Dingjian Xie

The paradigm shift from missiology to the study of the Chinese indigenous context has driven scholars in the area of Christianity in late imperial China to the Chinese reactions to the Catholic missions, either positive or negative. As an influential yet controversial model, Jacques Gernet's approach to Chinese responses to Catholicism in late imperial China has been recognised as an essentialist analysis of both Christianity and China, which are treated in that approach as two confrontational and monolithic entities. This article, by contrast, explores the dynamics of Chinese Christians' reception of Christian teaching by focusing on the interiorisation of creation theology in Yang Tingyun, one of the earliest Chinese Catholics in Late Ming China. While accepting the Christian idea that God created the world out of nothing (ex nihilo), Yang has to respond to the cosmogonic discourses advocated by Song Confucians, who exerted considerable influence on Confucianism in the Ming dynasty. Moreover, his way of expounding the Great Parent, Dafumu, as the Creator and Sustainer further shows an active engagement with both the Christian idea of creation and Chinese traditional discourses of cosmology and ethics. Approaching this concept of the Great Parent will provide a window into Chinese Catholic theology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Due to historical controversies and entanglements, previous scholarship has primarily focused on the Christology of the Church of the East and its potential reception within Christianity in Tang China (618–907), known as Jingjiao in Chinese. In contrast, this article highlights the Nicene foundation of Tang-era Christianity, as evidenced by the first Chinese translations of Trinitarian terminology in theological and liturgical texts produced by Christians of that era. It argues that Tang Christianity's translation and reception of the doctrine of the Trinity not only aligned with the broader Christian tradition but also engaged with contemporary Mahāyāna Buddhist discourse on “body,” thereby showing interreligious influence within the Tang Chinese context. Moreover, this analysis illustrates how continuities and discontinuities emerged during the process of translating Christian doctrine into a new language, emphasizing the “translatability” of the Christian faith and its significance in the development of Christian theology. Rendering the mystery of the Trinity can also create space for meaningful engagement with other faith traditions.