Over the centuries, one of the main challenges in evangelizing countries in the Far East, such as China, has been bridging the cultural gap that exists between their culture and the cultures in which Revelation was communicated and the Church’s Tradition articulated. Moreover, those evangelizing have disagreed over how to approach this, most famously during the Chinese Rites controversy. Similar debates and difficulties exist today. At the same time, these efforts to evangelize have often resulted in great success and notable examples of the inculturation of the Gospel.
In this interview, Joshua R. Brown discusses the inculturation of the Gospel in China and some of the best books on the subject.
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What do you mean by Chinese Catholicism? You are not referring to the current social situation of the Church in China. Instead, you appear to be referring to the integration of the valid, compatible elements of classical Chinese thought and culture into the evangelization and spirituality of Chinese Catholics. Typically, Chinese Catholicism refers to the Catholic tradition as lived and experienced in mainland China and the Chinese diaspora (places such as Taiwan and Singapore).
Though I am interested in those conversations, they are not my primary focus as a researcher and writer. I am more interested in the project of Chinese Catholic theology. Part of that project consists in negotiating how Chinese cultural concepts, ideas, philosophy, and commitments can be used to understand and articulate the Catholic faith.
By Chinese Catholicism, I mean articulating the Catholic tradition in a way that is inviting to Chinese culture. I am not referring to on the ground political or social experience of Chinese Catholics.
What are the distinctive traits of Chinese Catholicism? Like every other tradition, it has its own distinctive problems. Chinese culture—the traditions that have shaped the Chinese consciousness or spirit—is one of its concerns. That culture continues to be important for Chinese identity. So, many Chinese Catholics want to embrace the fullness of the Catholic Church while paying homage to their culture and being good Chinese.
Seeing how those things can fit together is a key problem within the Chinese Catholic theological tradition.
What prompted your own interest in Chinese Catholicism? I was raised neither Chinese nor Catholic but Southern Baptist in a rural area of North Carolina and in a very anti-Catholic Protestant denomination. Through the vicissitudes of fate or the God’s providence, I met my wife and became a Catholic myself.
My wife is Malaysian Chinese. When we were starting a family, I realized that I did not really know how to live out my life as a Catholic in a Chinese family. We celebrate Chinese holidays and adopt some Chinese language. I wanted to pass something of note on to my children and support them in that part of their background. The way I resolved this challenge was to work it into my doctoral studies in theology. I began an in-depth reading of early Confucian and Taoist philosophy and fell in love with it.
Over time, I have come to love the Chinese intellectual world more and the Chinese language as a vehicle for thinking not only about the principles and the commitments that animate the Chinese world, but also about the great mysteries of God and the Church.
Practical necessity led me to become aware of the great beauty of the Chinese Catholic tradition and to where I am today.
You have recently published a comparative study of St. Thomas Aquinas and the early Chinese masters. Who are the early Chinese masters and how similar is their thought to the theology of St. Thomas? In my book, I pose a heuristic question: a question that helps us probe a certain matter. In this case, the question is “What would St. Thomas have made of early Chinese philosophy had he read it? What would he have endorsed and what would he have found lacking?”
I deal mainly with three masters: the Confucians Mengzi (or Mencius), Xunzi, and the master of another school in early China, Mozi.
There were many other masters. One is Confucius himself, although scholars debate how much access we have to his actual writings. Other important figures are the early Confucian master, Zengzi, and the two main Daoist masters, Laozi, author of the Daodejing, and Zhuangzi. This is the book’s general cast of characters, with the three stars being Mengzi, Xunzi, and Mozi.
If Aquinas had have read all the texts of early China, he would probably have thought that the Confucianism and the Mohism were the clearest analogues to Catholic wisdom or, if you prefer, to Aristotelian wisdom. Confucianism clearly develops an ethics that is similar to that of Aristotle. It too stresses that we are social animals or relational selves. We are ordered toward life in community. That is where we attain our own flourishing. Moreover, we need to develop moral virtues to become who we are. In Chinese, the task or dao of being human (ren dao) consists in finding one’s proper role in the cosmos. Human virtue consists in fulfilling that role or place in the cosmos.
Aquinas would find much to agree with there.
Moreover, both Confucians and the Mohists have a deep devotion—deep space, I should say—for the concept of heaven or Tian. My book has a couple of chapters on this. Tian was the term normally used to designate the high god of the Zhou dynasty, the dynasty in power when most early Chinese philosophy was written. There is not a strong tradition of viewing Tian as the creator of the world, but there is a strong tradition of viewing Tian as the providential governor of the world and a moral deity who desires goodness and virtue, especially from rulers. Aquinas would deeply appreciate this view that a providential wisdom guides the cosmos
He would also esteem the way in which Confucianism and Mohism are concerned with the ways in which we ought to love and care for others. Mozi proposes universal love and the impartial care for others as a solution to the world's ills. He believes that the particular love of one’s family can get in the way of that. Aquinas could appreciate how that approximates the Christian virtue of charity but would also critique it. He would be more Confucian. However, he would appreciate this debate and this idea that caring for others leads to an imitation of Tian, a participation in heaven, and the flourishing of society.
There may be an erosion of traditional ethics in China, just as there is secularization in the West? Going forward, appealing to early Chinese philosophy or traditional values may not be a sure bridge for evangelization in China. Perhaps the main challenge will be materialist atheism, as it is in the West. Is that on the cards? That is a tremendous question. There are various ways of looking at it.
On the one hand, Archbishop Stanislaus Luo Guang (or Lo Kuang), who was originally from China but was a bishop in Taiwan for a long time, articulates this concern very well. In mainland China, atheistic materialism has overwhelmed traditional conceptions of the human person and moral flourishing, whereas consumerist materialism has prevailed in places like Taiwan and Singapore. Hence, both wings of modernity have influenced China in certain regards. They have had a powerful impact on societies shaped in the Confucian matrix. Hence, simply retrieving traditional Chinese philosophy is not the only step that needs to be taken in evangelization. It was never that simple and it certainly is not that simple now. Engaging the successes and the foibles of modernity is essential to evangelization, not just in the secularized West but also in East Asia or Africa.
On the other hand, Archbishop Stanislaus Luo Guang was also of the view that there remains a fundamental disposition in the Chinese and that their tradition cannot really be eclipsed.
The Communist Party of China tried very hard to eclipse it during the Cultural Revolution, when it attempted to stomp out the Four Olds, which included significant aspects of Confucianism and the Chinese philosophical tradition. Forty years later, the Communist Party of China was supporting Confucius Institutes throughout the world. It realized that it was necessary to reembrace the classical principles to some degree and could not eradicate them completely. That is a good indication of how Chinese culture has stubbornly resisted an utter conversion to materialism. China is both traditionalist and modern.
The evangelization of China needs to work both angles. It has to deal with the problems of modernity. However, to provide a compelling account of the faith, it also needs to articulate the faith in the light of the classical Chinese philosophical traditions.
The first four books that you have selected are writings by or on eminent figures of the Catholic Church. To some extent, they trace the trajectory of the Church in China. Is there available in English a good history of the Church in China? Available is the key word. Ignatius Press have published a translation of Fr Jean-Pierre Charbonnier’sChristians in China: A.D. 600-2000. This is my favourite single-volume history of the Church in China.
Currently, the freedoms of the Catholic Church in China are being suppressed in various ways by the state. Is there any definite position within early Chinese thought on the limits of legitimate state power or religious liberty? Religious liberty is a fascinating question. When Catholicism found its footing in China, early on it faced a crisis. The head of the Bureau of Rites want to extirpate the Church from China and was nearly successful. Part of his rationale was that Catholicism was subversive of the good morals of the Chinese tradition and even belonged to subversive political groups. A famous group with Daoist leanings, the White Lotus Society, had posed a political challenge to the Ming dynasty. Catholics were painted with the same brush.
In responding to this argument, the Catholic Church did not dispute the state’s right or obligation to suppress dangerous seditious elements. At that time, the Church did not have a very robust concept of religious liberty. Rather, much like early Christian apologists, it argued that Christianity was neither seditious nor contrary to sound morals. Instead, Matteo Ricci and others argued that the Catholic tradition aligns robustly with many of the fundamental moral convictions of Chinese Confucianism.
It was accepted that things religious do touch on the public or common good, and so fall under the state in some way. There was the question, especially later on, of how the state exercises authority properly. There was also the question of how Catholicism helps rather than harms the state. Later on, the conversation expanded to how the state should respect religious freedom, but that is a different question with a messy history.
1.
he first book is Matteo Ricci’s The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven. In it, the important Jesuit missionary engages Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism in a dialogue on the existence and nature of God, creation, human nature, and virtue. This dialogue is largely philosophical in character and meant to make his interlocutors more disposed to listen to the Good News. Have you chosen this work as an early example and eminent model of Chinese Catholicism? One reason for choosing The True Meaning of the Lord of Heavenis that it has been translated into English. Very few of the early texts of Chinese Catholic life have been translated into English.
Moreover, this work was of tremendous importance for later Chinese Catholic history.
Matteo Ricci's work was not perfect but set the table in several important regards.
Is it a work of Chinese Catholicism? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, it takes a broadly Thomistic or scholastic account of natural theology. It translates Aristotelian, scholastic principles into terms that the Chinese could understand and even translates the arguments themselves. On the other hand, it is one of the first major texts to engage the Chinese tradition deeply, at least in certain moments. Granted, sometimes Fr. Ricci was not exactly right about what those traditions were. That is understandable. He was one of the first Westerners to encounter Chinese philosophy, but it took several hundred years of scholarship for Western interpreters to gain a real competency in that literature. So, one might quibble with his reading of the Neo-Confucians or Mengzi. However, he the first to make a serious attempt at engaging them.
Fr. Ricci’s work is exemplary in many regards. He realised that the Chinese traditions are not simply some pagan foolishness that must be dispensed with but need to be wrestled with. Even when he disagrees with them—as he does with Daoism and Buddhism—he tries to engage with them as best he can and does not resort to fallacious dismissals of them. Through this robust engagement with them, he explains how the Catholic faith elevates and perfects all that is good in the Chinese traditions. His example has been imitated in later Chinese Catholic theology and practice.
"The Chinese Rites controversy was meant to solve a problem for the whole of China, but that mission-field was more complicated and could not be covered with a one-size-fits-all solution."
Ricci’s policy of evangelization allowed for the accommodation of certain traditional Chinese customs. These included the practice of referring to God as “Heaven”, seasonal rites of veneration of Confucius, and ancestor worship. The missionaries from other orders objected and the matter was brought to the attention of Rome. Clement XI condemned Ricci’s policy in a couple of bulls, mainly Ex die illa (1715). As a result, the Chinese authorities put restrictions on the Church and the evangelization of the country suffered a major setback. Did Ricci’s tactics go to far, to the point of accommodating syncretism, or did Clement XI misunderstand him and overreact? That is a wonderful question, one that experts still debate.
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