The Sinicization of Chinese Religions: From Above and Below

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Religions

The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ

2021 ◽  
pp. 446-462
Author(s):  
Roman Malek
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Context ◽  
The Future ◽  
Chinese Religions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Chinese Face ◽  
Historical Nature ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Jesus Christ has been the subject of manifold and intensive reflection in the Chinese context and has shown various faces. The essay surveys the innumerable works of biblical, apologetical, catechetical, liturgical, general theological, literary, and art-historical nature on Jesus Christ covering the periods from Tang and Yuan dynasties (seventh–ninth centuries and twelfth–fourteenth centuries) to the “Cultural Revolution” (1966–1976). The essay observes how various Chinese portraits of Jesus Christ engage with Chinese religions, and how the Chinese context limited the possibilities for the unfolding of a specific face and image of Jesus much more than other Asian and Western contexts. It raises the question of the future: Which faces and images of Jesus Christ will the Chinese context still generate? In this vast part of Asia, will he remain a vox clamantis in deserto?

Yin-Yang (Yijing) and the Bible

2021 ◽  
pp. 200-218
Author(s):  
Claudia von Collani
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Old Chinese ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Christianity In China ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
Chinese Religions ◽  
Catholic Mission ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The Way

Chinese religions, philosophy, and especially Confucianism constituted a great challenge for the Catholic mission since its beginnings in China in early modern times. This essay looks at the way the missionaries, especially the Jesuits, made several attempts to solve the problem. Niccolò Longobardo s.j., for example, refused to use Chinese terms for the Christian God, dismissing them as insufficient or atheistic. Most Jesuits, however, advocated for terms such as Tian, Shangdi, Tianzhu, and Taiji for God in China. The Mandate of the Vicar Apostolic Charles Maigrot m.e.p., prohibiting the use of the Yijing and Taiji as the Chinese name for God, became a great challenge for Joachim Bouvet s.j. in developing his Figurism. With this system, he found complements for Christianity in China and created a new theology combining Eastern and Western ideas. These efforts were stopped by the prohibition of the Chinese rites and by the historical-critical method for reading the old Chinese books.

Introduction

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Sun
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
World Religion ◽  
World Religions ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Chinese Religions ◽  
Religious Nature

This introductory chapter talks about the confusions and controversies over the religious nature of Confucianism. It argues that the confusions come mainly from three sources. First, they come from the conceptualization of Confucianism as a world religion at the end of the nineteenth century in Europe, which was a historical product of the emergence of the “world religions” paradigm in the West. Second, they are caused by the problematic way in which Confucianism—and Chinese religions in general—has been studied and represented by questions which are based on a Judeo-Christian framework that cannot capture the complexity of Chinese religious life. Finally, confusion arises from the often contradictory development of Confucianism in today's China.

From Modernity to Sustainability

2017 ◽  
pp. 133-146
Author(s):  
James Miller
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Chinese Religions

Modernity tends to frame religion as private spirituality and nature as objective materiality, each divorced from the other. Sinological scholarship on Daoism has tended to work within this framework and as a result has produced understandings of Daoism based on the categories of religion, philosophy, nature and culture that are external to the tradition itself. An alternative to the ordering framework of modern scholarship on China and Chinese religions is scholarship produced from a paradigm of sustainability.

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