Abstract
The relentless pursuit of the “ultimate truth” by Chinese intellectuals is demonstrated by the recent history of the “Sino-Christian theology” movement. Naomi Thurston, a young scholar who has worked at Sichuan and Hunan universities, is well placed to study this movement. Through qualitative interviews with nearly fifty scholars in the field, she applies a five-part typology and paints an overarching picture of a complex and evolving construction of an emerging academic discourse in Chinese scholarship. Since the “Open Door Policy,” Chinese intellectuals have been engaging with the conversation between Christianity and Chinese thought, stemming from the “Cultural Christians” represented by Liu Xiaofeng and He Guanghu, to a current generation of younger scholars trained in a wide range of disciplines, including theology. The contemporary Chinese “theologizing” project, largely undertaken by Hong Kong and mainland scholars, is nonconfessional, dialogical, interdisciplinary, intercultural, transnational, and conducted in their Chinese mother tongue, giving a prominent voice of the intelligentsia to Chinese Christianity.
The discursive writings of these scholars seek to engage and reinterpret Western theology from a Chinese standpoint for the nation of China. The appropriation and transmission of Christianity is not driven by their sense of mission to Christianize China, as many Western missionaries undertook in the past. Instead, it is motivated by their sense of public responsibility to save China by restoring the nation’s moral order for the betterment of society. In Gloria Davies’s words, they are “worrying about” China as insiders, similar to that of the scholar-officials in Chinese intellectual history. This focus may explain why this stream of academic studies found its place as a discourse partner, as peripheral as it may be, in an atheist Communist country. Thurston argues that, as a subset of the discipline of philosophy within universities and institutes, these studies are characterized by marginality, openness, and linguistic and cultural nuances. Situated in a unique sociopolitical setting, their strategic deliberation of exile from the church gives them a legitimate public sphere, as well as the scholarly distance to write, publish, and speak in local and global forums. The detachment, on one hand, positions them to an elitist role, allowing them to employ such concepts as Derrida’s meaning-making or Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity without the narrowness of church dogma and vocabulary; on the other hand, it produces “lifeless scholarship” (203), irrelevant to the missiological task of conversion and transformation that the church is deeply committed to. In Thurston’s finding, their studies are about God, not about belief in God. In other words, it is not faith seeking understanding as a church theology, but rather intellectual endeavor seeking understanding as an “academic theology” (189–91, 219–20).
Overall, Thurston provides valuable insights into Sino-Christian theology and argues persuasively its genuine motivation, marginalized stance, and cultural significance in contemporary China. However, her argument can be strengthened by exploring further the sharp differentiation of marginality between what Edward Said articulates and what Chinese political intelligentsia stand for. This is a critical element for understanding of the concept of marginality as seen by Max Weber (215), but unfortunately underdeveloped in Thurston’s argument. Readers of IBMR, mostly from confessional ecumenical bodies, will benefit from inviting scholars of this field as conversation partners. As an “academic theology” outside of the ecclesial tradition, the movement provides valuable multifaceted understanding of the ongoing conversation between Christianity and China, thereby deepening the process of inculturation or contextualization of Christian faith in Chinese soil. The ecclesial communities can learn from their studies how they integrate the Chinese resources (philosophy, humanity, social science) of five millennia with Christian theology developed mostly within European contexts. Meanwhile, these studies provide windows on the thought life of contemporary Chinese intellectuals in their quest for truth and authenticity, as well as spiritual hunger for transcendence and immanence. While it may be a point of departure to engage them with Christian faith beyond the Western theological appropriation they have devoted themselves to learn and dialogue with, doing so through mutual learning and listening with humility and compassion may deepen and expand our understanding of mission studies.
Some of Thurston’s interviewees repeatedly addressed a lack of interaction between church and academy in Sino-theology (218). The gap is yet to be filled by missiologists and theologians alike in the years to come. The enormous missiological task remains hopeful—if mission scholars can take their vocation seriously to bridge the church and the world, lived experience and rigorous scholarship, the local and the global, for the sake of the whole creation.