Ming And Qing Literati Christian Understanding

During the time when Qing Dynasty took over the reign of Ming Dynasty, China saw tremendous changes: invasion of Manchu, end of Ming Dynasty and introduction of western culture and Christianity. It was the first time that Chinese traditional thoughts met with the western thoughts. Together with these changes, were Xuguangqi's convert to Christianity and the introduction of astronomy, mathematics, maps and the clock., and also the rush of series of conceptions of universe, ways of thinking and the faith. But all of these are only the impressions. Though the missionaries had ever worked hard, they could not be inosculated into Chinese cultures. This thesis just wants to discuss why the Christianity had ever been wondering on the verge of Chinese culture but could never go deep into it, only with a procession of being accepted at first but being forbidden at last.In the ancient China, scholar-bureaucrats used to be the ruler of the society, so they would decide to assent or oppose to Christianity. This thesis chooses them as the research object, to know about the voice of assenters and opposers by historical materials, and to find out the reason of the gap between two cultures.Christianity came to China at a time of turbulence when Chinese society was controlled by confucian-sungming, and the scholar-bureaucrats were facing a kind of spiritual crisis. So they were impressed by the new comer. The Society of Jesus' measure of missionizing by way of the introducing of science coincided with the scholar-bureaucrats' concept of usefulness and was accepted by some of them. But with the gradually understanding to the Christianity, many of them began to realize the difference between the Confucianism and the Christianity. And they thought that the Christianity maybe would destroy people's faith to Confucianism. Especially the happening of Chinese Rites Controversy made the Boanerges' acceptance fail to convert Chinese.Perhaps the Boanerges didn't realize that they had affected Chinese by other ways, such as science. The scholar-bureaucrats showed their interests in science no matter they were converted or not. But because the ideology was still controlled by the Confucian, the concept of the western science originated from China strongly affected the communication between Chinese and western culture. Though the western science had influence on the solid learning, Chinese only accepted western technology, not its conception.The destiny of Christianity in China during the time of 16-18century showed that although some of the scholar-bureaucrats accepted the Christianity, they could not understand it really. Whatsmore, many of them are against with it. Because they thought that Christianity destroyed the Chinese tradition and should be droved out. On seeing the process of Christianity, accepted-objected-forbidden, we can get a conclusion that Chinese could not understand Christianity really.