PALGRAVE MACMILLAN S CHRISTIANITIES OF THE WORLD

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1 Series Editors: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN S CHRISTIANITIES OF THE WORLD Dale T. Irvin is president of and professor of World Christianity at New York Theological Seminary, in New York City. Peter C. Phan is the inaugural holder of the Ignacio Ellacur í a Chair of Catholic Social Thought, Theology Department, at Georgetown University. In recent decades there has been an increasing awareness in the academy of a reality called World Christianity. The expression refers to the fact that today Christianity is no longer predominantly Western, but has become a more truly worldwide religion. This catholicity, a hallmark of Christianity and a fruit of Christian missions, has resulted in a massive demographic shift in the overall numbers of Christians from the global north (Europe and North America) to the global south (Africa, Asia, and Latin America). At the same time, the twin forces of globalization and migration have simultaneously intensified the interconnections and amplified the differences among the various expressions of Christianity worldwide, radically transforming the character of Christianity as it finds expression in diverse forms all over the globe. In the twenty-first century Christianity can only be expected to become even more multiple, diverse, and hybridized. At the same time one can expect to find something that is recognizably Christian among them to make it possible to have a meaningful conversation. We call that conversation Christianities of the World. To help understand this new phenomenon Palgrave Macmillan has initiated a new series of monographs appropriately titled Christianities of the World under the general editorship of Peter C. Phan and Dale T. Irvin. The intention of the series is to publish single-authored or edited works of scholarship that engage aspects of these diverse Christianities of the world through the disciplines of history, religious studies, theology, sociology, or missiology, in order to understand Christianity as a truly world religion. To these ends the editors are asking: How has Christianity been received and transformed in various countries, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (the non-western world) in response to their cultural practices, religious traditions (the so-called world religions as well as the tribal or indigenous religions), migratory movements, and political and economic globalization (inculturation and interfaith dialogue)? In particular, how have newer forms of Christianity, especially those that identify with the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, changed the face of World Christianity? What are the major characteristics of Christianities both old and new? What new trajectories and directions can one expect to see in the near future? How should the history of Christian missions be narrated? How does one evaluate the contributions of expatriate missionaries and indigenous

2 agents? How should one understand the relationship between missions and churches? How should theology be taught in the academic arena (be it in universities, seminaries, or Bible schools)? How should various Christian theological loci (e.g., God, Christ, Spirit, church, worship, spirituality, ethics, or pastoral ministry) be reformulated and taught in view of world Christianity or Christianities of the world, in dialogue with different cultures and different religions, or targeted toward particular ethnic or religious groups? How does the new reality of world Christianity affect research methods? How should courses on Christianity be taught? How should textbooks on Christianity as well as on world religions generally be structured? What should curricula, course work, required texts, faculty hiring, criteria for tenure and promotion, research, and publication look like in the academic world that is responding to the questions being raised by the Christianities of the world? The issues are far-ranging and the questions transformational. We look forward to a lively series and a rewarding dialogue. Pentecostalism and Prosperity: The Socio-Economics of the Global Charismatic Movement Edited by Katherine Attanasi and Amos Yong Interfaith Marriage in America: The Transformation of Religion and Christianity By Erika B. Seamon Contemporary Issues of Migration and Theology Edited by Elaine Padilla and Peter C. Phan Theosis, Sino-Christian Theology and the Second Chinese Enlightenment: Heaven and Humanity in Unity By Alexander Chow

3 THEOSIS, SINO-CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND THE SECOND CHINESE ENLIGHTENMENT

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5 Theosis, Sino-Christian Theology and the Second Chinese Enlightenment Heaven and Humanity in Unity Alexander Chow

6 THEOSIS, SINO-CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND THE SECOND CHINESE ENLIGHTENMENT Copyright Alexander Chow, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture references marked RSV are from Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chow, Alexander. Theosis, Sino-Christian theology and the second Chinese enlightenment: heaven and humanity in unity / Alexander Chow. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. 1. China Church history 20th century. 2. China Church history 21st century. 3. Christianity and culture China. 4. Acculturation China. 5. Nee, Watchman. 6. Zhao, Zichen, Ting, K. H. I. Title. BR1288.C dc A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: May

7 To my Betty

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9 Contents List of Tables Foreword Edmond Tang Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations xi xiii xvii xix Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Chinese Enlightenments 21 Chapter 2 Watchman Nee s Spiritual Man 41 Chapter 3 T. C. Chao s Spiritual Fellowship 65 Chapter 4 K. H. Ting s Cosmic Christ 89 Chapter 5 Theological Concerns 113 Chapter 6 Theosis and China 129 Conclusion 157 Chinese-English Glossary 173 Notes 177 Bibliography 205 Index 219

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11 Tables 6.1 Comparison of original sin and ancestral sin 134 C.1 Typology from Justo Gonz á lez s Christian Thought Revisited 160 C.2 Typology from Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder s Constants in Context 161 C.3 Tripartite typology for Chinese contextual theology 163

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13 Foreword Sin, more specifically original sin, has often been cited as the principal obstacle for the Chinese people to accept Christianity. This contrasts with the mainstream Confucian belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature. Learning and moral rectitude, rather than repentance and grace, is the road to self-transcendence and human perfection. Daoism, in many ways the antithesis of Confucianism, also believes in the original innocence. Sin, therefore, is considered an alien concept and finds no echo in Chinese culture. That was the case until recently. Since the 1980s hundreds of thousands of Chinese people have turned to Christianity. What has changed? Has sin finally become acceptable, or even popular in the Chinese mind? A Chinese academic from an important government think-tank, himself not a Christian, once said to me, After the Cultural Revolution, I think for the first time, most Chinese can understand what sin means, because that was what they have experienced. He was referring to the decade of turmoil, violence, and mass hysteria during which almost every Chinese person had suffered individually and existentially. For him the cruelty inherent in the political system, which was also inflicted so willingly and mutually by individuals and groups on one another, could not be explained except by reference to some cosmic and ontological categories. Sin, for him, has become a useful term to describe the human condition as well as structures of society. The actual number of Chinese who have become Christians is hotly debated. Though it is not our concern here, it is worth pointing out that the obsession with numbers has often led us to overlook an important aspect of this new phenomenon, namely that the conversions come from all sectors of Chinese society. They are not confined to the sick, the old or the poor, as some government-sponsored research purport to show. Many new Christians are middle-class professionals, university students and well-known intellectuals. It seems

14 xiv FOREWORD that, either as a reaction against the collectivist ideologies of Marxism, or a response to the challenge of modernization, the individual has emerged with a clear awareness of his/her own subjectivity, which is seen as the ground of human freedom and personal destiny. If this is the case, then the moral and spiritual references of traditional Chinese society have made a fundamental shift, now favoring a religion that calls for personal conversion and response to the transcendent. The influence of these developments, that is, the historical experience of suffering and the shift in moral and cultural compass, on the dialogue between Christianity and Chinese culture must be studied more carefully. For many decades this dialogue rarely went beyond the intellectual comparison of ideas about God, self, transcendence, or immanence. These themes are still important and must be further investigated, but the dialogue has changed at least in two ways. First, the interlocutors have changed. In the past it was the odd Western missionary or Christian on one side, Confucian scholars on the other, and the dialogue had little existential consequence. The dialogue today, however, takes on a new sense of gravity, because it is not any more between two opposite camps. The battleground has moved to the inner person of the Chinese Christian, where the dialogue ad intra is taking place, and he/she must work toward a personal synthesis to remain true to both traditions. Second, there is a growing awareness that the old dialogue has reached an impasse because it involved two seemingly incompatible versions of Christianity and Chinese tradition. In the earlier encounters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Christianity was mainly of Evangelical or conservative Catholic persuasions. The emphasis on sin, hellfire, justification by faith (among Protestants), and salvation by calling on the name of Jesus or by joining the church has run up against the immanent, humanistic interpretation of Confucianism. Conversely, the Confucians never studied Christianity in any depth, and took for Christianity the simplistic versions of the village preacher or the little catechism. Today the situation is more sophisticated. On the one hand, Chinese theologians are more critical of the narrow interpretation of original sin while, on the other, the New Confucians are adopting theological hermeneutics to retrieve the transcendent dimensions of their own tradition. These initial explorations are perhaps pointing to an important paradigm change. It is in this context that the bold investigations by young theologians like the author of this present book should be given a proper hearing. Adopting the typological study of classical Christian theology by Justo Gonz á lez, Alexander Chow is able to demonstrate the bias

15 FOREWORD xv of earlier generations of Chinese theologians who worked only within the Western (Latin) tradition of Christianity, completely ignoring the Eastern (Greek) tradition. Returning to the theme of sin, Chow sets out very clearly that the Orthodox tradition does not subscribe to the concept of original sin, which has been the principal stumbling block for many Chinese. Rather they speak of ancestral sin, through which death has entered the world, and with death the inevitability of sin. To the relief of the Chinese person, it is now possible to see death, then sin, as the common denominator of the human condition, and do not need to feel alienated by an original guilt. Similarly, Orthodox theologians prefer to talk about salvation in terms of synergism, the cooperation between God and humans in salvation, instead of the more extreme form of monergism popular in Protestantism. And following from that it is possible to conceive salvation as humans becoming divine, not so much in sharing in God s substance as in God s energies. If the latter sounds a little like Tian ren heyi, the Chinese belief in the union of Heaven and Man (and Woman), then the dialogue between Christianity and Chinese traditions can enter a new and more fruitful phase. This reminds us of an old Chinese saying: If you diverge even by a hair of an inch at the start, in the end you will be miles apart. How important it is to find the right conditions and the correct paradigm when so much is at stake. Let us hope that more will join Alexander Chow and other Chinese theologians in this new journey. EDMOND TANG Birmingham, UK

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17 Acknowledgments There were many times when I believed the work on this book would not come to fruition. This is the revised version of my PhD dissertation written at the University of Birmingham, UK. I am thankful to the series editors Professors Peter C. Phan (Georgetown University) and Dale T. Irvin (New York Theological Seminary) for their enthusiasm for my work. I am particularly appreciative of Professor Phan who, while he was still an external examiner for my doctoral dissertation, wholeheartedly encouraged me to pursue its publication. I would also like to thank Burke Gerstenschlager, Lani Oshima and the Palgrave Macmillan staff for supporting me through the editorial and publication process of my first monograph. However, it is without question that this book would not have seen the light of day without the academic prowess and paternal support of Professor Edmond Tang (University of Birmingham). True to his own hybridity, as my doktorvater, Professor Tang oversaw my research as a strict Chinese father, demanding precision and excellence, but also as a gentle Western father, extending his friendship and interest in my work and my well-being. I am also grateful for his support and encouragement to travel to China several times in order to have a real-world grounding in my thinking. I am indebted to many who have read versions of this book in whole or in part. Both my doctoral examiners, Professors Werner Ustorf (University of Birmingham) and Peter C. Phan, offered important feedback early on for my introductory chapter. Much later, during my viva voce, I was greatly humbled by the encouraging words from these accomplished scholars for my completed dissertation. I am also thankful for the friendship of a fellow PhD student, Yen-yi Lee from Taiwan, who has more than once read the entirety of this work both as a dissertation and as a book manuscript. Through our many conversations and travels together, the now Doctor Lee helped to deepen my understanding into the nuances of Chinese philosophy and religion.

18 xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many others have also provided invaluable feedback for select chapters, including Sun Xiangchen (Fudan University), Wang Zhicheng (Zhejiang University), Glen G. Scorgie (Bethel Seminary, San Diego), Pan-chiu Lai (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Milton Wai Yiu Wan (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Philip L. Wickeri (Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui), and my good friend Clement Y. Wen. I have received a great deal of hospitality from many within China. Through the generosity of Professor Zhao Lin at Wuhan University, I was given a great opportunity to spend a focused amount of time researching in his department. Particularly with the assistance of his PhD students Chen Yanbo and Zhang Yuntao, I was able to meet with other PhD students and faculty members to engage in discussions on philosophy and religion in China. Many others were generous in sharing their time with me in Hangzhou (Lou Shibo [Zhejiang Theological Seminary] and Zhu Wenxin [Zhejiang University]), at the East China Normal University in Shanghai (Xu Jilin and Deng Jun), at Renmin University in Beijing (Yang Huilin, He Guanghu, Sun Yi, and Zhang Jing), and at the Institute of Sino-Christian Studies in Hong Kong (Gao Xin). Finally, a few personal notes. First, I am grateful for the financial and prayer support I received over the years from the Chinese Bible Church of San Diego. I also appreciate my parents who, though have not always agreed with my academic pursuits, have always offered me their unconditional love and support. Most especially, I am thankful for my wife, Betty. Within a matter of months of getting married in Vancouver, Canada, my new bride and I moved to Birmingham, England, for several years of doctoral studies. She has now followed me again around the world to Beijing, China, for my time as a postdoctoral fellow. Her tireless encouragement, despite my highs and lows, has helped me compose this text and has kept me on schedule to the very end. Moreover, she too has proofread the manuscript for this text. If working on a major academic monograph is not challenging enough by itself, Betty and I were blessed with the birth of our first child, Benjamin, born between the submission of my doctoral dissertation for grading and sitting my viva. I affectionately dedicate this work, my second child, to Betty. ALEXANDER CHOW, Beijing, China s National Day, October 1, 2012

19 Abbreviations Terminology CCC China Christian Council CPC Communist Party of China TSPM Three-Self Patriotic Movement YMCA Young Men s Christian Association ANF LW Multivolume Works Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds. The Ante-Nicene Fathers. 10 vols. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, Reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, Martin Luther. Luther s Works. American Edition. 55 vols. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann. St. Louis, MO: Concordia; Philadelphia, PA: Muehlenberg and Fortress, NPNF Philip Schaff et al., eds. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. 2 series (14 vols. each). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, Reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, TCT WMT ZZW Jaroslav Pelikan. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. 5 vols. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong). Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. 5 vols. Peking (Beijing): Foreign Language Press, Zhao Zichen (T. C. Chao). Zhao Zichen wenji [The Works of T. C. Chao]. Edited by Wang Xiaochao. 5 vols. Beijing: Shangwu yin shuguan [Commercial Press],