The Pathfinder Of Chinese Christian Thoughts

Yang Tingyun belongs to chinese first generation of Confucian Christian,known as one of "The Three Pillars" of Christianity along with Xu Guangqi and Li Zhizao in late Ming Dynasty.Influenced by the social reality and the School of Donglin in late Ming Dynasty,Yang Tingyun was greatly concerned about local practice and application of morality.At the same time,he had been trying to find answer from religions and therefore turned to Buddhism due to his focusing on personal life experience and doubting about worth of life.So when Christianity appeared in a way that comply with Confucianism's "School of application" and also brought him the answer of destination of one's life,it won Yang Tingyun's recognition very soon and made him receive baptism and turn to a Christian.After being a Christian,Yang Tingyun devoted himself to the analysis of Christian principles so as to form a complete set of knowledge System,which takes the concept of soul as the core to,based on the belief in God,establish a wish to the paradise by saving the soul.And the system also includes almost all important parts about mystery of Christ,like Incarnate and the Trinity etc.,to show Yang Tingyun's open and inclusive to the western knowledge.Yang Tingyun' s theory generally presents a feature of "Mutual Identification of Confucianism and Christianity" by combining his every religious concept with Confucianism as well as by criticizing Buddhism to reinforce the Confucianism-Christianity part in his theory.Besides that,Yang Tingyun also implemented "School of Application" advocated by him.He strictly abided by the Christian disciplines and combined religious practice with mental cultivation of Confucianism in order to achieve the application of morality and to obtain the possibility of Heaven.Yang Tingyun also focused on the science even though he was not good at it.He was very affirmative to the way that Xu Guangqi and Li Zhizao did to learn the western knowledge,and Xu Guangqi indeed explored another interactive mode of learning western technology and science and independently groped the essence of scientific spirit.In general,the first generation Christian showed their modernity in term of their open mind,their attention to the science as well as the personalization(awaken by means of formation of religious individuals)shown in Yang Tingyun' s theory.This is probably the spring of Chinese modernity.And the method of combining the personalization with subjectivity of Confucianism provides a possible mode for the integration of Confucianism and Western culture in present society.