Creation and the Great Parent: The Thought of Yang Tingyun, a Chinese Christian in Late Ming China
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 ap...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Edinburgh Univ. Press
2023
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| In: |
Studies in world christianity
Year: 2023, Volume: 29, Issue: 3, Pages: 268-288 |
| IxTheo Classification: | KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history KBM Asia KDB Roman Catholic Church NBD Doctrine of Creation RJ Mission; missiology |
| Further subjects: | B
Dafumu
B Late Ming China B The Great Parent B Matteo Ricci B Yang Tingyun B Discourses of the Three Teachings |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | 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. 1 |
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| ISSN: | 1750-0230 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Studies in world christianity
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3366/swc.2023.0445 |