| Before the Jesuits went to China in the seventeenth century, Christianity had already come and gone in China twice. Although the Jesuits deliberately adapted many Christian ideas to Chinese culture, which made them easier for the Chinese to accept, the idea of a crucified God remained alien to the Chinese and they continued to struggle with the image and work of Jesus over the next three hundred years. Nineteenth century missionaries were associated with the Western imperialism and cultural superiority, which gave Jesus imperialist overtones. Nonetheless, in the first half of the twentieth century Chinese Christians redefined Jesus across a wide spectrum from a radical social reformer to an extremely conservative personal savior. The controversy over the image of Jesus reflects the interaction between Chinese and the Western cultures, and Christianity as a world religion.;This dissertation will examine the Chinese Christian understanding of Jesus and salvation in the first half of the twentieth-century by exploring the thought of three representative Chinese Christian theologians. I will argue that the Chinese Christian understanding is the fruit of the encounter between Chinese and Western cultures. Chinese Christians actively sought their own understandings based on their cultural and socio-political context as well as the needs of the Chinese church. The differences of the three Chinese Christian theologians in their philosophical and educational backgrounds and in their approaches to the Christian Scriptures differentiated their understandings of Jesus and salvation. They redefined Jesus and his work by casting Jesus or meaning of salvation or both in Chinese terms and in relation to Chinese tradition to solve their contemporary problems and answer the questions of their age, namely, how to save China as a nation, how to defend Christianity in the face of nationalism and communism, how to answer the challenge from science and rationalism, how to reconcile Christianity with Chinese culture and tradition, and how to meet the needs of Chinese church and root it into Chinese soil. Taken together, their efforts reveal the diverse ways in which Chinese Christians make Christianity their own. |
