Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 16(2)/2019: 119-133

Preaching the Gospel in : Changes in the Concept of “Gospel” since the 17th Century

Xinhui MIN School of Humanities Southeast University 2 Southeast University Road, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China [email protected]

Abstract: This paper focuses on the change of the meaning of “gospel” in Chinese context since the 17th Century. In the late , Catholic missionaries were the first to translate “gospel” into Chinese with their writings about the Bible. Then the term became intermingled with traditional Chinese belief of seeking blessings. After the ban on imposed by the Emperor Yong Zheng, Chinese Catholics hid their faith and disguised it as Buddhism, Taoism and folk religions. At the end of the 19th century, “gospel” was connected to colonialism and became a trigger for Sino-Western conflict. The critique of and hostility toward the term abruptly arose. In the 20th century, “gospel” turned into a new concept, which went beyond its religious connotation and gradually referred to all kinds of “good news”. Keywords: Gospel, concept, Bible translation, anti-missionary riots

In western Christian doctrines, “gospel” refers to the good tidings that Jesus brought to the believers after his resurrection. In the 17th century, Catholic missionaries introduced the term “gospel” to China. The translation of “gospel” and changes in the meaning are entwined with the traditional Chinese custom of seeking blessings. During the 20th century, “gospel” gradually became a secular concept and referred to the good news for the public. This paper will present the history of the translation and acceptance of the term “gospel” in the Chinese context from a long- term perspective.

I. INDIGENOUS TRANSLATION: FROM “WAN RI LUE” TO “FU YIN”

Since the late Ming Dynasty, the term “gospel” has been translated with different Chinese terms, closely concomitant with various translations of the Bible, especially the four canonical gospels. The early Chinese translation of the Bible by foreign missionaries in China had two distinct climaxes. The first climax occurred in the 17th century, with the Catholic

© 2019 Xinhui MIN - https://doi.org/10.3726/CUL022019.0008 - The online edition of this publication is available open access. Except where otherwise noted, content can be used under the terms of the Creative 119 Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). For details go to http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ Xinhui MIN / Preaching the Gospel in China... missionaries focusing on an abridged translation of the Bible. The second climax pertained to a full translation of the Bible by Protestant missionaries in the 19th century. Unlike the century-long dispute over the translation of the term “God” (Marshall, 1977; Eber, 1999; Wu, 2000: 205-222; Zhao, 2019) 1, the translation of the term “gospel”, from the Latin word “evangelium”, was much less controversial. In short, the translation of the term “gospel” went through three phases: the early Jesuits opted for the transliteration of “evangelium” when translating the Bible into Chinese, i.e. “㩢ᰛ⮛”, pronounced as “Wan Ri Lue”; then, after the strict prohibition of western religions in the middle of the , Robert Morrison’s and Joshua Marshman's translations of the Bible formally adopted the term “⿅丩”, pronounced as “Fu Yin”, which gradually replaced the previous “㩢ᰛ⮛” as the most commonly used Chinese term for the word “gospel”; finally, in the middle of the 19th century, numerous English-Chinese and Chinese-English dictionaries included the entry “⿅丩”, cementing the acceptance of this translation(Min, 2017: 91-102). An Italian Jesuit Giulio Aleni (1582-1649) was the first person to translate the word “gospel” into Chinese. In his Tian Zhu Jiang Sheng Yan Xing Ji Lue (1635), the first chapter “㩢ᰛ⮛㏉䃠” is based on the main content of the four canonical gospels. “㩢ᰛ⮛ ”, which literally means ‘good news’, is a transliteration of “evangelium”. “㏉” refers to the scripture recording the nativity, passion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus(Aleni, 2002: 23-24). Aleni had an outstanding command of Chinese. Why did he adopt the unpronounceable transliteration “㩢ᰛ⮛” and supplemented it with the term “⿅丩”? Throughout the book, his main goal was not to translate the Bible as such, but to create a new way of presenting the birth story of Jesus. He thus opted for a transliteration of the classics. Different from Aleni’s translation of the gospels, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary Emmanuel Diaz Junior (1574-1659) chose a “literal translation” in his book Sheng Jing Zhi Jie, published in 1636. The book takes Catholic Sunday and veneration as clues and attempts to explain terms and classics, interpret scriptures and proverbs – an approach that is quite different from that taken by other Jesuits in the late Ming Dynasty. Diaz held that “a transliteration of the original text of the Bible is ‘䱞㩢ᰛ⮛’ and the Chinese translation is ‘⿅丩’, which is the message, also known as the New

120 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 16(2)/2019: 119-133

Testament, conveyed by Jesus to the world after his birth.” Diaz did not semantically distinguish the connotations of the three words “൙㔅”, “䱞 㩢ᰛ⮛” and “⿅丩”. “Although different gospels have different records, they tell the same truth. Therefore, the truth of the Bible is consistent.” (Diaz, 2014: 467) Diaz’s interpretation reflects his attempts to eliminate the implicit differences among the terms. He realized the importance of “⿅”, literally meaning “blessing”, and endeavored to expound on the “eight blessings” in Christian doctrines. “As is well documented in the Bible, eternal suffering will be exempted and people will enjoy eternal pleasure, which is why we call it ‘⿅丩’.” (Diaz, 2014: 458) The term “Fu Yin”, satisfying the indigenous belief of seeking blessing and avoiding misfortune, subsequently attracted greater attention. More than half a century later, Jean Basset (1622-1707), a missionary from the Paris Foreign Missions Society, wanted to stay clear of the disputes between different missionary societies in the Chinese Rite Controversy and thus went to Sichuan Province to concentrate on translating the Bible. His assistant Xu Ruohan, a native literati, helped him a great deal with polishing the translation. The Bible translated by Jean Basset was published in both a separate edition as well as a collection. Instead of the term “㩢ᰛ⮛”, Basset chose the term “⿅丩” for it is more approachable and points to the good tidings brought by God in Christian doctrines. Furthermore, this term accurately conveys the doctrine of Christianity and satisfies the psychological needs of Chinese believers (Basset, 1704). Since the early 18th century, the term “⿅丩” has been widely used in Chinese versions of the Bible. And Jean Basset's work had a decisive influence on the translation of the Bible by Protestant missionaries a century later (Zhang, 2012: 70-80; Uchida, 2012:191-198). In 1810, the New Testament translated by a British missionary Joshua Marshman (1768-1837) was published in separate editions. Marshman translated “gospel” into “ి䃔” (pronounced “Jia Yu”) and “ి丩” (pronounced “Jia Yin”), meaning good news and good luck. His transliteration of the titles of the gospels was difficult for Chinese people to understand and accept (Marshman, 1859: 165-166). Soon after, Marshman changed his translation style and strategy. Based on the translation of Jean Basset, he and Robert Morrison (1782-1834) settled on the term “⿅丩”. With the canonization of Robert Morrison and Joshua Marshman's Translation of the Bible, “⿅丩” officially replaced “㩢ᰛ⮛”

121 Xinhui MIN / Preaching the Gospel in China... as the Chinese translation of the term “gospel”. Later, authoritative English-Chinese and Chinese-English dictionaries further cemented the acceptance of the term “⿅丩”. A Dictionary of Chinese the Language compiled by Morrison translates the “gospel” as “⿅ 丩”, which refers to the good tidings spread by the early Jesuits, and the activities of preaching and evangelizing(Morrison, 1822: 192). Then, Water H. Medhurst (1796-1857) elaborated on the meaning of “⿅” with such adjectives as superb, lucky and happy. Compared with Morrison, Medhurst had a deeper understanding of the term and also explained the opposite relationship between “⿅” (literally meaning blessing) and “⾮” (literally meaning misfortune)(Medhurst, 1842-1843: 673). In English and Chinese Dictionary compiled by Wilhelm Lobscheid (1822-1893), “gospel” is defined at three different levels, namely the level of preaching, the level of religious belief, and the level of truth and creed, marking a shift in the discussion of “gospel” from word to concept (Lobscheid, 1866-1869: 909). Since the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese translation of the Bible has gradually shifted from abridged transliteration to full and free translation, with “⿅丩” replacing “㩢ᰛ⮛” as a fixed term of “gospel”.

II. THE AMBIGUOUS CONNOTATION OF ć≸⿅Ĉ (QIU FU)

The term “⿅ ” has profound connotations in Chinese traditional culture. In early history, it referred to good results brought about by the spiritual power of ancestral ghosts and gods due to the observance of certain norms. The custom of “worshiping God and asking for his blessing” gradually evolved into a syncretic local belief, 2 integrating the Confucian idea of “good virtue leading to a blessing” and the “dialectic of blessing and misfortune”, 3 the Buddhist notion of merits and virtues, and folk religion’s “salvation theory”(Yang, 1961: 231). Analogous to the conception of “ᣛ”(Yang, 1987), 4 which literally means “karma” and is pronounced “Bao” in Chinese, “⿅” has long provided a moral standard and belief motive for the customs and conventions of Chinese society. In the western tradition, “gospel” has a fixed connotation, referring to the good tidings brought by Jesus following passion, resurrection, and ascension. Accordingly, believers will be saved once they accept the good tidings. During the Chinese Rite Controversy in the late 17th century, the disputes over the translation of the term “Deus” led to some confusion

122 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 16(2)/2019: 119-133 among Chinese, precluding a full understanding of the religious connotations of “gospel”. Even though western missionaries such as Emmanuel Diaz Junior accurately explained “gospel” and associated it with the life and death of Christ in Christianity, “gospel” remained at the level of translation and interpretation due to limited circulation and acceptance of the Bible in China. Against the backdrop of the century-long suppression of Western religions following the Chinese Rite Controversy, Catholicism was hidden from the public and mingled with Buddhism, Taoism and folk religions, further exacerbating the ambiguity of “blessings” due to cultural differences between China and the West. In 1724, the second year of Emperor Yongzheng’s reign and just a year after the Fujian Anti- Missionary Riot, the Qing government issued a ban on Western religions, greatly endangering the lives of missionaries. Joseph-Anne-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla (1669-1748), a French Jesuit, wrote in a letter that, “What we have feared and predicted so many times over the years finally happened recently: our holy religion has been completely banned in China, and all missionaries except those in Beijing have been expelled from the empire.”(de Mailla, 1819: 486) Despite the continuous strengthening of state power, the imperial court, in its attempt to control all political and religious matters, struggled with local society, resulting in numerous religious riots. Catholicism as a foreign religion gradually became stigmatized. The similarities between Catholicism and other folk religions constituted a potential threat to the Qing government, forcing Catholicism to gradually become a “secret religion” excluded from the authority. By examining the confession of participants in a Catholic riot, the following part gives insights into the secret in the text and believers’ mentality of seeking blessings, and reveals similarities as well as differences between Catholicism, folk religions, Buddhism and Taoism in practices. Confession is a special text in which the person on trial explains the relevant facts in oral. It is recorded in written form by others and can be considered as a reconstruction of the original materials. In 1784, the 49th year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong, a riot involving Petrus Cai (Cai Minggao) broke out in Xiangyang, Hubei Province. The central figure of the case, Cai Minggao, a Catholic, lived in as a businessman and a doctor. That year, Cai learned that the Catholic Church in Shaanxi was recruiting foreigners for engaging in missionary work, so he secretly arranged for foreigners to go to Shaanxi. His arrest exposed a secret

123 Xinhui MIN / Preaching the Gospel in China... network in the region. The confession in the case of Cai Minggao was highly homogeneous. Influenced by Buddhism and folk religions, the believers called their faith “ਹᯁ”(undertake the religious precept). In most cases, the rationale behind it was to heal illness. “His mother knew I had tuberculosis, and advised me to undertake the precept advocated by Catholicism instead of Buddhism” (Liu, 2003: 349). The believer confused the precept advocated by Catholicism with that of Buddhism, and the utilitarian motive behind the religious faith eliminated any differences between the two religions. Some believers had crucifixes as well as small shrines with statues of God in their homes without actually knowing the difference between the two. “I only believe the precept advocated by Catholicism. I picked up this tattered holy book as well as a bronze statue of the Buddha from the passenger boat I worked on” (Liu, 2003: 351). They even called the foreign missionaries’ trip to Shaanxi “a pilgrimage to chant scriptures” (Liu, 2003: 350). The confession in the case of Cai Minggao had the following characteristics. First, believers denied engaging in obvious externalized religious rituals such as chanting sutras, worshiping sutras, etc. The confession was full of pragmatic concerns of seeking blessing and avoiding misfortune. The believers admitted that they believed in God, with a view to healing their diseases and seeking happiness. Second, Catholicism, coalescing with Buddhism and folk religions, was unable to maintain its distinctive characteristics. Third, the Catholic Church relied on consanguinity and geographical proximity to maintain the relationships among the believers. The central government's indiscriminate fear of large-scale secret societies, and the preventive measures it took to eliminate them, facilitated the occurrence of riots across the country. Seeking blessings was not only reflected in the daily prayer of believers, but also in their desire to ascend into heaven after death. The confession in the case of Cai Minggao mentioned the following death notice: “Thanks to God's grace. I now ask all the believers to recognize God’s love and pray to God to let him escape from the punishment of purgatory and enter the land of eternal pleasure. With my eternal gratitude.” When a Catholic died, the death notice would be passed among the believers, with the “land of eternal pleasure” referring to heaven where the believer's soul was saved after death. At that time, people often confused the Chinese ancestral belief with the Catholic doctrine of soul ascension decided by God, and they had no clear understanding of who was giving

124 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 16(2)/2019: 119-133 the blessing. During the century-long suppression of Western religions, Catholicism had to imitate the spread of folk religions. During the period in which concepts such as “ཟѱ” and “рᑓ” – the Chinese terms used to translate “God” – were banned, “⿅” was one of the few available terms for promoting Catholicism in China. The indigenous belief of “worshiping God and asking for his blessing” protected the Catholics hidden in secret societies. After the War, the Qing government relaxed the ban on foreign religions. Once again, the gospel could be preached in public. In contrast with Catholicism, Protestantism often regards the “gospel” as the truth. Liang Fa, the first Chinese Protestant minister claimed: “As Catholicism damages the reputation of the gospel, the good people who want to believe in it quit doing so in the end due to the grotesque rumor. As a result, the preaching of the gospel encounters so many obstacles that it is difficult for people to believe in it.”(Mai, 1979: 164) Liang Fa’s remarks revealed his objection to the Catholic missionary strategy at the time and demonstrated Protestantism’s determination to “preach the gospel”. He frequently used the phrase “the truth of the gospel” in his book Good Words to Admonish the Age(Quan Shi Liang Yan) and regarded it as an important component of the salvation theory. Liang seems to hold, however, that the importance of the gospel lies in the communication between believers and God. Inspired by God, believers trust in the truth of the gospel (Liang, 1979: 70-71). In brief, before the relaxation of the ban on foreign religions, the discussion of “⿅” and even “⿅丩” reflected the connotations of both native belief and foreign religion. On the one hand, the term “⿅” catered to Chinese believers’ pragmatic, deeply-engrained mentality of “seeking blessing and avoiding misfortune”, facilitating their acceptance of Christianity. On the other hand, however, such a mentality (“≸⿅” literally means “seeking blessing” in Chinese) distorted believers’ understanding of the “gospel” so central in Christian doctrine. The ambiguous connotation of “ ≸⿅” intensified the heterogeneity of “worshiping God and asking for blessing” in the Chinese context.

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III. IMAGINATIONS OF THE OTHER: FROM RELIGION TO SOCIETY

With the colonial plunder of China by western powers at the end of the 19th century, preaching the gospel was regarded as a form of soft cultural and religious aggression. The conflicts between China and foreign countries under the treaty system caused by frequent religious riots resulted in more and more heterogeneous imaginations of Christianity, turning the “gospel” into a target of public criticism (Sun, 2011:53-73). The attitude of the believers towards gospel also changed. On the one hand, they still frequently held pragmatic attitudes toward the seeking of blessings. The motive of many believers was to seek shelter in Christianity, and many of them were Rice Christians who sought personal gains through joining the church.5 On the other hand, “gospel” gradually became the subject of public criticism. For example, Dr. John Dudgeon (1837-1901), who was dedicated to promoting the cessation of opium in China, recorded the complaint of a farmer in Shanxi Province, “You bring Bibles, why not bring anti-opium pills. You brought us opium, and now bring us holy books and refuse to cure us Ă why not bring us anti-opium books or pills and not these ‘glad tidings books’ that contain nothing about opium.”(Dudgeon, 1871: 239) The growing rejection of the “glad tidings books” was not only indicative of doubts regarding the missionaries’ “noble” spirit from a pragmatic standpoint, but also a reflection of their hostility and hatred towards the Western powers for invading China and enslaving its people. Catalyzed by political factors, this hatred quickly turned into conflicts between the Chinese people and western religions. For instance, the Tientsin Massacre and Yangzhou Riot were both intensified through the instigation of the gentry, public rumors, riots of the anti-religious people, and diplomatic interference of Western countries. At that time, with the growing anti-religious sentiment, people’s heterogeneous imagination of Christianity was rife. In the aftermath of the Tientsin Massacre, Zeng Guofan (1811-1872) mentioned the specific reasons why the Chinese people hated foreigners. “It is said that some churches have abducted children and dug out their eyes and hearts. This is why the gentry and common people in Tientsin have been angry with foreigners. Righteous indignation made the Tientsin Massacre happen.” (Zeng, 1997: 376) In people's eyes, “gospel” gradually became a by-product of the gunboat

126 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 16(2)/2019: 119-133 diplomacy of western powers. The rise of the social gospel movement in the early 20th century was another important example of the changing concept of the “gospel”. At that time, Christian theology gradually completed its transition from Fundamentalism to Evangelicalism. “Gospel” came to refer to all Christian missionary activities and the good news for the public, very different from Liang Fa's perception of the gospel as a relationship between God and believers. The social gospel movement that arose in the United States centered on the idea that “the kingdom of God will be established on earth”. Theologian Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) considered “Kingdom of God” to be a social concept which touched on all aspects of human social life. In his view, it could save both the individual and society as a whole, enabling the individual to ascend to heaven and enabling earthly life to become harmonious (Hopkins, 1940: 149). The 1910 World Missionary Conference ushered in a new era of Christian missionary activities. The traditional model of the missionary society came to an end, with American missionaries and the social gospel movement subsequently playing an increasingly important role in China. Many North American college students joined the “Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions”, with the slogan “going to China and spreading the gospel to every corner” being extremely popular. The early 20th century marked the climax of the spread of the social gospel in China. Social problems intensified in an era of great change; and the fate of Christians seeking to save their souls amidst a torrent of political reform and revolution mirrored developments occurring in society and the country. The Chinese Christians devoted to the localization movement needed to give consideration to the subjective predisposition of many to “get rid of western religions”. “The problem of the application of Christianity to the life of China will be very prominent in the decade after 1922. Twenty years ago saw the end of the first stage of missionary intensive evangelistic preaching. In the larger centers the work is now much more varied than then. In addition to promoting the salvation of the individual the Christian Church is now trying to put him to work.” (Rawlinson, 1922: 39) Frank Rawlinson (1871-1937), editor-in-chief of The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, saw the “gospel” as a panacea to solve social problems and save individual souls, indicating a change in the way Christianity was preached in China as well as a change of the social context in which “gospel” was embedded.

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Against this backdrop, the concept of “gospel”, which originally only implied good tidings at the religious level, gradually took on new social connotations. Around the 1920s, the concept of “gospel” had the following two characteristics. First, it was embedded in every subsystem of society and widely used for various commercials; second, it evolved into a positive and optimistic discourse, reflecting Chinese people's future expectations of strengthening the country, protecting the nation, and reforming the society. “Gospel” became less tightly associated with the semantic field of religion and gained traction in a range of other fields. Slogans such as “the gospel for education”, “the gospel for females” and “the gospel for patients”, for instance, were widely used in various commercials in the 1920s and 1930s (Anonymous, 1915: 4, 1927: 4, 1924: 1). Similarly, drug advertisements for longevity, fitness, brain-invigorating and kidney- tonifying pills all claimed that they provided “the gospel for the weak and the sick”, hoping to cater to the consumption psychology and pragmatic mentality of women expecting to be beautiful and men wanting to be strong. Although the “gospel” contributed to promoting false advertising, the socialization of the concept of “gospel” was yet undeniably tied to the development of commercials, with political implications and cultural symbols embedded in such advertising that could not be ignored. Advertisements made in the name of “gospel” reflected not only demands of Chinese people to strengthen their bodies, but also a political vision of strengthening the country and protecting the nation. Slogans such as “from ancient to modern times, the strong survive and the weak perish, therefore the weak are ravaged by the strong”(Anonymous, 1923: 11), and “the gospel for the weak, cultivate the capacities of the strong”(Anonymous, 1919: 16), were quite popular among Chinese people then, bespeaking support for the evolutionary concept of survival of the fittest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The “gospel for the weak” was often associated with the inversion of the concepts of “slavery” and “ignorant masses” in the early 20th century. It was necessary to take advantage of the optimistic concept of the “gospel” to transform the poor, weak image of Chinese people, and encourage them to compete with the strong. The optimistic facet of the term “gospel” also found its way into ongoing discussions concerning the reforming of society. In the May Fourth Movement, the progressive publication The New Society highlighted

128 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 16(2)/2019: 119-133 in its foreword that, “we are aiming at reforming China into a democratic state. The purpose of our reform is to create a new democratic society – a new society of freedom, equality, peace and happiness without class and wars.” (Zheng, 1919: 1) Labor became the gospel of social reform. “The happiest thing can be obtained through hard work. Labor brings people complete happiness. Only labor can save us! No revolution! No communism! Labor! Labor is the gospel for mankind.” (Qu, 1920: 1) In issue No. 18 of The New Society, Qu Qiubai complained about the long- standing social problems during times of war, stating that, “Labor spreads good news and is the gospel for saving human beings.” His usage of the term “gospel” here seems to have been associated with the concept of “happiness”. Devoid of its original religious connotations, it was used as an idealized and abstract expression in a purely social context. After the 1920s, “gospel” turned into a non-religious, secular concept in the new social structure. Although it retained the literal meaning of “good tidings”, it had completed its transformation from a religious term that narrated the passion and resurrection of Jesus to a future-oriented social concept.

IV. CONCLUSION

Terms and concepts are closely linked to specific social contexts. Initially, both terms, “㩢ᰛ⮛” and “⿅丩”, were used as Chinese translations of the Bible against the backdrop of the Chinese Rites Controversy, with the former being the more commonly used one. Later, “⿅丩” became the indigenous Chinese term for “evangelium” and “gospel”. When western religions were banned in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, “seeking blessings” gradually became a secret activity in China, with Christianity getting intermingled with Buddhism, Taoism, and folk religions in doctrines, rituals, and practices. At the end of the 19th century, the public antagonism toward the “gospel” echoed the political discourse of the time, characterized by hatred and heterogeneous imaginations of western colonization under the treaty system. With the change of social structures in the early 20th century, “gospel” went beyond its original religious connotation and became conceptualized as the good news for all the people in society. Unlike other basic concepts of politics and society imported from the west, “gospel” was an indigenous concept originated from Chinese society and intertwined with specific historical contexts. Although “gospel” was

129 Xinhui MIN / Preaching the Gospel in China... initially anchored in the traditional Chinese custom of “worshiping God and asking for his blessing”, after the 1920s, it gradually reflected the functionally differentiated society. The socialization of the concept of “gospel” had two key aspects. The first one is popularization. Although the transliteration of “㩢ᰛ⮛” is more faithful to the original meaning of “evangelium”, the highly localized “ ⿅丩” evidently dovetailed better with the idiomatic expressions. Another key aspect is optimism. The concept of “gospel” has strongly future-oriented implications. After the 1920s, advertisements that made use of the positive connotation of “gospel” facilitated the selling of products and promoted a new interpretation of the progressive concept of “survival of the fittest”. The political vision of strengthening the country and protecting the nation was reflected in various commercial advertisements. With the increasing attention paid to social issues, as a tool for social practice, “gospel” became a brand-new discourse aiming to reform society and shape the future of the world.

Notes

Grammatically proofread by Stephen Roddy, University of San Francisco.

1 The dispute over the translation of “God” was also generated from the background of the Chinese Rites Controversy from 1630s. Catholic missionaries debated whether Chinese Christian converts might be able to continue to perform rituals in honor of their ancestors (Jizu ⾣⾌), and whether Chinese mandarins could perform rituals to Confucius (Jikong ⾣ᆊ). This debate had far-reaching implications and continued beyond the 18th century. To know more about this controversy, see Rule, Paul A. “The Chinese Rites Controversy: A long lasting controversy in Sino-Western cultural history”, in Pacific Rim Report, No.32, 2004:1-8. Li, Tiangang, Chinese Rites Controversy: history of literature and significance ѣു⿤ܶҁ⡣φ↭ਨȽᮽ⦱ૂᝅ㗟, Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1998. 2 Different religions coexisted in ancient China. Marcel Granet (1884-1940) believes that the syncretism of ancient Chinese faith highlights the features of pantheism and practical rationalism. See Granet, Marcel. Chinese Civilization, Innes, K. & Brailsford, M.(trans). N.Y.: Meridian Books, 1958:131-132. 3 In the Book of Rites, A Summary Account of Sacrifices, the most classic treatise on “Fu” ⿅, “Fu” is regarded as a good result of obeying moral and political norms. See Sun, Xidan. Liji jijie ⿤䁎䳼䀙, Vol.47, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1989: 1236. 4 Yang Lien-sheng considers that the concept of “Bao” ๧ has laid the foundation of social relations in China. See Yang, LS. Zhongguo wenhua zKRQJ´%DRµ´%DRµ´%DRµzhi

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yiyi ѣുᮽौѣ๧ȽؓȽऻҁᝅ㗟, Hongkong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 1987. 5 Such phenomena were quite common in the Boxer Movement. See Lu, Yao. Shandong yihetuan diaocha ziliao xuanbian ኧᶧ㗟ૂൎ䃵ḛ䋽ᯏ䚮㐞, Jinan: Qilu Shushe, 1980: 292.

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