti 長老教會不能成為民進黨次團體 [The Presbyterian Church Should Not Become a Subgroup of the Democratic Progressive Party]” on Apple Daily on January 23, 2016. 289

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In reading Lu’s explicit criticism of the PCT’s support for the DPP together with Lin’s conviction that church leaders should demonstrate political impartiality, one can infer that the “freedom” Lin urges the PCT to embrace by submitting to Christ rather than any secular authority is an evangelical version of “freedom.” The PCT’s strong ties with the DPP were highlighted in a speech given by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwanese Hokkien at the PCT’s celebration event to commemorate Mackay’s arrival. Tsai acknowledged Mackay’s perseverance in his mission work in Taiwan during a time when the local Taiwanese had a limited knowledge of Christianity; thus the challenges he was facing were significant. Tsai then praised Mackay who “devoted his whole life to his beloved Taiwan,” and noted that the PCT has continued to carry forward Mackay’s spirit of “fen er bu hui 焚而不燬 [burning yet not being destroyed]” and has made a positive impact on Taiwan society. Tsai continued to elaborate on the important role that the PCT had played in Taiwan’s democratization, and how it paved the path for Taiwan to demonstrate “democracy, freedom and human rights” and “put the love for this land into action.” Towards the end of her speech, Tsai thanked the PCT for its support for the government and asked the church to continue praying for world peace and “people in this country.”31 It should be noted that despite Tsai’s speech, this series of celebrations organized by the PCT were not intended to be political events. The aims of the celebrations, as advertised by the PCT, were to “Imitate Mackay” 學馬偕, “Make Disciples” 帶門徒 and “Preach the Gospel” 傳福音. Such an evangelical aspect was reflected in the talk given by Lin Hong-hsin as the “special speaker” at the events. Lin used Mackay’s story to encourage the audience to “Love other people, love the land, and live and die in God’s calling” 對人有愛，對土地有情，與 上帝呼召共存亡. Lin mentioned Mackay’s receipt of the message from God— “This is the Land”—upon his arrival in northern Taiwan. He cited Mackay’s poem “My Final Resting Place,” in which the missionary wrote about Taiwan as the place to which his “heart’s ties” “cannot be severed.” In saying “Taiwan has become Mackay’s homeland,” Lin prompted the audience to think about the 31 Tsai Ing-wen, “Jinian majie lai tai xuanjiao 150 zhounian 紀念馬偕來台宣教 150 週年

[Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of Mackay’s Arrival in Taiwan],” TWIMI.net, March 6, 2022. YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nta7PydVmEY.

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question: “Where is your homeland?” For Lin, this question means “Where is the place of your calling?”32 This interpretation of “homeland” can also be found in Lin’s poem “Sailing with Mackay on Tamsui River” 與馬偕同遊淡水, which was later turned into a song published by the CSTT. The poem contains a verse written from Mackay’s perspective: “Wherever God calls, there is my homeland” 哪裡有上帝呼召，哪裡就是我的家. In Lin’s talk, he also told the story behind Mackay’s choice to lead his family back to Taiwan while he was on furlough in Canada from 1893 to 1895. Although Mackay heard about the turmoil in Taiwan due to the Sino-Japanese war, he was still determined to return to Taiwan with his whole family. Following this, Lin told his personal story of choosing to return to Taiwan and devote himself to theological education after finishing his overseas studies, while most of his contemporaries chose to move abroad. Although Lin did not explicitly say so, his talk conveyed a message that centered around Taiwan as “the homeland.” Such a Taiwan-focused evangelical narrative could also be perceived in other PCT leaders’ comments during the celebrations. For instance, one of the PCT events’ organizers stated in an interview with Good TV, Taiwan’s biggest Christian media organization: “Through the celebration events, we hope our generation can continue with our church revival. May ‘the spirit of Mackay’ (馬偕 精神) continue to be carried forward.”33 Another example can be seen in the words spoken by Liang Yueh-mei 梁越美 (Liang Yuemei), a former student of Lin and current Assistant Professor at Taiwan Graduate School of Theology, after performing “Sailing with Mackay on Tamsui River” on stage at the celebration: “Mackay’s vision was: Taiwan shall turn to the Lord (台灣要歸主). It’s our

32 The recording of the event was accessed on YouTube in March 2022, but the video entitled

“20220306 馬偕來台 150 週年 慶典禮拜 上午場” was later made unavailable to the public. The main points of Lin’s talk can also be found in the following news report: Kingdom Revival Times, “Majie lai tai xuanjiao 150 zhounian qingdian hu zhao nianqing ren xianshen 馬偕來台宣教 150 週年慶典-呼召年輕人獻身 [Celebrate the 150th Anniversary of Mackay’s Arrival, Call Youngsters to Dedicate Themselves to Mission],” Kingdom Revival Times, March 11, 2022, https://www.krt.com.hk/post/25832/馬偕來台宣教150週年慶 典-呼召年輕人獻身/. 33 Lin Wei-tao 林維道, “Majie 150 zhu ri qingdian kaichuang da xuanjiao shidai 馬偕 150 主 日慶典 開創大宣教時代 [“Mackay 150” Sunday Celebration Starts the Era of Great Mission],” interview by Good TV News, GOOD TV NEWS, March 8, 2022, YouTube video, 1:13–1:26, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB9Pw3SZjA0.

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turn, young people from Taiwan churches.”34 Here, Liang is urging the younger generation in Taiwan’s Christian community to carry on the legacy of evangelism Mackay left to Taiwan. As noted above, the PCT was not the only church group that celebrated Mackay’s mission to Taiwan. The significance and popularity of the commemoration was manifest in various events organized by non-PCT church groups. For example, Abraham Liu 柳子駿 (Liu Zijun), a non-presbyterian pastor who is nowadays known for using new media to evangelize, held a special service among his congregation and broadcast it via his YouTube channel 子是駿了點 IT’s JUST JUN’s LIFE.35 At this service featuring the use of Taiwanese Hokkien, Liu interviewed two PCT pastors who told the story of Mackay’s mission to Taiwan and discussed how the Christian gospel could be more “indigenized” and more “contextualized” in Taiwan. It was suggested in the discussion that speaking Taiwanese Hokkien would be a way to accentuate the indigenization and contextualization. Liu later called his congregation to honor the PCT for what this denomination had been doing in Taiwan, especially for marginalized groups in remote areas. The three speakers and the congregation then received communion together as a symbol of sharing the mission with the PCT. Liu called on the congregation to pray for the PCT and prayed for those present that they would “have more enthusiasm for Taiwan, for mission, and for contextualizing themselves wherever they go.”36 These events in commemoration of Mackay reflect a part of present-day Taiwan’s Christian cultural landscape, and thus can give us a glimpse into Taiwan’s current dominant public theological discourses. As shown in these cases, narratives about Mackay tend to be tinted by Taiwanese nativism. On the one hand, this attests to scholars’ contention that Mackay has become an icon for Taiwanese nationalism. On the other hand, one might wonder why the example of Mackay as a cross-cultural missionary was not used to encourage Taiwanese Christians to get involved in cross-cultural missions? So far, the cross-cultural 34 Michelle 簡英慧, “Yu majie tong you danshui 與馬偕同遊淡水 [Sailing with Mackay on

Tamsui River],” March 6, 2022, YouTube video, 4:40–4:46, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=MRdV2HH2jUw. 35 Liu currently leads Taipei Revival Church 台北復興堂, which belongs to the evangelical denomination Grace Evangelical Church 恩惠福音會. 36 IT’s JUST JUN’s LIFE, “Majie lai tai 150 zhounian tebie juhui 馬偕來台 150 週年特 別聚會 [Special Service For the 150th Anniversary of Mackay’s Arrival],” March 9, 2022, ­YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StZHG5W_Lnw. 292

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mission fair 宣教博覽會 organized by Taiwan Taichung Churches Alliance, RADIUS ASIA Cross-cultural Missionary Training Center, and some other mission agencies in April 2022 seems to be the only event that has promoted cross-cultural mission as a way to memorialize Mackay. However, compared to the PCT’s Mackay events, the cross-cultural mission fair was rather small-scale and did not draw much attention. Indeed, since Christians in Taiwan make up only around five percent of the total population, Taiwan is understandably not a missionary-sending nation and there is less attention paid to cross-cultural mission. Yet, the tendency for evangelical leaders to focus on Taiwan as the “homeland,” that is the land of Taiwanese Christians’ calling, can still be seen as a product of Taiwan’s surging nationalism and nativism.

A Popularized and Evangelical Version of Homeland Theology Considering the academic nature of the four theologies under the umbrella of Taiwan Homeland Theology introduced above, it may sound far-fetched to say that the recent theological and missionary discourses on Mackay’s legacy in celebration of the 150th anniversary of his arrival in Taiwan constitute a branch of Homeland Theology. However, as suggested by the heading of this concluding section, I would like to propose that these discourses exemplify the emergence of a popularized and evangelical version of Homeland Theology amid the continued surge of Taiwan’s nationalism in recent years.37 Since contextual theology focuses on the interaction between real contexts and Christian teaching as well as the application of the latter to the former, the homeland-centered messages surrounding Mackay’s mission to Taiwan can be regarded as manifestations of such contextualization. “Homeland” in these messages bears an evangelical meaning that points toward the call of God rather than the worldly concept of one’s native land. However, while such messages appear to be rooted in evangelical teaching that emphasizes the kingdom of 37 Up-to-date figures with regard to Taiwanese nationalism can be found in survey data on

“Trends of Core Political Attitudes” published by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center. For Taiwanese people’s self-identification over “Taiwanese/Chinese Identity” since 1992, see https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7800&id=6961. For Taiwanese people’s attitudes toward “Taiwan Independence vs. Unification with the Mainland” since 1994, see https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7801&id=6963. 293

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God rather than any earthly kingdom, the evangelical leaders who teach these messages inevitably guide the audience to regard Taiwan as their “homeland.” To some extent, such messages, although conveyed without salient political impetus, cannot avoid being political by implication. Indeed, the relation between the academic discourses of Homeland Theology and actual practices of Christian ministries in Taiwan is hard to determine. In discussing Coe’s ideas on theological education, Chen states that further discussion is needed as to whether the theologies proposed by Coe, Song, Wang, and Huang have had an actual impact on the church ministry of the PCT at a practical level.38 Chen, whose “theology of identification” shares a similar concern to Homeland Theology over how theology can respond to Taiwan’s sociopolitical reality, argues that “identification” should be the core theme for contextualizing theology in Taiwan. Chen’s theological discourse develops along two threads: identity crisis is a shared experience among the Taiwanese people, and the Bible is a series of stories telling of God’s identification with suffering human beings. Chen thus contends that the PCT’s mission should be grounded in “identification and commitment,” which entails proclaiming the church’s identity in Christ, being fully committed to God and further identifying with all Taiwanese people and serving them.39 Chen’s contextual theology was one of those consulted by the General Assembly of the PCT in producing its Mission White Paper: Identification, Commitment, and Growth published in 2006.40 Chen further mentions the “Reading the Bible with New Eyes” (RBNE) movement launched in 1998 by the General Assembly of the PCT. As an adaptation of the RBNE movement introduced by the Christian Conference of Asia, the PCT’s RBNE movement promotes contextualizing Bible reading 38 Chen Nan-Jou, “Toward the Renewal of Theological Education and Church Ministry: A

Reflection on Shoki Coe’s Views on Theological Education,” in Wrestling with God in Context, 311–12. 39 Chen Nan-Jou, “Rentong, weishen, chengzhang: Cong shenxue xing si jinri taiwan shikuang zhong de xuanjiao 認同、委身、成長：從神學省思今日台灣實況中的宣教 [Identification, Commitment, and Growth: Theological Reflections on Evangelism in Present-day Taiwan],” General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan “One-leads-One, Doubling Movement” Website, 2009, http://101.pct.org.tw/share.aspx?strBlockID=B00251&str ContentID=C2010090800027&strDesc=&strSiteID=&strCTID=CT0294&str ASP=share. 40 Chen, “Toward the Renewal of Theological Education and Church Ministry,” 311–12.

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in real Taiwanese contexts, especially from the perspectives of the marginalized and the oppressed, so as to bring about social change. According to Chen, the popularity of RBNE among the PCT’s local church groups lasted only for a few years. Although RBNE Bible study materials are still being published under the name of the movement, Chen comments that they have now moved away from “contextual reflection” and returned to “finding the so-called ‘objective’ meaning of the Bible.”41 The year 2022 witnessed a vibrant celebration of Mackay’s mission to Taiwan. This article has explored different digital materials that celebrate the legacy of Mackay. The tendency of Taiwanese evangelical leaders to focus on Taiwan as the “homeland” in their narratives can be read together with Rychetská’s claim that Mackay’s mission to Taiwan has been “reinterpreted” from the perspectives of homeland theology and liberation theology. Outside the Christian community, Mackay has also become an emblem of the Taiwanese identity. In March 2022 the Taiwanese government published “At Home in Formosa: Canadian Missionary George Leslie Mackay,” an introduction to Mackay’s life and mission, on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.42 In May 2023, the former mayor of Taipei, Ko Wen-je 柯文哲 (Ke Wenzhe), launched his presidential campaign in Tamsui, where Mackay’s mission was based. Ko will run for the Taiwanese president on behalf of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), the party he founded in 2019. According to the TPP’s statement, it chose Tamsui as the location for Ko’s first event for two reasons. First, Tamsui was the first port open to foreign trade in northern Taiwan, thus it has a rich multicultural heritage. Second, 150 years ago Mackay arrived in Tamsui, and he has become the epitome of “new Taiwanese” for how he served the Taiwanese in a self-­sacrificing spirit. In his address, Ko further proposed a “new definition for being a Taiwanese” with reference to Mackay: anyone who lives in Taiwan and identifies with Taiwan is 41 Chen, “ Toward the Renewal of Theological Education and Church Ministry,” 312–13.

RBNE online daily devotional materials can be accessed via http://www.pct.org.tw/ neweyes_daily.aspx. 42 Cathy Teng, “At Home in Formosa: Canadian Missionary George Leslie Mackay,” Translated by Phil Newell, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Repubic of China (Taiwan), March 3, 2022. https://nspp.mofa.gov.tw/nsppe/news.php?post=215828&unit=410&unitname= Stories&postname=At-Home-in-Formosa:-Canadian-Missionary-George-LeslieMackay. The article was originally published in Taiwan Panorama, a monthly magazine published by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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a Taiwanese.43 This shows how Mackay’s legacy reaches beyond the Taiwanese churches. As Taiwanese nationalism and nativism are expected to continue to rise, it would not be surprising if Mackay remains the icon who inspires the Taiwanese, be they Christian or non-Christian, to embrace Taiwan as their homeland.

43 柯文哲 Ko Wen-je, “Xiangxin · meihao Taiwan 520 Ke Wenzhe canxuan 2024 zongtong

xuanshi jizhe hui 相信·美好台灣 520 柯文哲參選 2024 總統宣示記者會 [Believing Beautiful Taiwan 520 Ko Wen-je’s Announcement for 2024 Presidential Candidacy],” May 20, 2023. YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N--Zsc0hYEw. 296

Chapter 15

THE THEOLOGY OF YI The Diasporic and Indigenous Theology of Chow Lien-Hwa Cindy S. Lu 呂素琴, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Introduction Esteemed as one of the most influential pastor-theologians in contemporary Chinese churches, a biblical scholar, and prolific Christian writer,1 Chow Lien-hwa (Zhou Lianhua 周聯華, 1920–2016) is well-known for his pioneering contribution to Bible translation and the advancement of a contextualized Chinese theology. In addition to integrating Christianity with Confucianism and Buddhism, a number of Chinese theologians have taken the Yijing 易經 (I Ching, Book of Changes) as a bridging building block for constructing their contextual theology. In this they followed Jesuit missionaries to China of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who had earlier successfully launched an intellectual movement in which they advocated the Yijing as a prophetic book containing the mysteries of Christianity.2 Originally a divinatory text with six-line diagrams forming sixty-four hexagrams (六十四卦) comprising various combinations of yin and yang, the Yijing was composed around the twelfth century BCE. Each hexagram symbolizes a situational pattern and has a name and a short text or hexagram statement interpreting the hexagram. For example, the first hexagram is “Qian” (乾) which means “Creating.” The last two hexagrams are “Jiji” (既濟) and “Weiji” (未濟), designating “Already Complete” and “Not Yet Complete” respectively. These 1 See Zhou Lianhua and Johnson T. K Lim, Take Root Downward Bear Fruit Upward: A

Festschrift Presented to Lien-Hwa Chow on the Occasion of His Eighty-Eighth Birthday (Hong Kong: Asia Baptist Graduate Theological Seminary, 2008). 2 Wu Weiming, The Making of the Global Yijing in the Modern World: Cross-Cultural Interpretations and Interactions. (Singapore: Springer, 2021): 85–106.

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hexagrams, names, statements and line statements establish the fundamental text of Yi or the [Book of ] Changes.3 Several layers of commentaries and appendices were attributed to Confucius and other scholars between the sixth and the third centuries BCE.4 The Yijing became a book of wisdom depicting the patterns of the natural world and the social world, used as a guide to help those who understand the patterns of hexagrams to adjust successfully in changing situations, and esteemed as one of the thirteen core classics (十三經) of Chinese history.5 Over the past three thousand years or so, the Book of Changes has been used in China not only as a manual of divination but also as a source of philosophical, literary, and artistic inspiration.6 The core of the Yijing lies in the third layer text—Ten Wings, composed of seven writings edited from 5th to 2nd century BCE, reputedly by Confucius and his followers.7 These writings apply the hexagrams to discuss cosmic patterns and the complexity of human life. Use of the Yijing over the centuries divides along two lines: the “image and number” (xiangshu 象數) is focused on the interpretation of the trigrams and hexagrams, and the “meaning and principle” (yili 義理) draws upon the philosophical essence of the Yijing.8 There are diverse interpretations of the concept of “Yi” (易). Yi was first understood as “change,” in the Eastern Han dynasty, and has also been comprehended as “unceasingly changing.”9 Chinese theologians’ approaches to integrating the concept of Yi into their theological discourses fall into two major categories, depending on their understanding of Yi as “change” or “unceasingly changing.” Chow Lien-Hwa has proposed a Theology of Yi 3 The Yijing is usually printed in two volumes (juan 卷): 1–30, 31–64. See Joseph A. Adler,

The Yijing: A Guide, (Oxford University Press, 2022): 3–8, 10.

4 Adler, The Yijing: A Guide, 6. 5 Dong, Fangyuan, “Xie Fuya ‘Guocheng shenxue’ de tantao,” Shen xue lun ji (34) (Taibei:

Guangqi wenhua, 1977): 517–34.

6 Smith Richard J. Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching or Classic

of Changes) and Its Evolution in China (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008).

7 The Tuan Zhuan (彖傳) are the commentary on the hexagram statements; the Daxiang

Zhuan (大象傳) and Xiaoxiang Zhuan (小象傳) contain commentary on The Greater Images and The Smaller Images that describe the proper behavior of the “Superior Person” or ruler (君子); the Xici Zhuan (繫辭傳), Treatise on the Appended Remarks, contains the core philosophy of the Yijing; with Wenyan Zhuan (文言傳) the commentary on the Words of the Text of the first two hexagrams, Qian (乾) and Kun (坤). See Adler, The Yijing, 12. 8 Joseph A. Adler, “Zhu Xi’s Conception of Yijing Divination as Spiritual Practice” in Wu Weiming, Global Yijing, 9–24. 9 Zheng Xuan 鄭玄, 127–200 CE,「易有三義：簡易一也，變易二也，不易三也」 “ ” [Yi has three layers of connotations: first, it means simple; second, change; third, non-change.] 298

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(易的神學) as a theology of change in Taiwan; while in mainland China, Wang Weifan (汪維藩, 1927–2015) advocated a “Theology of Unceasing Generation” (生生神學) based on the characteristics of the Yijing. Wang’s theology is focused on the creativity (生生不息, “unceasing activity”) of Yi,10 while Chow emphasizes the exchange and transformation (bian yi 變易) of Yi.11 This essay proposes that the distinction is predicated on the diasporic experiences Chow underwent throughout his lifetime.12 The ways in which Chow’s application of the Yijing to establish his Theology of Yi (or Change) differ from that of Wang Weifan showcase how Chow’s diasporic experience and the socio-political background in Taiwan have influenced his approach to Christian theology, and demonstrate one of the contours of contemporary Chinese Christianity rooted in Taiwan. Chow’s theology of Yi may spell out a fundamental factor in theology, namely, how geography and religion—which are centered on relationships among the natures of God, humanity, and earth—shape the formation of one’s theology.13 This chapter examines Chow’s understudied “theology of Yi” against the sociocultural background of Taiwan where he lived and worked. It focuses on three aspects: the development of Chow’s Theology of Yi, the characteristics of its system, and the influences of Chow’s theology in Taiwan. To better comprehend Chow’s theology, an interdisciplinary framework is applied to interpret how the interactions among place, culture, and diasporic self-identity influenced the development of Chow’s Theology of Yi. These social theories include critical cultural studies on practices of everyday life under surveillance and cultural geography of religion. 14 10 Yuan, Yijuan 袁益娟, Sheng sheng shen xue : Wang Weifan shenxue sixiang yanjiu 生生神学 :

汪维藩神学思想研究 (Beijing: Jincheng, 2010), 88.

11 L. Zhou and C. Wu, Yi de shenxue: Zhou Lianhua zhuzuo buyi [The theology of Yi: Addendum

to Chow Lien Hua’s works] (Hong Kong: Jinxinhui, 2017): 101.

12 As Graham Walker points out, “the trajectory of Dr. Lien Hwa Chow’s life follows the amaz-

ing dynamics of globalization in the Twentieth Century,” while Chow was able to “maintain both his local cultural fluency and develop a cosmopolitan proficiency.” Graham B. Walker, Jr. “How Heavy Is The Ink Brush?: The Theological Method of Dr. Lien Hwa Chow.” Taiwan Baptist Christian Seminary Journal. No.18, (2020): 3–34. 13 C. J. Glecken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967). Cited in L. Kong, “Geography and religion: trends and prospects.” Progress in Human Geography 14 (3), (1990): 355. 14 Michel de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984); A. Blunt, “Cultural geography: cultural geographies of home.” Progress in Human Geography 29(4), (2005): 505–15. 299

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Chow Lien-Hwa’s Theology and Practices in Everyday Life The Catholic priest and French philosopher Michel de Certeau observed that powerless people may resist what is arbitrarily imposed on them by creatively using tactics to consume and produce social and cultural products. The concept indicates that the weak who are overpowered by the dominant have an innate creativity to resist tactically in order to meet their needs in particular situations. De Certeau proposed that these acts of tactical, creative resistance could be expressed invisibly in daily life through walking, poaching via place-making, reading, and deception. Walking, reading, and deception are mundane practices in everyday life; however, poaching via place-making means deliberately changing the function of a place for one’s purpose, or clandestinely using resources that one does not own, on a territory that is not ours.15 Owing to Chow’s sympathetic stance toward the Taiwanese Presbyterian churches that advocated for the independence of Taiwan and were connected with the World Council of Churches, he lived constantly under the surveillance of the ruling political party, as well as suspicion from fundamentalist Christian leaders in Taiwan, over the three decades from the 1950s to 1980s.16 De Certeau’s concept offers a helpful tool to comprehend the major actions taken by Chow in building his theology: de Certeau’s tactics of walking, poaching via place-making, reading, and disguise are used here to examine the formation of Chow’s theology of Yi. De Certeau described “walking” as an art that forms a mode of operating for the powerless: “To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper.”17 Chow Lien-hua, who was born in Shanghai, walked out of China for the United States in 1949. In light of de Certeau’s concept, Chow’s walking out of China before Communists took power, then his coming to Taiwan in 1954 and subsequent visits to Europe to meet Tillich, Barth, and Niebuhr during the 1960s, can be understood as his individual tactics in response to surveillance and the White Terror prevailing in Taiwan in the period from 1949 to the 1980s. At this stage Chow was trying to find a proper standpoint to articulate his theology. His tactical, creative walking under constrained situations had been exemplified in his extraordinary leadership in evacuating 15 “Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others,” poaching

is closely related to consumption and place in time: De Certeau, Practice, 25–26, 53.

16 Zhou Lianhua, Zhou Lianhua Huiyilu (Taibei: Lianhe wenxue, 1994): 215–29. 17 De Certeau, Practice, 103. 300

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more than two hundred schoolmates of his college to the remote Sichuan province during the Sino-Japanese war in 1944. Chow was twenty-three years old but embarked on the tough, long journey of walking because he refused to concede to the occupying forces.18 De Certeau held that the places walked by are like statements or a written text.19 By a similar analogic move, the sanctuary of Grace Baptist Church in Taipei could serve as a statement of Chow’s indigenous theology and personal spiritual experience with place. Chow acknowledged that one of his indigenous efforts was manifest in the church building of Grace Baptist Church in 1983, which he insisted on rebuilding in ancient Chinese style, to replace the previous colonial-era white building.20 The roof of Grace Baptist Church imitated the shape of an intellectual’s cap in ancient China, to commemorate the origins of Grace Baptist Church: that is, outreach mission to college students and faculty. Grace Baptist Church was started in 1952 by a Southern Baptist missionary, Inabelle Coleman, as an English fellowship group to reach out to students and faculty at National Taiwan University just across the road. Chow joined the ministry in 1954 and soon started the Chinese congregation. The tiles of the roof were made of yellow ceramic, because yellow is the color for royal majesty and hence could symbolize the royal kingship of Jesus Christ. The four walls of the church were constructed with red bricks to resemble cottage huts in the Taiwanese countryside, demonstrating the church’s commitment to embrace the indigenous theology that Chow embraced. The rich cultural symbols of the church building make Grace Baptist Church a historic landmark of indigenous Protestant theology in Taiwan and reflect changing cultural and social circumstances in Taiwan.21 As a Bible scholar and theologian, Chow was an ardent reader and read widely in the writings of St. Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, and Paul Tillich, in addition to the Chinese classics. Chow did not read passively but actively adopted what he read to suit the needs of both his pastoral ministry and teaching endeavors at Baptist Theological Seminary. He also traveled far to seminaries and universities in the United States to acquire the knowledge he needed. As de Certeau’s metaphor of reading as “textual poaching” implies, Chow picked

18 19 20 21

Zhou, Huiyilu, 97. De Certeau, Practice, 97–98. Zhou, Huiyilu, 159. Kong, “Geography and religion,” 363. 301

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out the elements that were of interest to him and repurposed what he read to function in new ways.22 Chow’s translation and publication of Today’s China Version of the Bible (現代 中文譯本) begun in 1965 demonstrated his reading practices. Encouraged by Eugene Nida, Chow devoted much of his energy to the vast translation project.23 Chow’s translation of the Bible into modern Mandarin was an act of textual poaching and a tactic that he applied to resist dominant Christian thought at that time in Taiwan, where the Chinese Union Version Bible (和合本, 1919) and its embedded fundamental theology were esteemed as orthodoxy for Christians. Chow supposed the Bible translation of Today’s China Version of the Bible to be another contribution to indigenous theology.24 However, upon the publication in 1979, Today’s China Version of the Bible was immediately controversial. Disagreement culminated around Chow’s translation of Romans 8:3, which implied that Jesus Christ shared a sinful nature with human beings; a tenet that was not acceptable to many Christians at that time.25 To protect his own safety, Chow used a pseudonym (Luo Henian, 羅鶴年) when he translated and published Tillich’s work Dynamics of Faith in 1967 as 信 仰的能力. This practice was more than deception; it was a resistance against the norms imposed by the powerful and a tactic to protect his security.26 In Chow’s life, there were various occasions and opportunities to mingle with influential politicians, pastors, scholars; however, Chow did not keep many photos or diaries due to his special role as chaplain to Chiang Kai-shek. Surveillance and intensified tension between church and culture may have contributed to his severe illness during 1975–1976, a period that resulted in Chow’s theology of Yi.27 22 De Certeau says, “[R]eaders are travelers; they move across lands belonging to someone else,

23

24 25

26 27

like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves.” De Certeau, Practice, 174. See Zhou et al., Fang Tan Lu, 99–110; Zhou, Huiyilu, 321–23. Chow was the leader and facilitator of the grand Bible translation project, a team was composed of Moses Hsu (許牧世教授), I-Jin Loh (駱維仁博士), Wang Chengzhang (王成章博士), Jiao Ming (焦明女士). Zhou, Hui Yi Lu, 161; Zhou et al., Fang Tan Lu, 215. Zhou et al., Fang Tan Lu, 102, 216. Caleb Hwang (黃子嘉) and Changgan Wang (王長淦), for example, were against Chow’s translation of Romans 8:3,「上帝差遣自己的兒子, 使他有了跟我們人相同的罪性。」This controversial translation was later modified to「取了跟我們相似的罪的肉身。」 Zhou, Huiyilu, 311. L. Zhou and C. Wu, Yi de shenxue, 4. 302

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Changes of place certainly played a role in the development of Chow’s theology, as he moved within Taiwan, to China, and globally.28 Walker examines Chow’s evolving theological method, identifying him as an early dialogical, “glocal,” theologian with an emphasis on Creation theology, “a way to celebrate God’s mysterious presence in world cultures.”29 Geographical places for de Certeau refer not only to specific socio-spatial environments, but also institutional rules with everyday practices and uses.30 It is thus appropriate to apply a geographical framework to explain the development of Chow’s theology of Yi, given that both the biblical doctrine of creation and the Yijing explore the relations among earth, humanity, and nature.31 The concept of Yi carries a worldview that embodies the place of human beings in a substantial natural world.32 Chow’s identity as a member of the Chinese diaspora after the Communist Party took power in mainland China inevitably helped shape his theology of Yi.33 In 1966 Chow gave up a later plan to leave Taiwan under the counsel of Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong Mei-ling, 宋美齡) and determined to stay and commit himself wholeheartedly to ministry in Taiwan.34 The international theologian who dialogued with Tillich, Niebuhr, Latourette, Barth, and Brunner in the 1960s was gradually transformed into an indigenous theologian rooted in Taiwan. Chow attested in his memoir that although he was not born in Taiwan, he identified with the Taiwanese people, particularly the oppressed leaders at Taiwanese Presbyterian churches and theological seminaries. Chow’s theology derives not only from his diasporic status, but also his position as the pastor of Grace Baptist Church and as faculty in the Baptist Theological Seminary in Taiwan. Chow’s longtime colleague Graham Walker observed, “His life story uniquely positioned him to distill divergent global Christian theologies and offer a radically new perspective on the living God like no other Walker, “How Heavy Is The Ink Brush?,” 17. Walker, “How Heavy Is The Ink Brush?,” 4. De Certeau, Practice, 117. Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 13–15. Adler, The Yijing, 3. This article refers to people of Chinese birth or ethnicity who reside outside mainland China broadly as Chinese diaspora, whether living in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, or the West. As Blunt has observed, the term diaspora is inherently geographical, implying a scattering of people over space and transnational connections between people and places (2003, 282). 34 Zhou, Huiyilu, 212–13. It was only when he returned to China to preach in 1989 and started speaking in Shanghainese after decades of life as a sojourner, that he said, “I am finally home.” (345). 28 29 30 31 32 33

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time in Christian history.”35 Chow’s speech at the Divinity School of Chung Chi College, Chinese University of Hong Kong, in 2004 offered a statement of his indigenous theology, alluding to Tillich’s remarks that theology should speak to the audience in specific time and space.36 In the speech Chow proposed an indigenous theological method that emphasizes interpreting the Gospel by and for a given geographical region by the local population.37 For Chow, a local theologian needs to develop their thought collaboratively with cultural insiders and outsiders, because cultural outsiders bring important experience and critique to a local church.38 It was out of Chow’s desire to inspire a local theology-in-dialogue to contribute to the ever-growing mosaic of Christian tradition that he committed himself to develop a theology of Yi, to create a dialogue between his local theology and academic readers of the Yijing readers in Taiwan. In 1980, Chow had engaged in an unsuccessful debate with a number of Neo-Confucianist scholars like Mou Zongsan, Tang Chun-I (Tang Junyi), and Cai Renhou.39 Inspired by the religious and philosophical elements of Yijing, Chow turned his attention to use the Yijing as a bridge to dialogue with the intelligentsia in Taiwan. Under the contested interplay of time, place, home, culture, and identity, Chow’s diasporic status in Taiwan resulted in a theology of Yi drastically different from that of Wang Weifan who remained in mainland China, even though they both adopted a bifocal structure (雙焦點架構) in their work and emphasized the integration of Chinese culture and Christian theology. A comparison between the themes of Chow’s theology of Yi and Wang’s Yijing-based theology helps elicit the particular character of Chow’s thought. For Chow, leaving the mainland meant leaving behind the influence of some formidable names among indigenizing theologians, like Zhao Zichen or Wu Yaozong. More relevant to his use of the Yijing were the concerns of Presbyterian 35 Walker, How Heavy, 4. 36 Chow, Lien-hwa. “Chinese theology of tomorrow.” Divinity School Newsletter, No. 1. (Divinity

School of Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005), 4. The citation of Tillich reads: “Theology, as a function of the Christian church, must serve the needs of the church. A theological system is supposed to satisfy two basic needs: the statement of the truth of the Christian message and the interpretation of this truth for every new generation. Theology moves back and forth between two poles, the eternal truth of its foundation and the temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received.” (Tillich, 1951, 3) 37 Walker, How Heavy, 10. 38 Walker, How Heavy, 13–14. 39 Zhou et al., Fang Tan Lu, 2012: 92–94. 304

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theologians in Taiwan: human rights and social justice. While Wang Weifan was focused on keeping Chinese theology alive under a Marxist sociopolitical setting, Chow in the diaspora traveled to seek inspiration from Western theologians. Chow’s theology seems more rootless and uncertain, and his comprehension of the Chinese classic was inevitably tinted with nostalgia.40 Wang Weifan could straightforwardly develop a theology of Yi to fathom the creativity of spiritual life under Communism, but Chow had to tactically practice multiple roles in state and church, serving as the chaplain to a president. Chow’s endeavors to establish a well-developed theology of Yi were constantly disrupted by time, space, and floating identities. His theology of Yi was represented in praxis in his walking around Taiwan to reach out to dissidents in desolate prisons, impoverished native Taiwanese in mountain areas, and in the ecumenical movement to unite Christians from different denominations.41 In de Certeau’s terms, Chow’s walking was like reading a “text,” and the places he walked by are like statements or the written text of his theology.42

Characteristics of Chow’s Theology of Yi In the late 1970s, Chow started to engage the integration of biblical doctrines with the tenets of Change (Yi) in the Yijing, and claimed this “Theology of Yi” as “A Theology of Change.”43 Drawing upon the commentary by Zheng Xuan of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Chow adopted Zheng’s outlines—simple (簡易), change (變易), and non-change (不易), and added creative Yi (生易) for God the Father, transformative Yi (化易) for Christ’s sonship, and renewing Yi (更易) for eschatology, to explain key Christian doctrines. Chow wrote two versions of his Theology of Yi, the first version published in 1976, with an unpublished second version in 2010. Chow attempted to include the Eight Trigrams and hexagrams in his delineation of the biblical doctrines. Careful comparison of these two versions of Chow’s Theology of Yi reveals

40 Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 7–9 41 Zhou et. al., Fang Tan Lu. In 1960s, Chow visited the prisoners in Lan Yu Island (蘭嶼)

regularly to encourage them. Zhou, Huiyilu. Chow volunteered to work with World Vision among Native Taiwanese on the East Coast. He labored with Presbyterian theologians to organize the 100th Anniversary celebration of the Presbyterian Church in 1964 and was placed under government surveillance. 42 De Certeau, Practice, 97–98. 43 Chow, Unpublished manuscripts, 2. 305

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notable differences. In the first version, Chow depicted the system of Christian theology through six propositions: 1. God who changed nothing into being (將無易為有的上帝) 2. Christ who transformed from Godhead into human (從神易為人的 基督) 3. The Holy Spirit who changed from one into many (從一易為眾的聖靈) 4. Human beings who changed from good into evil (從善易為惡的世人) 5. Salvation whereby God changed place with humanity (神與人易位的 救恩) 6. The end time that changed being into nothing (從有易為無的終結) This version of Chow’s theology of Yi, which omitted any doctrine of the church, was presented at four seminaries and a Christian university in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Chow admitted, however, that he had not integrated theology and the Book of Yi successfully at this stage.44 For this reason he revised his original work on the theology of Yi into seven chapters in 2010,45 in order to incorporate more core doctrinal tenets.46 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

God the Father, changing from nothing to everything (無易為有的聖父) God the Son, changing from Logos to Flesh (道易為肉身的聖子) God the Holy Spirit changing from One to Many (一易為多的聖靈) Human Beings, changing from good to evil (善易為惡的世人) Salvation that is simple to exchange (容易交易的救恩) The Church, changing from One to Multitudes (一易為眾的教會) Renewed, transforming into New Jerusalem (更易為新天新地)

This revised “Theology of Change” emphasized three key theological convictions to expand Chow’s previous trinitarian theology. In terms of Salvation, Jesus had exchanged all things through his atonement on the cross.47 On Ecumenism, he wrote: “I hope they will remember we are in one church. We should also 44 Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, Fang Tan Lu, 98. 45 Chow, 2010. Unpublished manuscript of Chow’s “The theology of Yi” provided by Chow’s

son John Chow to the author in January 2023. 46 Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 2017, 109–26. 47 Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 40.

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remember the Lord himself prayed that the church should be one.”48 Here Chow recalled the actions he took to bring reconciliation among the denominations in Christianity and between the church and the state in Taiwan. To differentiate from the eschatology that he maintained as “changing being into nothing” in the version of 1976, Chow’s revised text elaborated on the transformation of the current material world into the new Jerusalem, seemingly replacing his conviction of a bleak annhilation of the world with hope for the new Jerusalem later in life.49 Unfortunately, it seems that Chow did not have enough time to integrate the texts and hexagrams in Yijing with the theological doctrines; the second version was drafted when he was ninety years old.

Theology of Yi and Creation Theology In Chow’s Theology of Yi, he described the creation of heaven and earth using the ideas of the Yijing and hexagrams; nonetheless, he acknowledged that Yijing did not recognize the existence of a Creator.50 This section intends to fill in some gaps in Chow’s Theology of Yi by drawing on the Ten Wings of the Yijing. The following quotations illustrate how Chow integrated the philosophy of cosmos in the Yijing with the creation theology. The Yijing text here is adopted from the Chinese Text Project website.51 Xu Gua (序卦): This part of the Ten Wings indicates the sequence of the hexagrams, and bears some similarity with the Book of Genesis on the creation of the universe and human beings.52 There was heaven and earth, then afterwards all things were produced. What fills up the space between heaven and earth are all things. Hence [Qian and Kun] are followed by Zhun.53 There was Heaven and earth, and then there was all material things; Once there was material things, then there was male and female; once there Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 50. Chow, Unpublished manuscripts, 2. Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 12. https://ctext.org/book-of-changes/yi-jing. The English version of Yijing is based on James Legge’s translation. 52 Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 14. 53 “有天地，然後萬物生焉。盈天地之間者唯萬物，故受之以《屯》 .” 48 49 50 51

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was male and female then there was husband and wife; once there was husband and wife then there was father and son.54 Fu (復): The twenty-fourth hexagram seems to imply the creation of the world in seven days.55 Fu indicates that there will be free course and progress [in what it denotes]. [The subject] finds no one to distress him in his exits and entrances; friends come to him, and no error is committed. He will return and repeat his [proper] course. In seven days comes his return. There will be advantage in whatever direction movement is made.56 Chow adopted the concept of Grand Terminus (Taiji) to depict God’s act of creation from nothing.57 Therefore in [the system of ] the Yi there is the Grand Terminus (太極), which produced the two elementary Forms. Those two Forms produced the Four emblematic Symbols, which again produced the eight Trigrams. The eight trigrams served to determine the good and evil [issues of events], and from this determination was produced the [successful prosecution of the] great business [of life]. (Xi Ci I, 繫辭上):58 Chow elaborates on applying the concept of Gu (蠱) to explain the doctrine of sin.59 In Gu we have the strong (trigram) above, and the weak one below; we have (below) pliancy, and (above) stopping: these give the idea of Gu (a Troublesome Condition of affairs verging to ruin). Gu indicates great progress and success: (through the course shown in it), all under heaven there will be good order. (Gu Gua (蠱卦) Tuan Zhuan (彖傳).60 54 “有天地然後有萬物，有萬物然後有男女，有男女然後有夫婦，有夫婦然後有父

子.” Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 15. “復：亨。出入无疾，朋來无咎。反復其道，七日來復，利有攸往.” Zhou, Ru ci wo xin, 82. “是故，易有太極，是生兩儀，兩儀生四象，四象生八卦，八卦定吉凶，吉凶生 大業.” 59 Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 59, 61. 60 “蠱卦彖傳: 蠱，剛上而柔下，巽而止，蠱。蠱，元亨，而天下治也.” 55 56 57 58

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Theology of Yi and Trinity Chow delineates the Trinity in terms of the Yijing, interweaving his Theology of Yi with the commentary text. God the Father, Creator of everything from nothing (無易為有的上帝) as Xi Ci I (繫辭上) says: The successive movement of the inactive and active operations constitutes what is called the course [of things]. . . . Production and reproduction is what is called [the process of ) change. . . . That which is unfathomable in [the movement of ] the inactive and active operations is [the presence of a] spiritual [power].61 Chow did not select or elaborate on many texts in the Yijing to proclaim the person and work of Jesus as Son of God. And yet the Yijing contains many sayings that might be applied to the person of Jesus Christ. For example, the following could be adopted to illustrate the work of Jesus Christ. God the Son, From Logos changes to Flesh (神易為人的基督). In Xi Ci I (繫辭上): It is said in the Yi, “Help is given to him from Heaven. There will be good fortune; advantage in every respect.” The Master said: “You (祐) is the symbol of assisting. He whom Heaven assists is observant (of what is right); he whom men assist is sincere.”62 God the Holy Spirit, Changing From One to Many (一易為眾的聖靈). The Yijing provides ample sayings to support Chow’s depiction of God the Holy Spirit.63 For example, Xian Gua (咸卦), Tuan Zhuan (彖傳): Indicates the heaven and earth could exert mutual influence to transform everything. Xian is here used in the sense of Kan, meaning (mutually) influencing. The weak (trigram) above, and the strong one below; their two influences moving and responding to each other, and thereby forming 61 “繫辭上: 一陰一陽之謂道. . .生生之謂易. . .陰陽不測之謂神.” 62 “易曰： 「自天祐之，吉无不利。」子曰： 「祐者，助也。天之所助者，順也；人

之所助者，信也」 .” 63 Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 50. 309

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a union; . . . Heaven and earth exert their influences, and there ensue the transformation and production of all things. The sages influence the minds of men, and the result is harmony and peace all under the sky. 64 Furthermore, Xun Gua (巽卦), Xiang Zhuan (象傳) could be interpreted as the work of the Holy Spirit:65 (Two trigrams representing) wind, following each other, form Xun. The superior person, in accordance with this, reiterates his orders, and secures the practice of his affairs.66

Salvation in Which God Took the Place of Humanity (神與人易位的救恩) A series of sayings in the Yijing illuminate Chow’s exposition on salvation.67 The fitting time for repentance: As Sun Gua (損卦), Tuan Zhuan (彖傳) pinpoints, In what shall this (sincerity in the exercise of Sun) be employed? (Even) in sacrifice, two baskets of grain, (though there be nothing else), may be presented: for these two baskets there ought to be the fitting time. There is a time when the strong should be diminished, and the weak should be strengthened. Diminution and increase, overflowing and emptiness: these take place in harmony with the conditions of the time.68 The readiness of the forgiveness of sin: Fu Gua (復卦), Xiang Zhuan (象傳) says: Notwithstanding ‘the perilous position of him who has made many returns,’ there will be no error through (his aiming after righteousness).69

64 “咸，感也。柔上而剛下，二氣感應以相與,  .  .  .  天地感而萬物化生，聖人感人心 65 66 67 68 69

而天下和平.” Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 50. “隨風，巽；君子以申命行事.” Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 72. “曷之用？二簋可用享；二簋應有時。損剛益柔有時，損益盈虛，與時偕行.” “頻復之厲，義无咎也.” 310

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Yi Gua (益卦), Xiang Zhuan (象傳) exhorts: The trigram representing wind and that for thunder form Yi. The superior person, in accordance with this, when he sees what is good, moves towards it; and when he sees his errors, he turns from them.70 On justification by faith:71 Lu (履卦) says, The first NINE, undivided, shows its subject treading his accustomed path. If he go forward, there will be no error.”72 Ge Gua (革卦), Tuan Zhuan (彖傳) maintains that: when the change has been made, faith is accorded to it. . . . When change thus takes place in the proper way, occasion for repentance disappears.73 The sanctification of saved sinners: Ding Gua (鼎卦), Tuan Zhuan (彖傳) suggests: The sages cooked their offerings in order to present them to God, and made great feasts to nourish their wise and able [ministers]. We have the symbol of flexible obedience, and that [which denotes] ears quick of hearing and eyes clear-sighted.74

Eschatology and Yijing: The Old World transformed into the New Jerusalem Chow referred repeatedly to the concept of Jiji (既濟) to explain the doctrines of salvation and the end-time.75 Jiji is the 63rd trigram of the Yijing, “He that surpasses others is sure to remedy [evils that exist], and therefore Xiao Guo

70 71 72 73 74 75

Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 79. “風雷，益；君子以見善則遷，有過則改.” Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 80. “初九：素履，往无咎.” “巳日乃孚；革而信也。. . .革而當，其悔乃亡.” “聖人亨以享上帝，而大亨以養聖賢。巽而耳目聰明.” Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 72, 75, 78, 81, 82, 87, 89. 311

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(小過) is succeeded by Jiji.”76 Jiji connotes “completion.” Chow quotes Xiang Zhuan (象傳) to recommend that we should prepare for the end time:77 (The trigram representing) fire and that for water above it form Ji Ji. The superior person, in accordance with this, thinks of evil (that may come), and beforehand guards against it.78 However, Chow highlighted the contrast between Jiji and Weiji (未濟), which indicates, “But the succession of events cannot come to an end, and therefore Jiji is succeeded by Wei Ji, with which [the hexagrams] come to a close.”79 Weiji means “non-completion,” thus, Chow concluded that Weiji suggests the vital essence of Yi: endless change and creativity.80

Church as an Eschatological Community In the initial draft of his Theology of Yi (1976), Chow defined the church as an eschatological community and categorized his ecclesiology under the doctrine of eschatology. The nature of church is richly described in the light of several concepts in Yijing. Cui (萃): Xu Gua (序卦) defines Cui as follows: “Cui denotes being collected. When [good people] are collected and mount to the highest places, there results what we call an upward advance.”81 Tuan Zhuan (彖傳) elucidates that the purpose of gathering is to offer sacrifice to Heaven: Cui indicates [the condition of union, or] being collected. We have in it [the symbol of ] docile obedience going on to [what is expressed by that of ] satisfaction. . . . Hence comes the [idea of ] union. ‘The king will repair “有過物者必濟，故受之以《既濟》” Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 82. “水在火上，既濟；君子以思患而預防之.” “物不可窮也，故受之以《未濟》 ，終焉.” Chow said: “既濟是物之窮，變則復生，生則不窮矣。未濟者未窮也，未窮有生生 之義。 ” (Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 82). 81 《 “ 萃》者，聚也。聚而上者謂之升.” 76 77 78 79 80

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to his ancestral temple:’ with the utmost filial piety he presents his offerings [to the spirits of his ancestors] . . . all is done in accordance with the ordinances of Heaven. When we look at the way in which the gatherings [here shown] take place, the natural tendencies [in the outward action] of heaven and earth and of all things can be seen.82 Chow advocated that the church should extend its services to reach out to the outside world,83 and the rich text of Bi in Yijing could provide a common ground for the dialogue between Chinese culture and Christianity.84 Bi (比): Tuan Zhuan exposits that “Bi denotes help; [and we see in the figure] inferiors docilely following [their superior]. Let [the principal party intended in it] reexamine himself, [as if ] by divination.”85 Xiang Zhuan says: “The movement towards union and attachment proceeds from the inward [mind]: [the party concerned] does not fail in what is proper to himself.”86

The Influence of Chow’s Theology of Yi in Taiwan Chow’s theology of Yi debuted at Tainan Theological Seminary and Baptist Theological Seminary in Hong Kong in 1976. However, audiences were not enthusiastic and Chow supposed his theology of Yi was not satisfactory.87 Realizing that the integration of biblical doctrines and the concepts and hexagrams of the Yijing was not successful, Chow ceased further presentation or publication of his theology of Yi until 2014, when he was invited to give a talk at Chung Yuan Christian University (中原大學) near Taipei. Chow’s plan to write an English version of his theology of Yi was left unfulfilled after he passed away in August 2016. In 2022 there was renewed academic interest in Chow’s theology, with Cai arguing for a reconstruction of Chow’s theology of Yi using the major concepts 82 “萃，聚也；順以說，剛中而應，故聚也。王假有廟，致孝享也。.  .  .用大牲吉， 83 84 85 86 87

利有攸往，順天命也。觀其所聚，而天地萬物之情可見矣.” Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 88. Wu Weiming, Global Yijing, 3. “比，吉也，比，輔也，下順從也。原筮元永貞，无咎，以剛中也.” “比之自內，不自失也.” Zhou et al., Fang Tan Lu, 99; Zhou and Wu, Yi de Shenxue, xi–xii.

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of the Yijing as the fundamental unit. But it awaits to be seen how the results of this approach will turn out.88 The remarkable influence of Chow’s theology was demonstrated in the process of the February 28 reconciliation service on December 8, 1990, when key officials in the Guomindang government apologized to the descendants of the victims of the massacre that took place from February to May 1947. Drawing on the philosophy of change in the Yijing, Chow suggested Christian churches should pursue ecumenical union and obedience regardless of their denominational background.89 This peacemaking ceremony coordinated by Chow and two prominent Presbyterian leaders resulting in the reconciliation and continuing collaboration of Christian churches in Taiwan thus further facilitated the production and reproduction of Christianity in recent years in Taiwan.90 Today’s China Version of the Bible (現代中文譯本) is used as the pew Bible at Grace Baptist Church in Taipei. In addition, the sacred structures and symbolism of Grace Baptist Church have left an imprint of Chinese culture in the urban landscape in Taiwan; the building was selected as one of the monumental Christian buildings to be printed in a series of postal stamps in 2019.

Conclusion Having experienced great challenges both politically and culturally in his lifetime, Chow Lien Hwa is one of the early adventurers who introduced Christians to dialogue with local culture in Taiwan through the concepts of the Yijing. Chow’s integration of the Yijing with Christian doctrines was an act of placemaking, a social practice in the context of political upheaval in Taiwan during the 1950s and 1970s. Chow’s indigenous efforts in narrating theology through the philosophical concepts of Yijing—the yili (meaning and principles) and the 88 Tsai Yi-Jen 蔡沂蓁 (Cai Yiren), “潛存教會的本色語言: 周聯華重構”

[Indigenous Language of Latent Church: A Reconstruction of the Theology of Yi of Chow, Lien-Hwa], (Master’s Diss., Taoyuan: Chung Yuan Christian University, 2022). 89 Zhou and Wu, Yi de shenxue, 123. 90 The two leaders are Pastors Weng Hsiu-kung 翁修恭 and the author and publisher Su Nanchou 蘇南洲, both of whom have been committed to the human rights movement in Taiwan since the 1980s. At the Peace Worship Service in December 1990, Chow preached in Taiwanese and Weng in Mandarin as a sign of unity. See Fenggang Yang and Chris White, “A Historical Overview of Chinese Christian Activism: Institutional Change Towards Democracy” in Christian Social Activism and Rule of Law in Chinese Societies eds. Yang and White (Lanham, MD: Lehigh University Press, 2021), 13. 314

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hexagrams—were imprinted with both a diasporic nostalgia toward Chinese traditional culture and reflect the contemporary context in Taiwan. The Yijing or “Book of Changes,” is not only a canonized Confucian classic, but also the classic that demonstrated and enabled thinking on the supernatural among Chinese.91 Chow’s theological system was left unfinished, but his legacy has paved a path for Chinese theologians to take up the task of linking Chinese culture with Christianity through the Yijing. This study suggests exploring a better approach to synthesize the yili and the hexagrams of the Yijing, so that the “multiplicity and flexibility” of the Yijing may serve as a source of wisdom, while the church is facing the unprecedent challenges caused by the changing relationship among God, humanity, and the world, as well as place and identities during the era of artificial intelligence.92

91 Zhou et al., Fang Tan Lu, 212. 92 Cf. Wu Weiming, Global Yijing, 4. 315

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-04-07 01:50 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

Chapter 16

LOCALIZING CHINESE AND AMERICAN FUNDAMENTALISM Timothy Tow and His Construction of a Separatist Biographical Theology in Singapore Joshua Dao-wei Sim 沈道偉, Department of History, Hong Kong Baptist University

Introduction In the foreword to Timothy Tow’s (Du Xianghui 杜祥輝, 1920–2009) semi-­ autobiographical book The Story of My Bible-Presbyterian Faith (1999), Chia Kim Chwee, a significant Elder within the Bible-Presbyterian (B-P) Church movement in Singapore, commented on Tow’s employment of biography and history to highlight his theological message. He observed that Tow had “chosen a narrative form to write a doctrinal position, that of the Bible-Presbyterian Church in Singapore,” which encompassed an integration of “doctrine, a little autobiography and the history of the B-P Church which he pastorally founded.” Chia explained that theology was the main motivation behind this narrative. He commented, “Rev. Tow embarked on a book which . . . tells the biblical beliefs of the mother B-P Church in Singapore . . . [where] there are various shades of B-Pism . . . that have, in varying degrees, doused the vital spirit and extinguished the fire of doctrinal separation, both in precept and practice.” 1 Chia’s observations hit the nail on the head. He summarized Tow’s lifelong fundamentalist theological agenda while positioning it within the context of a 1 Timothy Tow, The Story of My Bible-Presbyterian Faith (Singapore: Far Eastern Bible College

Press, 1999): 7.

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Bible-Presbyterian denomination that had fractured into groups of individual churches that practiced different levels of doctrinal separation or separatism, a key doctrine that defined the identity of the original Bible-Presbyterian movement. 2 Generally, there were two levels of separatism practiced by the fundamentalists. The first level, also known as “first-degree separation,” refers to “total separation from theologically modernist churches and from all those who cooperate with such churches.” “Second-degree separation” refers to the separation of fundamentalists “from all non-fundamentalists as well as from those who were doctrinally fundamentalist yet in contact with theological modernists.” 3 The Bible-Presbyterian denomination—which practiced these two levels of separatism—was established in 1955, and after more than thirty years of rapid growth and expansion, suffered a controversial dissolution in 1988. It is noteworthy that Tow’s separatism was directly influenced by his intimate association with the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC).4 The Council was “the single largest international organization of self-designated fundamentalist or ‘Bible-believing Christian churches and parachurch organizations’ for a large part of the Cold War.”5 The ICCC was established to act as the conservative global alternative to the World Council of Churches (WCC), which was deemed too liberal in theological and political orientation. The WCC was also accused of being “ecumenical”—in the sense that it promoted the wrong kind of ecclesiastical unity by exploring closer ties and a possible union with the Roman 2 This study follows George Marsden’s classic definition of American fundamentalism, which

he characterized as “militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism.” Tow was heavily influenced by specific strains of American and Chinese fundamentalism that were strongly anti-modernist. See George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, second ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006): 4. Fundamentalism is not one dimensional, and there are aspects of Tow’s millenarian thinking that align with Sutton’s definition of fundamentalism as “radical apocalyptic evangelicalism.” See Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalyse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 3. 3 Markku Ruotsila, “Carl McIntire and the Fundamentalist Origins of the Christian Right,” Church History 81, no. 2 (2012): 380 and 387. Also see Ruotsila’s Fighting Fundamentalist: Carl McIntire and the Politicization of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016): 32. 4 See, for instance Tow, The Story of My Bible-Presbyterian Faith, 36–39, and Son of a Mother’s Vow (Singapore: FEBC Bookroom, 2001): 125–30 and 156–60. 5 Markku Ruotsila, “Transnational Fundamentalist Anti-Communism: The International Council of Christian Churches,” in Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War: Agents, Activities, and Networks, eds. Giles Scott-Smith, Stephanie Roulin, and Luc van ­Dongen (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014): 235. 318

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Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Churches, in effect, undoing the contributions of the Reformation. The ICCC distinguished itself from the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in America—a doctrinally fundamentalist body that was also identified as “neo-evangelical”—and its related global bodies that were seen as non-separatist as they allowed their members to retain official affiliations with the WCC and its associated national bodies. On another level, Chia provided a snapshot of the ongoing localization of specific strains of Chinese and American fundamentalism that had been introduced into Singapore’s ecclesiastical scene by Tow and his cofounder Quek Kiok Chiang (Guo Kechang 郭克昌, 1916–2015) since the late 1940s. By “localization,” I follow Carl Kilcourse in emphasizing a receiver-oriented perspective that stresses how Tow “imposed [his] thought patterns .  .  . and localized meanings onto Christianity.”6 For this chapter, “Christianity” refers to the strains of fundamentalism that Tow and Quek introduced to Singapore. As we shall see, Tow highlighted his separatist position and ideas through various biographical translations and writings. Both Tow and Quek, who were from multigenerational Teochew (Chaozhou) Presbyterian lineages, experienced the profound impact of the Chinese revivalist-­ evangelist John Sung’s revivals in Singapore in 1935 and became advocates for his brand of Christianity. Tow, in particular, became a significant interpreter of Sung to the English-speaking public in Singapore during the late 1980s.7 He also drew on his Chinese Christian heritage to author and translate biographical accounts about prominent Republican-era fundamentalists8 like Wang Mingdao in light of the ICCC-influenced separatism that he introduced to Singapore. Tow and Quek can be considered fathers of Protestant fundamentalism in twentieth-century Singapore because of their foundational contributions in establishing ICCC-influenced fundamentalist institutions in Singapore that advocated for both first- and second-­degree separatism: The Bible-­Presbyterian denomination, its theological school, the Far Eastern Bible College (FEBC) and Southeast Asia’s first ICCC-related ­periodical—Malaysia Christian (南洋基督徒). 6 Carl S. Kilcourse, Taiping Theology: The Localization of Christianity in China, 1843–64 (New

York: Palgrave Macmillan: 2016), 17.

7 Tow, Son of a Mother’s Vow, 19–39; Kiok Chiang Quek, My Thanksgiving Testimonies (Singa-

pore, Far Eastern Beacon Monthly and Southeast Asian Christian Monthly, 2009), 10–14.

8 I use the term “fundamentalists” interchangeably with “evangelicals” or “evangelicalism” when

referring to these prominent Republican-era Chinese Christians. 319

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These points therefore raise two questions about Tow’s shaping and interpretation of the separatist ideas through his biographical literature, which this paper will attempt to address. First, what attracted him to use biography as a means to communicate his primary theological message of separatism?9 Second, how did he produce such biographical theology and what was its significance? In order to answer these questions, I draw on a number of biographical and historical writings that were published by Tow from the 1980s to the early 2000s and made available to me by the FEBC.10 These sources will also be contrasted with the private correspondence and documents between Tow and various B-P and ICCC leaders gathered from the Carl McIntire Manuscript Collection (CMMC) located in Princeton Theological Seminary. Tow considered himself a “disciple” of McIntire (1906–2002), the founder of the ICCC, and was one of the Council’s key Asian leaders and closest associates of McIntire from the early 1950s to the late 1990s.11 Through these sources, I argue that Tow localized specific strains of his Chinese and American fundamentalist influences from the early 1970s to the early 2000s in order to shore up support for his strict separatist position within the Bible-Presbyterian movement. Biography became one of Tow’s main vehicles in asserting a separatist identity over all other matters, especially to the younger generation of Bible-Presbyterian leaders who did not align entirely with his views, such as in terms of cooperation with non-separatist evangelical organizations and taking a more nuanced stance on Pentecostal tongue-speaking. This occurred in two ways: his English-language biographical translations and writings of prominent Chinese evangelicals became his main way of prosecuting an argument for separatism as a response to some key members of the second-­ generation Bible-Presbyterian leadership with whom he had major disagreements. In addition, he utilized his own autobiographical writings to construct an image of himself as a loyal separatist who stayed true to his convictions even after experiencing relational problems with his local pastoral colleagues and McIntire. As I shall uncover from these two cases, separatist theologies of tongue-speaking and church growth can be discerned from these writings. 9 I use the term “biographical theology” as a shorthand to signify Tow’s employment of the

biographical genre (situated within particular historical contexts) to promote a specific theological position. 10 “Publications,” Far Eastern Bible College, accessed on April 26, 2022, https://www.febc.edu. sg/v15/publications/febc_press. 11 Timothy Tow, Disciples of McIntire (Singapore: Far Eastern Bible College Press, 2002), 8–10. 320

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Timothy Tow’s Local Emphasis Addressing local concerns was an important part of Tow’s fundamentalism. Although a dedicated leader of the ICCC movement, his ultimate pastoral concern was the local promotion and defense of the separatist position of the Bible-Presbyterian denomination. As we will see through the use of biography, however, Tow introduced, translated, and highlighted the significance of the Chinese Christian heritage for his Bible-Presbyterian congregants and the wider English-speaking Protestant sector in Singapore. Thus, centering on Tow’s fundamentalism not only contributes to the greater inclusion of diasporic Chinese voices in Chinese theology (and more broadly, studies in Chinese Christianity); it also accounts for the ways in which diasporic Christians engaged with mainland Chinese theology for their own purposes. This entails a shift toward understanding how diasporic Christians attended to the various local contexts and concerns in their places of settlement outside China (for the purposes of this paper, the diasporic aspect is limited to Singapore), as well as the way in which they valued and interpreted theological texts and ideas from China. Until today, the most significant historical and theological interpretations in this field of study are on Chinese Christian agents based in mainland China. Some recent studies of twentieth-century Chinese Christianity have treated individuals and communities outside of China. One such work is Jean DeBernardi’s monograph on a transnational history of Brethren missionaries and Chinese preachers in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Southeast Asia. ­DeBernardi highlights that during the second-half of the twentieth century, the local Chinese Brethren assemblies in Penang and Singapore formulated their own theological hermeneutics to defend their practices and reject the authority and teachings of foreign missionaries and non-local Chinese evangelicals. This aided the assemblies in securing their independence as well as seceding from older congregations to form their own churches and denominations.12 Within scholarship on John Sung in Southeast Asia, Michael Nai-Chiu Poon provides key findings that speak about Tow’s capacity to draw on Sung for local purposes. Poon’s work is noteworthy because he is the first scholar who accessed Tow’s unpublished and published correspondence and documents in 12 Jean DeBernardi, Christian Circulations: Global Christianity and the Local Church in Penang

and Singapore, 1819–2000 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2020): 264–335. 321

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the CMMC, and synthesized his findings in two important pieces written about Sung’s legacy. 13 His primary argument is that Tow can be considered the first Singapore actor who attempted to mobilize the “Sung network in Singapore” and his historical legacy for the separatist cause since the 1950s. In so doing, he reconfigured “Sung into a champion of the separatist movement.” In particular, Poon documents Tow’s largely divisive and unsuccessful attempts (in partnership with Quek) to convince Singapore Chinese Church leaders, as well as the Chinese leaders of his Presbyterian denomination, to become part of the ICCC and repudiate any direct or indirect affiliations with the WCC.14 These Chinese churches were part of Sung’s Singapore network as they were directly involved in Sung’s revivals and the formation of his evangelistic bands in the 1930s and 1940s.15 Poon concludes that Tow’s actions can be considered a “first attempt to internalize Sung’s legacy .  .  . in the decolonized world in the late twentieth century.”16 Poon’s intervention is significant because he shows that Tow was not drawing upon Sung to create a version of “Chinese Christianity”—that is, a faith that was actively concerned about the salvation of the Chinese people and/or the Chinese nation, as well as how it could be accepted as a legitimate belief amongst members of this ethnic group. Instead, Tow was interested in convincing the local Chinese churches, and by extension, Christians of other ethnic and cultural groups, to accept the ICCC’s separatist position as the orthodox interpretation of the Protestant faith. This explains why he left the Presbyterian denomination to start the Bible-Presbyterian Church with his coworkers in 1955,17 and also coheres with a study that demonstrates the denomination’s commitment 13 Michael Nai-Chiu Poon, “Interpreting John Sung’s Legacy in Southeast Asia,” Trinity Theo-

14 15

16 17

logical Journal 21 (2013): 133–57 and “Song Shangjie yu Xinjiapo Jiaohui 宋尚節與新加坡 教會 [ John Sung and the Singapore Church],” in Song Shangjie yu Nianshiji Xinjiapo Huaren Jidujiao de Lingcheng 宋尚節與廿世紀新加坡華人基督教靈程 [ John Sung and the Spiritual Pilgrimage of the Twentieth Century Singapore Chinese Church], ed. Michael NaiChiu Poon (Singapore: Trinity Theological College, 2015): xxxii–lxv. Poon, “Interpreting John Sung’s Legacy,” 140–42, and “Song Shangjie yu Xinjiapo Jiaohui,” lix–lxii. Joshua Dao Wei Sim, “Chinese Evangelistic Bands in Nanyang: Leona Wu and the Implementation of the John Sung-Inspired Evangelistic Band Model in Pre-war Singapore,” Fides et Historia 50, no. 2(2018): 38–65. Poon, “Interpreting John Sung’s Legacy,” 141–42. Tow, Son of a Mother’s Vow, ch. 9.

322

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to separatism in contrary to the more “ecumenical” ecclesiastical landscape in Singapore. 18 The failure of Tow and Quek to persuade the Chinese churches in Singapore to accept the ICCC’s position saw them turn toward print media to soften the ground for the acceptance of the Council’s ideas. In 1950, both men agreed there was a “necessity” to “answer the modernists and ecumenists” in Singapore, Malaya, and the broader Southeast Asian region. Thus, they named their bilingual Chinese-English publication Malaysia Christian (before 1957, “Malaysia” was a geographical term denoting the island countries of Southeast Asia). 19 In the following years, Tow and Quek created additional publications to increase, diversify, and sharpen the frequency of their information battle. For instance, the Malaysia Christian, which was initially a bilingual quarterly, evolved into a purely Chinese-language monthly by the 1960s while they started a tabloid-sized English-language Far Eastern Beacon to replace the English Malaysia Christian.

Separatist Theology Through Biography and Autobiography The 1970s witnessed a shift in Tow’s writing work. While he continued to edit and publish articles and sermons in the various ICCC- and B-P-related periodicals, he started to engage in book publication. Specifically, Tow became a keen historian of Chinese evangelicalism and the B-P denomination—seventeen out of 51 books he published can be categorized as histories and/or (auto)biographies of the two topics. 20 Tow seemed to hold a particular attraction to historical writing—­especially (auto)biographical works—because he saw the stories of the men that 18 Ernest Kang Zheng Teo, “Christian Fundamentalism in Singapore: Biblical Separation in

the Bible-Presbyterian Church of 1955 to 1988” (Honours’ Thesis, Department of History, National University of Singapore, 2021), 7, 16, and 24–25. 19 Tow, Son of a Mother’s Vow, 133 and 135. Also see, Timothy Tow and Quek Kiok Chiang, “Our Stand,” Malaysia Christian, no. 1, Nov 1951, 1–2, TOW, Rev. Timothy—1954 file, Box 206, CMMC. 20 Tow also wrote a 54-page historical account of the B-P denomination that was published in 1971 as part of the denomination’s 21st anniversary commemorative volume. See Timothy Tow, “The History of Life Church in the Bible-Presbyterian Church Movement in Singapore and Malaysia, 1950–1971,” in The Bible-Presbyterian Church of Singapore and Malaysia, 1950–1971, eds. Wai Choon Tan, Lorena Tan, Swee Khoon Tan, Chin Kwee Lau, Timothy Tow, and Kiok Chiang Quek (Singapore: Acme Printers, 1971).

323

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he translated or wrote about as spiritual models for his church members and readers. Significantly, he brought the stories of a number of prominent Chinese revivalist-­evangelists and missionaries to the English-speaking public, including John Sung, Wang Mingdao, Ding Limei, Jason Linn, and Lim Puay Hian. 21 While the first three men are household names within twentieth-­ century Chinese evangelicalism, Linn and Lim were key figures who engaged in ethnic-based and cross-cultural evangelism and missionary work in Southeast Asia from the 1920s to 1960s. Interestingly, the figure that received the most biographical treatment was himself. In all, he wrote seven historical or autobiographical books where he starred as a central character; evidently, Tow also saw himself as a spiritual model. 22 Crucially, beyond the issue of spiritual models, Tow realized that these historical narratives were able to act as vehicles to transmit and support the separatist position of the Bible-Presbyterian denomination. This did not always mean that the theological message that he wanted to highlight was the central point of these writings. Nonetheless, Tow was opportunistic and did not waste any chances to make his message known. In the following three sections, I will analyze how Tow produced his separatist theology through selected biographies of these men, and also in his historical and/or autobiographical writings about the Bible-Presbyterian denomination.

Biography In the 1980s there was extensive debate between the first- and second-­generation leaders of Tow’s denomination, disputes that culminated in the dissolution of the Synod of the B-P Church in 1988. The first-generation leadership refers to the pastors who were part of the founding membership of the denomination. For the purposes of the paper, this includes Timothy Tow, Quek Kiok Chiang 21 Tow’s publications include among others: John Sung My Teacher (Singapore: Christian Life

Publishers, 1985); Wang Ming Tao & Charismatism (Singapore: Christian Life Publishers, 1989); In John Sung’s Steps: The Story of Lim Puay Hian (Singapore: Far Eastern Bible College, 1976); Jason Linn, Pioneering in Dyak Borneo, trans. Timothy Tow (Singapore: Far Eastern Bible College, 1973). 22 These works include Timothy Tow, “The History of Life Church in the Bible-Presbyterian Church Movement in Singapore and Malaysia, 1950–1971,” Born Again in the Singapore Pentecost (Singapore: Christian Life Publishers, 1993), Forty Years on the Road to Church Growth (Singapore: Christian Life Publishers, 1993), The Singapore B-P Church Story (­Singapore: Life Book Centre, 1995), Son of a Mother’s Vow (2001), The Story of My Bible-­Presbyterian Faith (1999), and Disciples of McIntire (2002). 324

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and Tow’s younger brother, Tow Siang Hwa (SH Tow, Du Xianghua 杜祥華, 1925–2019). The two brothers became each other’s closest allies in the dispute. Two key leaders who formed the second generation were Quek Swee Hwa (SH Quek, Guo Ruihua 郭瑞華, b. 1941) (Quek Kiok Chiang’s son) and David Wong (Wang Weifa 王惟發, b. 1949). 23 The dispute can be defined by three characteristics: doctrinal, generational, and personality. For the purposes of this paper, I focus primarily on the first two factors. Essentially, the disagreements that occurred manifested as generational differences over the separatist position of the B-P Church, as well as related teachings, such as biblical inerrancy and Pentecostal tongue-speaking. Through their writings, the Tow brothers fashioned themselves as staunch defenders of separatism. SH Quek and Wong, meanwhile, were characterized as “new evangelicals,” that is, a label that put them in the same category as the non-separatist groups. Along with this was also the view that they were willing to adopt more nuanced positions on issues such as tongues-speaking, and therefore compromised on the fundamental doctrines of the B-P Church. 24 This neo-­evangelical lens colored the views of the Tow brothers, and as we shall see in the next section, formed the basis of their perpetual opposition to the views of the second-­generation leaders. In The Singapore B-P Church Story (published seven years after the dissolution of the Bible-Presbyterian synod), Tow summarized the dispute and his interpretation of separatism as follows: A true B-P is opposed to all efforts to obscure . . . the clear line of separation between B-Ps and New Evangelicals, Charismatics, promoters of ecumenical cooperative evangelism, promoters of the liberal-modernist social gospel, and all links with the Ecumenical Movement. As the B-P Movement grew, the younger men went overseas and imbibed liberal and New Evangelical theology, a deviant spirit began to creep into the B-P Church. While wearing the B-P name these were playing the New Evangelical Game . . . 25 23 David W. F. Wong, “The End of an Era: What Went Wrong,” in Heritage and Legacy of the

Bible-Presbyterian Church in Singapore, eds. Chua Choon Lan, Swee Hwa Quek, David Wong, and Daniel Chua (Singapore: Finishing Well Ministries, 2018): 419. 24 David W. F. Wong, “Disintegration of a Denomination: Events Leading to Dissolution of BP Synod,” in Heritage and Legacy, 400–401. 25 Tow, Singapore B-P Church Story, 226–27. 325

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While Tow raised a number of labels here which signify the types of Christian groups and persuasions that a B-P member should not be associated and identified with, the main issue at stake was “the clear line of separation”—which was a strict implementation of second-degree separation. The Tow brothers defined their standards of where the line should be drawn and demanded no compromise on the standards they set, while the second-generation leaders were generally willing to accommodate more flexibility and nuance in their separatism. Two pertinent items that should be highlighted to elucidate differences in their views pertain to the labels “new evangelicals” and “charismatics.” First, the second-generation leaders did not agree that they should draw a “clear line of separation” with doctrinally fundamentalist (or evangelical) groups that were identified as neo-evangelical and non-separatist by the Tow brothers. 26 Such groups included parachurch agencies like Overseas Mission Fellowship (OMF) and Varsity Christian Fellowship, organizations with which the B-P denomination was happy to maintain relations with throughout the 1950s to 1970s. 27 To them, disassociation with these bodies was unwarranted and seen as “isolationism” and not “separatism.” 28 Wong argued that while “separation from liberalism and [WCC’s] ecumenism is scriptural,” he was not persuaded that non-separatist evangelicals should be “disparaged or treated like pariahs.” 29 Clearly, the key second-generation leaders were uncomfortable with the practice of second-degree separatism and argued that it went beyond their interpretation of the doctrine of separation. To be fair, the ICCC had taken a strong position on these so-called neo-evangelicals since 1968, denouncing their willingness to collaborate with WCC-affiliated bodies in their organization of joint-evangelistic 26 “Making Sense of the Synod Dissolution: A Round Table Discussion,” in Heritage and

­Legacy, 441.

27 “Making Sense of the Synod Dissolution,” 439–41. Paul Seng Hua Phua, “A Personal Jour-

ney in the BP Church,” and Philip Swee Choon Heng, “Growing Up In Say Mia Tng,” in Heritage & Legacy, 208–209 and 162–65, and Bobby E. K. Sng and Tong Suit Chee, To Whom Much Is Given: The history of Graduates’ Christian Fellowship in Singapore 1955–2015, third ed. (Singapore: Graduates’ Christian Fellowship, 2015), 10–11. 28 Wong, “Disintegration of a Denomination” and “Making Sense of the Synod Dissolution,” 405 and 445. 29 “Making Sense of the Synod Dissolution,” 444–45.

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meetings, 30 thus the Tows’ “clear line of separation” was consistent with the ICCC’s standards. The second issue pertains to a disagreement about the B-P denomination’s official position on the Pentecostal practice of tongues-speaking (referring to ecstatic, unintelligible utterances) that had been popularized by the charismatic movement that swept the Singapore ecclesiastical scene in the 1970s and 1980s. 31 Here, again, the issue at stake was the clarity of the line of separation. To be sure, on the matter of tongues, the first- and second-generation leadership were in agreement about the prohibition of tongues-speaking, and other related charismatic practices. While the B-P position on the other practices remained a non-issue, tongues-speaking became a matter that divided the Tow brothers from the second-generation leaders. According to SH Quek, Tow had always maintained a position that tongues-speaking was “less desirable.” This changed by 1987, a year before the dissolution, when Tow (and SH Tow) adopted a hardened position that “tongues have ceased and are not desirable.” 32 What arose from this shift in views was a series of misrepresentations about the stance of SH Quek and Wong vis-à-vis their modified cessationist position on tongues. The second-generation leaders sought to establish a denominational-wide consensus: the ceasing of tongues “as signs” of the Holy Spirit’s power after “the completion 30 San Feng Li, “Wanlian Youguan ‘Xinfuyingpai Zhe’ Yijue An 萬聯有關‘新福音派者’議決

案” [The Case of the International Council’s Decision on the New Evangelicals], Malaysia Christian, Nov 1968, 1. Also see, Kiok Chiang Quek, eds. Tenth General Assembly Reports of the Far Eastern Council of Christian Churches (Singapore: International Council of Christian Churches, Far Eastern Office, 1982): 24–25. 31 Bobby E. K. Sng, In His Good Time: The Story of the Church in Singapore, 1819–2002, third ed. (Singapore: Bible Society of Singapore and Graduates’ Christian Fellowship, 2003): Chapters 8 and 9. 32 “Making Sense of the Synod Dissolution,” in Heritage and Legacy, 431. A possible reason that gave rise to Tow’s hardened position was his research on various evangelicals in China, such as William Burns, Dora Yu, and John Sung, during the first half of the 1980s. He concluded that “insofar as our Chinese spiritual ancestry is concerned—none of them ever spoke in tongues.” See, Timothy Tow, “Australetter No. 4,” B-P Weekly XXII, no. 8, Oct. 19, 1986, 1. SH Quek’s account of Tow’s “less desirable” position may also be debatable as Tow seemed to show implicit support for a cessationist position as early as 1976 in his biography of Lim Puay Hian. Tow published Lim’s view on cessationism and referred to the total absence of tongues-speaking in a revival that Lim experienced as a young boy in South China. He did not, however, provide any explicit support for cessationism. See, Tow, In John Sung’s Steps, 33 and 141.

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of the New Testament canon.” This meant that while they rejected modern charismatic tongues-speaking practices, they did not rule out that possible “isolated” outbreaks could still occur. SH Quek further clarified that his personal position was that “tongues historically had ceased” while the church led by Wong issued a similar stance just weeks before the Synod dissolution. 33 In spite of the efforts to establish common ground, the positions adopted by SH Quek and Wong were interpreted by the Tow brothers as an endorsement for the continuance of tongues-speaking, making it a major question that contributed to the dissolution of the BP synod. 34 With these conflicts serving as the backdrop, I propose that a separatist theology on charismatic tongues-speaking can be evidently discerned through Tow’s production of three biographical writings: John Sung My Teacher (1985), The Asian Awakening (1988), and Wang Ming Tao & Charismatism (1989). Although a separatist theology on neo-evangelicalism did not emerge, as we shall see, Tow’s position on tongues-speaking was evidently linked to his unhappiness with his second-generation leaders’ unwillingness to disassociate entirely from the so-called neo-evangelicals. The hardening of Tow’s position can be seen through his use of John Sung as a spiritual model who brought about the repentance of sins and true transformation of lives through his revival campaigns. These were seen as genuine signs of true spiritual revival. In John Sung My Teacher (published two years before Tow adopted an absolute cessationist view on tongues), this point was accompanied by his explicit observations that tongues-speaking was absent in these revivals, and his narrations of Sung’s disapproval of tongues-speaking. Altogether, he mentioned seven such cases in his book. 35 One example was Sung’s first revival engagement in Shanghai’s Bethel Mission in 1931, which ended up primarily in sin repentance: Three hundred were so slain by the message that they went forward in deep sorrow for their sins. Then when they had confessed their sins item by item at the behest of the evangelist, they were filled with the joy of salvation and the fulness of the Holy Ghost. But no one spoke in tongues. 33 Wong, “Disintegration of a Denomination” and “Making Sense of the Synod Dissolution,”

398, 408, and 432. 34 Tow, Singapore B-P Church Story, 217–19 and Wong, “Disintegration of a Denomination,”

405–408.

35 Tow, John Sung My Teacher, 29, 114, 119, 121, 134, 142, and 161. 328

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The only tongue present at such a conclusion was praise and singing with choruses of “Chey Mei Tze, Chey Mei Tze” = Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord! in Shanghainese. 36 The same points were stressed in Sung’s revival campaign in Qingdao in 1931 when he came into conflict with some Pentecostals who “stressed a great deal on speaking in tongues, spiritual songs, visions and dreams, as signs of being filled with the Holy Spirit.” In Sung’s reply to them, he explained that it was the confession of sins that allowed the Holy Spirit to transform and fill a person’s heart, and not tongues or other miraculous practices like visions and dreams. 37 In order to make these points convincing, Tow also included a firsthand account of the spiritual revival he experienced through Sung’s Singapore campaigns in 1935 as a fifteen-year-old, an account later reproduced in his first autobiographical account Born Again in the Singapore Pentecost (1993). As a tonguein-cheek comment on the issue of the absence of tongues-speaking, Tow added that he received his “gift of tongues from the Holy Spirit” as he acquired “fluent Hokkien”—the dominant language among Singapore’s Chinese communities— through his participation in the revival campaign. 38 In short, Tow demonstrated that he was living proof of Sung’s revivalist model: sin repentance and true life transformation, with the absence of Pentecostal tongues-speaking. 39 Finally, in The Asian Awakening (1988), which was partly a consolidation of lectures he gave on John Sung in London in 1986, Tow summarized what he learned about the absence of tongues-speaking from Sung’s work. 40 While Sung’s model strongly suggested the absence of tongues in his revivals, as well as the inauthenticity of revivals based on Pentecostal practices, it did not lead to the conclusion that tongues had ceased. Based on this point alone, one can conclude that Tow’s position was not dissimilar to that of SH Quek and Wong—that is, tongues had historically ceased due to evidence of its absence. Thus, in order to draw a clear line of separation (which can be seen as an attempt to differentiate his stance from SH Quek’s and Wong’s views), Tow seized on the 36 Tow, John Sung My Teacher, 118–19. 37 Tow, John Sung My Teacher, 121. 38 Tow was a Teochew native speaker, which is considered a Southern Min language; it would

have been relatively easy for him to grasp and master Hokkien. See Picus Sizhi Ding, Southern Min (Hokkien) as a Migrating Language: A Comparative Study of Language Shift and Maintenance Across National Borders (Singapore: Springer, 2016): 2–7. 39 Tow, John Sung My Teacher, 24–33; Tow, Born Again in the Singapore Pentecost, 14–23. 40 See Tow, Asian Awakening, 53–54. 329

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opportunity to publish Wang Ming Tao and Charismatism in 1989 (just after the Synod dissolution), a book that reproduced parts of a new English-language translation of Wang Mingdao’s classic autobiography These Fifty Years (五十 年來), and Tow’s own translation of Wang’s 1934 critique of Pentecostalism. Additionally, the book contains a transcript of an interview with Wang that was conducted by Tow’s FEBC students in Shanghai during 1988. The primary point that Tow wanted to make was that the charismatic movement was a “Counterfeit Holy Spirit Movement,” and that the “source” of charismatic tongues and other practices was suspect. 41 Interestingly, Peter Masters, a prominent British Baptist separatist who wrote the foreword to the book, noted that Wang did not hold the view that tongues and other charismatic practices had ceased. 42 Indeed, in the translated article titled “The Charismatic Movement in the Light of the Bible,” Wang explained that if one were to receive “signs and wonder and speaking in tongues” from God, the person “would logically receive them thankfully.” 43 In spite of this inconsistency with the position of absolute cessationism that the Tow brothers demanded of the second-generation leaders, what attracted Tow to reproduce Wang’s story and views was the latter’s spiritual journey. Wang, who was brought up in a Christian family, underwent a conversion to Pentecostalism while working as a teacher in a Presbyterian school, before eventually “repudiating” the Pentecostal faith and its various practices, such as tongues-speaking. 44 Wang also concluded that while tongues and other charismatic practices could be from God, they could also come from non-divine sources: the “evil spirit,” human “flesh” and “pretenders.” 45 Given the stature of Wang Mingdao as a model spiritual giant among Chinese Christians, Tow drew on his life story of rejection of Pentecostalism to craft a resolute separatist position of tongues-speaking, where he incorporated elements of the charismatic movement’s influence on Roman Catholicism and 41 Timothy Tow, Wang Ming Tao & Charismatism (Singapore: Christian Life Publishers,

1989), 99 and 101. Author’s emphasis.

42 Tow, Wang Ming Tao, unpaginated. 43 Tow, Wang Ming Tao, 64. See Wang Ming Tao, Shengjing guangzhong de Ling’en Yundong

聖經光中的靈恩運動 [The “Ling En” Movement in Light of the Scriptures) (Peiping: The Spiritual Food Quarterly, 1934). 44 Tow, Wang Ming Tao, 48–51. 45 Tow, Wang Ming Tao, 78.

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his own evidence of the absence of tongues in the modern evangelical revivals to argue that charismatic Christianity was counterfeit. 46 As Tow put it: Not only had Wang Ming Tao stood against the wild teachings and unbridled practices of Charismatism, but also against Ecumenism, her twin sister. For speaking in tongues, etc., is no more a phenomenon confined to Protestant circles, but is a ball of fire that has leapt over into the Roman Catholic fold since 1967, and set it all ablaze. . . . This is one proof that tongues-speaking has come from a source anything but holy. 47 In spite of Tow’s efforts to build a historical case for cessationism and the illegitimacy of tongues-speaking on the basis of Chinese fundamentalism, it is hard to discern whether there were really any substantive differences between Tow’s separatist theology of tongues-speaking and the stated positions of SH Quek and Wong. Tow did not offer any definitive proof that tongues had fully ceased. Instead, I suggest that Tow’s (and SH Tow’s) insistence on interpreting the positions of SH Quek and Wong as non-cessationist was likely due to his unhappiness with their unwillingness to completely disassociate from the agencies and figures that had been identified as neo-evangelical and were friendly with Pentecostals. This was spelt out in his evaluation of the Synod dissolution in 1995, when Tow observed that “those younger leaders who spoke for tongues have not receded” and that “One of them now sits in high council with them who are well known charismatic leaders.” 48 The man that Tow referred to was SH Quek. In the final analysis, Tow’s production of a separatist theology of tonguesspeaking can be considered as part of an ongoing localization process where he attempted to reject his younger leaders’ views and justify the positions and interpretations he adopted.

Autobiography The dissolution of the B-P synod in 1988 was a big loss as it represented the disintegration of the ICCC’s separatist position in Singapore. Although Tow remained in control of Far Eastern Bible College, its separatist position was no 46 Tow, Wang Ming Tao, 99–100. 47 Tow, Wang Ming Tao, 99. 48 Tow, Singapore B-P Church Story, 219.

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longer representative of all the individual churches. Due to this fragmented state of affairs, Tow realized that it was necessary to preserve his understanding of separatism through the production of historical and autobiographical books, of which The Singapore B-P Church Story (1995) is best representative. He explained in its preface that while the book was for public consumption, it served the greater purpose of informing the “B-P sons and daughters” about their “roots.” Tow went on to provide a master narrative that came to shape his subsequent retellings of the B-P story, and also his efforts to maintain a separatist agenda in his work: The Singapore B-P Church began in 1950 as a separated Church and a strong constituent of the 20th Century Reformation movement (International Council of Christian Churches) vis-a-vis the Ecumenical Movement (World Council of Churches). As the Church grew and increased in numbers, dissensions and deviations from the original position and precepts crept in. The result of it all was the dissolution of [the] Synod in 1988. 49 Various local and external circumstances motivated Tow’s preservation efforts. Locally, the dissolution of the Synod and the lack of a wide institutional body to represent separatism served as a basic motivation. Beyond these, there was the establishment of Biblical Graduate School of Theology by SH Quek and Wong in 1989 after the Synod dissolution. BGST came to represent the rivalry between the Tow brothers and the two second-generation leaders. In effect, the Biblical Graduate School of Theology was a direct competitor of the FEBC as it stemmed from the B-P denomination and was formulated as a “separatist institution,” although it did not adopt the second-degree separatism against neo-evangelicalism that was advocated by Tow. 50 Part of the reason for the genesis of the Biblical Graduate School of Theology was due to a long-standing conflict between Tow and SH Quek while both 49 Tow, Singapore B-P Church Story, 7. Nineteen-fifty is the founding year of the original English

congregation led by Tow within the Teochew-speaking Life Presbyterian Church in Singapore. This congregation became the first B-P church in 1955. 50 Swee Hwa Quek, “Report of Dr Quek Swee Hwa’s Trip to India on Behalf of the ICCC, Jan 17–25, 1989,” Feb. 8, 1989, 6, Dr. K. C. Quek TAM folder, Box 9, CMMC. and “Theological Position,” Biblical Graduate School of Theology website (2014), accessed on 6 May 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20151103053237/http://www.bgst.edu.sg/welcome-­ message/theological-position. 332

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men served as leading faculty members in FEBC during the early 1970s (SH Quek started to serve as FEBC’s Academic Dean in 1971). 51 Tow’s substantive disagreements with SH Quek were mainly doctrinal. Some of these disagreements were repeatedly aired in Tow’s historical and autobiographical books in the 1990s and 2000s, resulting in SH Quek’s repeated defense of his own views. 52 The crux of the matter came down to Tow’s view that Quek displayed signs that he did not believe in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible, nor held to a literal interpretation of events that were recorded in Genesis, such as the age of the Patriarchs and the Great Flood. To Tow, these were “neo-­ evangelical” views, or, by implication, the incorporation of critical liberal theological scholarship into conservative interpretations. 53 These differences, among many others, were “irreconcilable,” and led to SH Quek’s formal resignation in July 1974 and formed the basis of his later mistrust and misapprehension of SH Quek’s and Wong’s views on neo-evangelicalism and tongues-speaking in the late 1980s. 54 This is evidenced from Tow’s letter to McIntire in 1976, where he commented, “The FEBC almost fell to Neo-Evangelicalism in Quek’s son, Dr. Quek Swee Hwa.” 55 Externally, Tow suffered from an increasingly strained relationship with McIntire that came to a head in 1989, a year after the Synod dissolution. Private correspondence from the Carl McIntire Manuscript Collection reveals that there were two major conflicts between the men in the 1970s and 1980s. The first, which was carried out over correspondence from 1974 to 1978, centered upon issues such as Tow’s unhappiness that McIntire had undermined his authority as President of the Far Eastern Council of Christian Churches (ICCC’s Asian wing). 56 The second issue, which led to a great deal 51 Key aspects of their conflict can be found in a restricted document titled “Extracts from the

52 53 54

55 56

Minutes of the FEBC Board of Directors” that was circulated by SH Quek to his church elders a few months before the Synod dissolution. Swee Hwa Quek, “Extracts from the Minutes of the FEBC Board of Directors,” 2 May 1988, Quek, Swee Hwa folder, Box 9, CMMC. Also see, Tow, “The History of Life Church in the Bible-Presbyterian Church Movement in Singapore and Malaysia, 1950–1971,” 58. Tow, Singapore B-P Church Story, 219, Son of a Mother’s Vow, 368–73 and “Making Sense of the Synod Dissolution,” 426–27. Tow to McIntire, Sep. 7, 1976, Timothy Tow and Tow Sien Ai file, Box 195, CMMC. Kiok Chiang Quek, “Far Eastern Bible College,” July 11, 1974, Quek, Swee Hwa folder, Box 9, CMMC. Also see, A Christian Worker to McIntire, Oct 11, 1974, Timothy Tow and Tow Sien Ai file, Box 195, CMMC. Tow to McIntire, Sep. 7, 1976. Tow to McIntire, May 21, 1975, Dr. Timothy and Tow, Sien Ai file, Box 195, CMMC. 333

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of anger from Tow and SH Tow, pertained to McIntire’s failure to repay SH Tow’s property loans to the ICCC on time from 1979 to 1981. The many years of strained relations took a toll on Tow’s trust in his American teacher. After the dissolution in 1988, Tow disassociated FEBC from the ICCC and distanced himself from the organization, although it did not seem that he fully broke ties. 57 He also published an article in the Reformation Banner (then the organ of FEBC) in May 1989, publicly criticizing McIntire and Quek without directly naming them. 58 The effect of this criticism was that Tow and his brother decided to isolate themselves and their institutions from the backing of the ICCC and stand alone in their battle for the separatist position in Singapore. With no more broadbased local and external support, Tow’s history and autobiographical writings were meant to fashion a positive record of his firm loyalty to the separatist cause. This also served to tell a continuous story of the true B-P separatist heritage in Singapore where Tow was established as the key leader who inherited and perpetuated this cause to the end of his life. I suggest that he utilized two ways to mould himself as the model B-P separatist leader. Tow positioned himself as the key leader who introduced ICCC separatism into the Singapore ecclesiastical scene. This was primarily accomplished through his ancestral retelling of the denomination’s history in The Singapore B-P Church Story, as well as the repeated production of the narrative about his collaborative efforts with other leaders to establish a separatist church. A key technique that Tow deployed was to contextualize his pioneering efforts in an imagined ancestry of the denomination that he called “The B-P Singapore Tree Has Seven Roots.” By “imagined ancestry,” I mean that Tow drew connections to various historical figures in the history of Christianity by way of association through denominational and theological connections, as well as by linkage with his own Chinese Presbyterian lineage in Shantou (Swatow), China. Tow had first written about this imagined ancestry in 1985, although the specific idea about lineage ancestry can be traced to his 1971 essay on “The History of Life Church in the Bible-Presbyterian Church Movement in Singapore and Malaysia, 57 McIntire to Tow, May 5, 1989, 2, Tow, Dr. Timothy and Tow, Sien Ai file, Box 195, CMMC.

Tow did not fully disassociate from the ICCC. He attended ICCC meetings in 1997 and 1998. See, The Story of My Bible-Presbyterian Faith, 39. 58 Timothy Tow, “Even an Apostle,” Reformation Banner, May 1989, 2, and McIntire to Tow, May 5, 1989, 1, Tow, Dr. Timothy and Tow, Sien Ai file, Box 195, CMMC. See Poon, “Song Shangjie yu Xinjiapo Jiaohui,” lxii–lxiii. Also see, McIntire to Tow, May 5, 1989, 2. 334

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1950–1971.” 59 An updated re-narration of this piece with an expanded seven roots drawn from different Western and Chinese branches of Protestantism was provided in The Singapore B-P Story. This included John Calvin (French root), John Sung (Chinese root), McIntire (American root), and the founding leaders and members of the first B-P church in Singapore, Life B-P church (Singapore root). 60 A significant move that Tow utilized in this book, as well as in his autobiographies, was to make his “conversion” to the ICCC’s separatism the foundational story of the B-P Church. This also made him a central character of the movement, alongside Quek. Such a move can be found in his narrative about the American root: When the challenge to join the 20th Century Reformation was given by Dr McIntire to Faith Seminary students, the founding pastor of the B-P Church, Singapore, Timothy Tow, then a junior, felt God’s call to join the movement. Fired with a crusading zeal to defend the Faith, he wrote Elder Quek Kiok Chiang, then of the Teochew-speaking mother church . . . at Prinsep Street [in Singapore] to join the ICCC. Like David and Jonathan, the two leaders of this B-P Church in embryo began to impart the spirit of the 20th Century Reformation to the congregation that gathered after them. Thus, in our Stand for the Faith, we can trace to Dr Carl McIntire . . . who must be acknowledged as our American Root. 61 Similar narratives were also repeated in his autobiographies, although they were meant not only to stress his role in introducing separatism but also to demonstrate that he stayed committed to separatism even after the 1988 dissolution. In a chapter in The Story of My Bible-Presbyterian Faith, he assessed his lifelong commitment to the ICCC’s cause, calling those B-P churches who continued to support him “true-blue Bible-Presbyterians”: From Geneva 1950 to this day, Quek and I have stuck together for the 20th Century Reformation. . . . Why do I spend time to tell you of our 59 Tow, The Singapore B-P Story, 9 and “The History of Life Church,” 7–9. Also see, Timothy

Tow, “The B-P Singapore Tree Has Seven Roots,” in Pressing Toward the Mark: 1950–1985, Souvenir Programme (Singapore: Bible-Presbyterian Church of Singapore, 1985): 7–9. 60 Tow, The Singapore B-P Story, 9–18. 61 Tow, The Singapore B-P Story, 17. 335

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struggles for the faith during the last half century? For the 20th Century Reformation is a great part of our Bible-Presbyterian Faith, And I have stood firm for the ICCC without a break for the last fifty years. 62 A synthesis of these narratives was produced in his last two autobiographies Son of a Mother’s Vow (2001) and Disciples of McIntire (2002). This synthesis was a reproduction of a sermon that Tow delivered in 2000, in celebration of fifty years of the B-P movement in Singapore. Interestingly, in this sermon, he acknowledged that the B-P denomination was a collaborative effort spanning multiple generations. 63 Nevertheless, Tow’s conversion remained as the foundational story to the introduction of separatism. Building on this team-based discourse, he described the loyal younger generation of leaders from FEBC and the churches that both he and SH Tow led as “the last of the relay team for the Faith up to now” and “McIntire’s Disciples of the second generation.” 64

Separatist Theology of Church Growth The justification that Tow continued to be the model separatist leader came in the form of a particular separatist theology that can be discerned from his historical and autobiographical books. This separatist theology of church growth took shape in his 1993 book Forty Years on the Road to Church Growth (similar content was repeated in The Singapore B-P Church Story). Crucially, it was meant to act as a response to the institutional model of megachurch-style growth that had been adopted by some prominent charismatic churches. 65 The key difference was encapsulated in the adjectives “horizontal” and “vertical,” with the former representing the B-P movement’s method of establishing or “planting” multiple congregations in places and regions that lacked or had no fundamentalist Christian presence. Horizontal church growth essentially meant adhering to the apostolic pattern of church planting that was set out in the Acts of the Apostle (Acts 62 63 64 65

Tow, The Story of My Bible-Presbyterian Faith, 39. Tow, Disciples of McIntire, 105, and Son of a Mother’s Vow, 439–40. Tow, Disciples of McIntire, 106, and Son of a Mother’s Vow, 441. See, for instance, Terence Chong, “Speaking the Heart of Zion in the Language of Canaan: City Harvest and the Cultural Mandate in Singapore,” in Pentecostal Megachurches in Southeast Asia: Negotiation Class, Consumption and the Nation, ed. Terence Chong (Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2018): 213–14.

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1:8) and by St. Paul. This meant “decentralization” and “not centralization,” that is establishing new churches in “strategic” locations like important cities, and “multiplying” the planting by traveling to smaller cities and towns that were connected to these important cities. In short, members of churches had to hold an evangelistic and church-planting mindset by seeking new people and communities to evangelize. 66 Tow continued to insist on his centrality to putting in place this pattern of horizontal church growth for the B-P movement as the founding pastor of Life B-P Church, arguing that certain aspects enabled him to set the pattern, such as the freedom given to him to conduct itinerant preaching across the world as a “missionary-pastor,” and serve as the theologian to his denomination, especially through the founding of FEBC. 67 Importantly, what this meant was that Tow was provided with the right conditions that enabled him to work with his leaders, members, and theological college students to replicate the specific pattern set out in Acts 1:8, that is the “geographical progression” of how the apostles were commanded to evangelize by starting with Jerusalem and expanding to “all Judea, Samaria and into the uttermost part of the earth.” 68 In a long chapter, he detailed the church planting strategy that he had adopted with his B-P leaders and ICCC colleagues since 1950, explaining their use of the apostolic pattern for church-planting across the region through four metaphors: “Singapore as Jerusalem,” “Malaysia as Judea,” “Indonesia as Samaria” and the “Uttermost part of the earth.” 69 At the end of Forty Years on the Road to Church Growth, Tow concluded his theology of church growth by pointing to the results of the separatist Bible College that remained under his authority. Specifically, he argued that the educational model that he implemented at FEBC (alongside his faculty) went beyond “so-called academic excellence” by also stressing “spiritual training.” This meant that the principal (Tow) and his faculty had to be “spiritual men” and “men of exemplary character” in order to instruct and coach their students to have the same “life and spiritual values.” Significantly, this was key, as to him, a Bible College that shaped the students with such values and “character” was the “secret to continuing church growth.” To Tow, this produced 66 67 68 69

Tow, Forty Years on the Road to Church Growth, 10–12, and 41. Tow, Forty Years, 23–39. Tow, Forty Years, 10–11. For more details, see Tow, Singapore B-P Church Story, 53–201 and Tow, Forty Years, 54–107.

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an evident and superior outcome, demonstrating the success of the separatist model of church growth that was carried out in accordance with the apostolic pattern: Far Eastern Bible College has graduated 201 students during the last 30 years and the majority of these are planting churches around the world. . . . The story of 43 years on the road to church growth of the B-P Movement is also the story of Far Eastern Bible College. 70

Conclusion In this essay I have uncovered Tow’s production of separatist theologies about tongues-speaking and church growth through his biographical and autobiographical writings. This leads me to make two conclusions: one is that Tow creatively appropriated the lives of Chinese evangelical leaders for separatist purposes, especially for addressing the issue of tongues-speaking within the B-P movement. This insight is particularly interesting in light of recent scholarship on Chinese theological literature. Chloë Starr’s seminal book on Chinese theology, which argues that Chinese theology and “literary forms” are deeply intertwined, has demonstrated how T. C. Chao, the most prominent Chinese liberal theologian during the Republican era, constructed a biography of Jesus Christ that portrayed Jesus as a “moral exemplar” through his use of the Chinese biographical tradition. Importantly, Starr observes that he drove a “multifaceted” reading and theological message “within a Chinese conception of the world” that fitted both into the traditional and New Culture forms of literature. 71 Other studies have also shown how the Chinese biographical tradition was utilized to memorialize the Christian-Confucian virtues of exemplary female Christians (and males too). 72 70 Tow, Forty Years, 154–55. 71 Starr, Chinese Theology: Text and Context, 2, 76–77, and 97. 72 Peter Chen-main Wang, “Models of Female Christians in Early Twentieth-Century China:

A Historiographical Study,” in Pioneer Chinese Christian Women: Gender, Christianity, and Social Mobility, ed. Jessie G. Lutz (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2010): 166–67 and 177–78, and Joshua Dao Wei Sim, “A Chinese Protestant Female Model in Southeast Asia: The ‘Confucianizing’ of Leona Jingling Wu in 1970s Singapore,” Ching Feng 18, nos. 1–2 (2019): 101–22.

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Here, however, Tow authored and translated biographies of prominent Chinese Christians, not for the purposes of producing a Christianity that would be congenial to Chinese senses, but rather to use the examples of particular Chinese Christians to advance his local separatist ideas and drive life-stories that would support the validity of his theological positions. In short, Chinese Christianity was subordinated to Tow’s fundamentalism. To be sure, Tow’s writings should also be seen as endeavours to preserve the Chinese Christian heritage. Nonetheless, one of Tow’s primary uses of the biographical genre was about deploying Chinese Christian stories as vehicles for fundamentalist ends, with a particular eye toward the domestic troubles he faced within the B-P movement. More specifically, his separatist theologies of tongues-speaking and church growth can also be seen as strategies against developments in the Singapore ecclesiastical scene, which he found objectionable: the non-separatist position of influential Singapore-based evangelical parachurch agencies and the rise of local Pentecostalism and megachurches from the 1970s to 1990s. 73 By attempting to shape and impose these strategies through the biographies of prominent Chinese evangelicals (and his own autobiographies), Tow, I would argue, was seeking to localize Chinese Christianity in the Singapore context by underlining its significance to separatism. A second conclusion, which can be taken as a preliminary reflection, is that Tow’s work challenges us to consider how to shift scholarship on Chinese Christianity from one that has focused on the translation and reception of the faith within the Chinese context, to one that views Chinese Christianity as a particular model of World Christianity (in the sense of local expressions of Christianity), which has been subject to translation and appropriation in new environs and contexts in the twentieth century. 74 This can be observed in the recent findings of various studies that have examined the appropriation of Christian figures, institutions, and histories as cultural heritage in Xiamen, 73 Daniel P. S. Goh, “State and Social Christianity in Post-colonial Singapore,” Sojourn: Journal

of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 25, no. 1 (2010): 63–66, 75–82.

74 See, for instance, Peter Tze Ming Ng, Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global

and Local Perspectives (Leiden and Boston, 2012), and Joseph Tse-Hei Lee and Lars Peter Laamann, “Christianity and Community Governance in Modern China,” The Church as Safe Haven: Christian Governance in China, eds. Lars Peter Laamann and Joseph Tse-Hei Lee (Leiden, the Netherlands and Boston: Brill, 2018), 5–6.

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Fujian province and the emergence of Chinese Christian businesses and evangelical mission in Europe as new models of globalization. 75 In the last analysis, this translation and appropriation can be seen in Tow’s construction of the imagined ancestry of the B-P denomination, where the Chinese root (Sung) and American root (McIntire) became the most important basis for Tow’s fundamentalist faith, and by extension, the establishment of the Singapore B-P movement.

75 Jifeng Liu, Negotiating the Christian Past in China: Memory and Missions in Contemporary

Xiamen (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), Nanlai Cao, “A Sinicized World Religion? Chinese Christianity at the Contemporary Moment of Globalization,” Religions 10, no. 8: 459, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10080459. 340

INDEX affective communion, theology of manifold affective communion 242, 244, 246, 249–51, 253–54 Ai Weiwei 54 Alliance Bible Seminary 199 Analects, Confucian Analects 67–72, 75, 77, 82–84 Anti-Christian Movement 175, 182 Anti-Extradition Law Protest 129, 133 April Fifth generation 14 Aquinas, Thomas 105, 258, 263–66, 270, 275–77 art 25–48, 49–57, 59–65 inculturation of art 31 public theological art 38 post-Cultural Christian Art 47 Augustine 82, 105, 227 Baptist 130, 174–75, 179–80, 196, 301, 303, 313 Baptist Theological Seminary, Taiwan 179, 301, 303, 313 Barth, Karl 21, 300 Bei Cun 50 Bettiza, Gregory 137 Bevans, Stephen B. 113, 118, 220–21 Bible-Presbyterian Church 317–325, 334–36 Bible-Presbyterian Church, Singapore 317–28, 331–40 bible, authority of bible 82, 201, 333 Chinese Union Bible 67, 71, 75–76, 81–82

Today’s China Version of the Bible 302, 314 Bok, Grace 215, 219, 221, 227, 230 Bonaventure 237, 243–44 Buddhism, in dialogue with 174, 176–77, 237–42, 252–53 Buddhist LGBTQ group 225, 229 Calvin 105–06, 335 Calvinist 56 Cao Xueqin Dream of the Red Chamber 15, 19 Cao Yuanming 36 Catholic Patriotic Association 134 Catholicism (Roman) art 32, 48 bible 70, 81 texts and authors 68, 77, 78, 80, 82, 215, 225 see also natural law, Aquinas Chang Chao-Ho 32 Chao, Jonathan (Zhao Tianen) 43, 56 Charismatic Christianity 195–98, 200–06, 213, 325–28, 330–31, 336 Cheng Yinghong 8 Cheng, Patrick 220, 225, 228 Chia Kim Chwee 317, 319 Chineseness, as discourse 136, 151, 156, 165 Chow Lien-hwa (Zhou Lianhua) 297–314

In d ex

Chow, Alexander 5, 19, 112 Christian and Missionary Alliance Church Union (Alliance Church, Hong Kong) 195–96, 198–200, 203, 207–10, 211–13 Chung Chi College 218–19, 304 Chung Yuan Christian University 313 Chhut-thau-thin theology 284 civilization 34, 98–99, 137–38, 158, 164, 264, 266, 272 Chinese civilization 28, 88, 100, 137, 141, 145, 147, 155, 160, 164–65, 167, 261 Coe, Shoki 280–82, 284, 294 Confucian, see Ruist contextual theology 4, 59, 122, 134, 136, 146–47, 159, 160–61, 188, 279, 280, 283, 285, 293–95, 297 contextualization 142, 153, 229, 281, 284, 292–93 glocal theology 173, 188, 303 cross-cultural dialogue 51, 69, 76–77, 81, 86, 324 cross-cultural mission 292–93 cross, as symbol 25–28, 31–35, 40–47, 50, 52–53, 61, 212, 220, 231–33 cross removal, demolished crosses 36, 38, 45–46 Great Cross series 34–36, 40 Cultural Christians 4, 25–26, 28–30, 36, 40–50, 132 Cultural Christian artists 25–26, 28–30, 33, 38, 40–42, 47 cultural identity 159, 174, 176, 178, 180, 184, 188, 193 Cultural Revolution 4–14, 22, 26–27, 29–30, 36, 103, 112, 156, 176

Culture Regeneration Research Society 238 Dao Zi (also as Daozi) 43, 45–47, 49, 52, 60–62, 64 Daoism 4, 19–20, 22, 59, 174, 237–38, 240, 243, 250, 254, 269, 272 Dao 82–83, 106, 243, 248, 250, 272 De Certeau, Michel 300–01, 303, 305 DeBernardi, Jean 321 deification 251; or, see also sanctification Democratic Progressive Party 288–89 Diaspora, diasporic voices 187, 321 diasporic community 111, 178, 180, 185–86 diasporic journey 173–75, 180–81 diasporic platforms 117, 119–25 diasporic theology 173, 194 Ding Fang 28–29, 38, 40–41, 63 Ding Limei 198, 324 Duo Fu (Zhang Feng) 50, 52 Ecumenism 306, 326, 331 Eddy, Sherwood 175 Elkins, James 39–40 empire 18, 93–95, 102 Roman empire 94 eschatology 212, 305, 307, 311–12 esoteric writing 124, 132, 140–41 evangelical 50, 76, 81–83, 175, 180, 191–92, 196, 207, 217, 219, 285, 288, 290–95, 319–20, 325–26, 331, 333, 338–40 Neo-evangelicalism 328, 332–33 Protestant evangelical hermeneutics 68, 81

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evil 17, 20–21, 97, 105, 201, 205–06, 306, 308, 312, 330 evil spirit 206–07 Fällman, Fredrick 4, 53 Far Eastern Bible College 319, 331, 337–38 feminism 216, 218, 220–21, 224 Fung Yu-lan (Feng Youlan) 241 Four Books 73 Free Church of Scotland 280, 287 Fu Jen University 31–32 fundamentalism, fundamentalist 64, 174, 181, 213, 300, 317, 319–21, 331, 336, 339–40 Gao Brothers 33–36, 38, 40–43, 50 Gao Jianfu 30, 33 glossolalia, speaking in tongues 195–98, 200–05, 213, 325, 327–31, 333, 338–39 cessationist position on tongues 197, 204, 327–28, 330–31, 331 Goforth, Jonathan 198–99 Grace Baptist Church, Taipei 301, 303, 314 Greek writings 74, 76, 79, 101, 183 Greek philosophy 186–87, 248 Hao Qingsong 38, 41 Harmony 17, 53, 92, 98, 246–47, 270, 274–77, 310 He Guanghu 126, 136, 153–54 He Hai 37 He Yunchang 52 Ho Tsun-sheen (Rev.) 74 Hobbes, Thomas 107

Hokkien speaking 284, 290, 292, 329 Holy Spirit 82, 135, 175, 195–96, 198, 200, 202–04, 249, 306, 309–10, 329–30 Homeland theology (Taiwan) 279–82, 293–95 Hong Kong protests 131 Hsu, Princeton (Xu Songshi) 174 Huang, Po Ho 283 Huaxia nation 93, 101–02 Hui Lai-Kwan 221, 223, 225 human nature 7, 54–55, 60, 84, 89–90, 107, 186, 251–52, 264, 270, 272–74, 277 humanism, humanist 49, 59, 64, 78, 125–28, 273 Humanities and Art 54 Hwang Tsung-I 80 hymns, hymn-singing as protest 130 imperialism 9, 11, 94–94, 102–03 Incarnational theology 282 Indigenisation 136, 177, 182, 292 Institute of Sino-Christian Studies, Hong Kong 57, 111, 117, 133 International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC) 318–23, 326, 334–37 Jesuit 73–74, 86, 297 Jesuit Figurists 51 jingshen wenhua 精神文化 58, 65 Keswick spirituality 212 Kilcourse, Carl 319 Ko Wen-je (Ke Wenzhe) 295 Kong Duen-yee 195 Kong Yongqian 36

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In d ex

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-04-07 01:50 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

Kong, Master Kong, Confucius 72, 77, 82–84, 267–69, 275, 298 Kowloon Union Church, Hong Kong 231 Kwok Pui-Lan 226 Lam, Jason 142 Laozi 250, 267–68, 272 law, jurisprudence 72, 77, 82–84, 267–69, 275, 298 Law of Nature School 267, 272 legal positivism 257, 273 Lee, Jung Young 193 Legalism 102, 267–70 Legge, James 74 Leung, Thomas In-Sing 237–54 Li Xiangping 114 Lifescape Theology 237–38, 240–48, 253–54 Lim Puay 324 Lin Fengmian 31, 33 Lin Hong-hsin (Lin Hongxin) 286 Lingnan Painting School 30 Linn, Jason 324 Liu Tat Fong (Liu Dafang) 196 Liu Xiaofeng 4–23, 29, 36, 117, 123, 126, 129, 132, 136, 139, 141–47, 152 Liu, Abraham (Liu Zijun) 292 Localization 164, 319, 331 Logos & Pneuma 131, 135 Lu Chun-yi (Lu Junyi) 289 Lu Xun 15, 20–21 Luk, Small 227, 230 Luther, Martin 105 Lutheran theology 83 Mackay, George Leslie 279–80, 285–87, 290–93, 295–96

Malaysia Christian 319, 323 Mandarin (Putonghua), use of 149–50, 160, 163–64 “Mandarin church” 289 translation into 302 Mandate of Heaven 269, 270–76 Mao Zedong 7–12, 17, 21, 36, 43, 84, 103 Maoism 6, 17–18, 22 Maoist worldview 6, 12, 17 Maoist violence 22 martyrdom 18, 27, 61 martyr 27, 44, 71 Marxism 107, 262, 305 Marxist ideas 80, 84–85, 262 McIntire, Carl 320, 333, 335 Mencius 106, 271 Methodist legacy 211 Methodist missionary 70 migration 91, 124, 151, 162, 179, 182, 190–91 missions 204–05, 207–08, 324 missionaries 279–80, 285, 290, 293, 301, 337 missio dei 205, 209 cross-cultural mission 292 Mitter, Rana 11 mother-tongue theology 119, 135, 153 Nanjing Union Theological Seminary 27 nation, theology of nations 89–92 National Security Law (Hong Kong) 119, 174, 190–91, 218 nationalism 136, 152, 157, 175, 178, 185, 279–80, 292–93, 296 federalism 95–96 National-Statism 99–100, 103, 108 344

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Natural Law 257–66, 269–77 neo-Evangelicalism 332–33 New Human 3, 6–10, 13–17, 19–23 New Socialist Human 6 Occupy Central 46, 130, 190 Orthodoxy Eastern Orthodox 82, 196, 319 Russian Orthodox 68, 73, 76, 130 Overseas Mission Fellowship (OMF) 326 patriotism 99 state-patriotism 93, 96, 101 Pentecostal Movement 195, 202 Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement 197, 200–01, 203–04 practice 196, 213, 320, 325, 327, 329 Phan, Peter 193 pneumatology 195–96, 198, 200, 208, 213 Poon, Michael Nai-Chiu 321–22 post-Cultural Christian art 25, 30, 36, 42, 47 post-secular 68, 84–86 Pound, Rosco 261–63, 265, 267, 276 Power, Renewal and Evangelism meeting 196 Presbyterian Church of Taiwan 280, 285, 287, 289, 300, 303–04, 314 Propaganda 23, 26, 100, 104, 184 public theology 3, 5–6, 23, 112–13, 125 public theological art 38 Qian Zhusheng 62 Qu Yuan 15, 17–18, 93

queer theology 215–20, 223–24, 229, 234 Queer Theology Academy 224–25, 231 Queer Stations of the Cross 220, 222, 231–32 Quek Kiok Chiang (Guo Kechang) 319, 322–24, 335 Quek Swee Hwa (SH Quek, Guo Ruihua) 325, 327–29, 331–35 realm (jingjie 境界) 237–49, 252–54 realm theory 241, 244 Red Guards 7, 9–14, 23 Reform Era 49, 56, 58, 151 Reformed church 56, 201, 208, 211 Reformed intellectuals 50, 57 Reny, Marie-Eve 116–17, 122 revival meetings 175, 200 Ricci, Matteo 74 Ruist (Confucian) commentaries, canons 67, 69–70, 72–73 Ruist-Christian dialogue 69, 75, 77, 80, 86 Ruist scholars 73, 75, 78–79, 81, 83–84 Russian Orthodox, see Orthodox salvation 4, 16, 29, 42–44, 47, 64, 83, 99, 105–06, 127–28, 175, 177, 179, 203–04, 210, 216, 240, 251, 253, 282, 284, 306, 310–11, 322, 328 Christocentric salvation 177, 179–81 sanctification 198, 209–12, 243, 251–52, 311 Schmitt, Carl 124, 134 separatism, doctrine of (in BiblePresbyterian Church) 318–20, 323, 325–26, 332, 334–36, 339 345

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sexual ethic 217, 225–26, 228, 233–34 Shangdi 81 Shanghai, Shanghai lockdown 90 shen (God, spirits 神) 53, 81, 250–55 Shi Chenggang 55 Shi Hengtan 67–86 Shi Wei 60–61 Shih, Shu-Mei 137, 159, 161, 165 Shu Qun 27 Simpson, A. B. 209–12 Sinicization 75, 136 Sinitic communities 150–55, 157–166, 168 Sino-Christian theology 3–5, 25–26, 28, 47, 51, 57, 69, 87, 91, 112–15, 117, 125, 148–69 Institute for Sino-Christian Studies 111, 117, 119–120, 133, 135, 143, 145–46 Liu Xiaofeng and 132, 135, 142–43, 145 Sino-Japanese War 178, 184, 190, 291, 301 Sinophone studies 136–37, 151, 159–66 Sinophone theology 54, 137, 148–51, 166–69, 216, 220, 224 SMSC, Scholars in the Mainland Studying Christianity 28 Song Choan-Seng (C. S. Song) 281–82, 284, 294 Song Shangjie ( John Sung) 198, 200–01, 310, 321–22, 324, 327–29, 335, 340 Soothill, William E. 70 Spirit, see Holy Stammler, Rudolf 259–60 Starr, Chloë 4, 338 Statism 93, 99–101, 103–04, 136

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Strauss, Leo 124–25, 139–40 Straussian political theology 132, 139–43, 147 T’ou-Se-We orphanage art workshop 31 Tainan Theological College and Seminary 282, 285, 313 Taiwanese nationalism 279, 292, 296 Taiwanese Nationalist Theology 280 Tang Chun-I (Tang Chunyi) 184, 237, 241–43, 254 Tang Yijie 10 Tao Fong Shan 117 Tao Yuanming 15, 17–19 Tathagata-garbha 252–53 Teng, Philip 195–212 theology of identification 294 political theology 38, 87, 90, 148, 286 comparative theology of nations 90 Three-Self Church 134 Three-Self formula 230 Tian (天 heaven) 18, 83, 271 Tiananmen 33, 42–43, 190 post-Tiananmen 51, 53 Tillich, Paul 300–01, 303 Tow Siang Hua (SH Tow, Du Xianghua) 325, 327, 331, 334 Tow, Timothy (Du Xianghui) 317, 319–40 transcendence 4–5, 17, 19, 22, 26, 39, 49, 52–53, 61, 79, 242 divine transcendence 16 Trinity 82, 209, 243, 247, 249, 309 True Light 176 Tsai Ing-wen 290

In d ex

Ukraine war 87–92, 97, 99, 129–30 Umbrella Movement (Hong Kong) 46, 118, 130, 139

Xi Jinping 23, 85, 156, 168 xiangtu shenxue 鄉土神學, see Homeland theology Xu Youyu 10

Van Genechten, Mon (Edmond) 31–32 violence 3, 5–6, 9–12, 15–17, 19, 21–23, 46, 52, 94 sexual violence 232

Yang Guobin 11 Yang Junjie 125–26 Yen, James Y. C. (Yan Yangchu) 183 Yi, Theology of Yi 297–315 Yijing (Book of Changes) 51, 237, 249, 251, 253–54, 297–99, 303–05, 307, 309–15 yili 義理 meaning and principles 298, 314–15 Yin Peng 227 YMCA 182 Yuan Yunsheng 27

Wang Hsien-chih 280, 282, 285 Wang Mingdao 200, 319, 324, 330 Wang Weifan 299, 304–05 theology of Unceasing Generation 299 Wang Yi 46 Way, the Way (Dao) 106, 248, 272 Weil, Simone 131, 134 Wendell Holmes, Oliver 259 Wesley, John 201, 211 Wong, David (Wang Weifa) 325 Wong, Pearl 219, 221, 223 World Council of Churches (WCC) 130, 281, 300, 318–19, 322, 326, 332 World-relational aesthetics 55, 59 Human-divine relational dimension 53, 55–56 Wu, John C. H. (Wu Jingxiong) 257–78 Wu, Rose 217–22, 224, 231 Wuhan 87, 89

Zha Changping 29, 40, 51–65 world-picture logic 55–56, 63 World-relational aesthetics 55, 59 Zhang, Richard X. Y. (Zhang Xianyong) 157 Zhang Yi 40 Zhao Junying 199 Zheng Xuan 72, 305 Zhong Xi Yuandian Duidu 67–68, 81–82, 86 Zhu Jiuyang 38, 42–44, 47, 61 Zhu Qi 39 Zhu Xi 72–73 Zia, N. Z. (Xie Fuya) 173, 180–90, 192–93

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