Abstract
Chinese Theology and Translation is a significant contribution to global intercultural missional history in China. It focuses on how the Jesuit Figurists produced a Chinese version of their commentaries on the Yijing (Book of Changes), which was considered to be the oldest Chinese literary classic. These commentaries contained their European theological interpretation of the Chinese classics, history, chronicles, and literature. The author systematically examines how the mystic biblical theology of the Jesuit Figurists shaped their intralingual translation and interpretation of the Yijing to further the Confucian-Christian synthesis of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610).
Sophie Ling-chia Wei’s primary sources are a collection of more than four hundred pages of handwritten Chinese manuscripts composed by three Jesuit Figurists: Joachim Bouvet (Bai Jin, 1656–1730), Joseph Henry de Prémare (Ma Ruose, 1666–1736), and Jean-François Foucquet (Fu Shengze, 1665–1741). She found these manuscripts in the Vatican Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the British Library, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, and Archives Jesuites de Vanves (x). The use of these materials reflects the author’s “cultural turn” from the Eurocentric to the Sinocentric (6). Wei narrates the Jesuit missionary-translators’ works through a historical lens and analyzes them from the perspective of intercultural theology.
According to Wei, the Jesuit Figurists’ main method for proselytizing in China was suoyin, “seeking the mystical and hidden messages of God embedded in the Chinese classics, especially the Yijing” (11). Historically, the Figurists viewed the Yijing, with its classical Chinese commentaries, charts, and pictures, as a proto-Confucian text that includes the main Christian message. Thus, for them, it provided an intercultural hermeneutic that could connect their apologetic discourses with the Confucian readers of the Qing imperial court, including Emperor Kangxi himself. The Jesuit Figurists’ Christian message of the manifested one true God was thus unveiled in Chinese terms, integrating it with the source of the Chinese classics and accommodated to Chinese culture (37–48, 88, 125, 132).
The book’s seven chapters present five dimensions of the Jesuit Figurists’ Christian view of the Yijing. They investigate details about the Figurists’ “other words” of commentary and reinterpretation of the Yijing, such as the concept of God in classical and vernacular Chinese languages, Jesus as the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu) and as a Confucian “sage” (shengren) demonstrating loyalty (zhong) and filial piety (xiao), and the deciphering of God’s encoded messages within the Yijing’s numbers and themes, using theological typologies and exegesis (59–66, 75, 88–89, 133–36). By showcasing the Jesuit’s Chinese version of Jesus rendered through the merging of Christian narratives with Chinese classics, Wei brings together the fields of translation studies, Jesuit mission studies, and philosophy of religion. Her careful translations from classical Chinese to English and her insightful intercultural theological analysis highlight a truly complex relationship between knowledge, culture, and mission history.