Wang Wei-Fan's Evangelical Theology

Wang Wei-fan’s Evangelical Theology 3

Chapter 1 Wang Wei-fan’s Evangelical Theology Its Significance for the Church in China Today

Kevin Xiyi Yao

Within the contemporary Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), Wang Wei-fan (汪维藩, 1927–2015) stands out as a theological spokesman for evange licalism. Wang was born in 1927, and converted to evangelical Christianity in his early twenties. In 1951 he started his theological education and eventually graduated from Nanjing Union Theological Seminary (NUTS) four years later. As an evangelical, he decided to join emerging Three-Self Patriotic Movement, and soon founded himself condemned as a ‘rightist” and doing hard labor on farms and factories for decades. When the Great Cultural Revolution (1966– 1976) finally came to an end, he was rehabilitated and appointed to a teaching post at NUTS in 1980. In that position, he quickly arose as a popular teacher, prolific writer, and key theological thinker within the TSPM. Since his retire- ment in 1999, he has remained active as a writer. In most significant academic studies, Wang has been recognized as one of very few influential evangelical writers, theologians, theological educators, and church leaders.1 Inheriting the fundamentalist / evangelical tradition of the Chinese Church of the early 20th Century, Wang re-interprets and develops the tradition in the context of 21st Century Chinese church and society. In many ways, his theology is not only a good sample of contemporary evangelical theological thinking but also a helpful indicator for the future direction of Chinese theology.

1 See Yuan Yi-juan 袁益娟, Shenshen shenxue – wang wei-fan shenxue sixiang yanjiu 生生神学－汪维藩神学思想研究 [Theology of Ceaseless Creativity – A Study of Wang Weifan’s Thoughts] (Beijing: Golden Wall Press 金城出版社, 2010); Philip L. Wickeri, Seeking the Common Ground, Protestant Christianity, the Three-Self Movement, and China’s United Front (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), 274; Reconstructing Christianity in China, K.H.Ting and the Chinese Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007), 230.

1 The Historical Roots of Wang Wei-fan’s Evangelicalism

The evangelical tradition of the Chinese Church was based on the methods of Western missionaries in the 19th Century. Such agencies as the China Inland Mission played a major role in shaping the conservative characters of the Chinese Church. As Christianity in China came of age in the 1930s and 1940s, generations of Chinese evangelists and church leaders rose and helped bring Chinese evangelical tradition to its maturity. The result is a tradition that affirms Biblical authority, supernatural Christology, and centrality of evange- lism.2 One of the major achievements of the evangelical revival during and after the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) is the rise of evangelical student ministry. A large number of young people were evangelized in these years and became the backbone of Chinese churches in the decades to come.3 In many ways Wang Wei-fan was a product of this particular wave of campus ministry. Although he was baptized as early as the summer of 1947, his spiritual life really deepened and matured when he studied at the Central University (中央大学) in Nanjing from 1948 to 1951. During these three years he was very active in evangelical student ministry, and attended a conservative church led by Rev. Yang Shao-tang (杨绍唐, 1898–1968), a nationally renown evangelist. Under Rev. Yang’s tutelage, Wang experienced spiritual re-birth and chose an evangelical orientation of his theology and ministry. In early 1951 Wang dropped out of college and decided on a theological education. Not surprisingly, with his evangelical orientation, he chose to go to a conservative seminary based in Hangzhou. Within a year this seminary merged with a dozen other theological schools into Nanjing Union Theological Seminary (金陵协和神学院, NUTS) largely due the new social and political

2 For the studies on Chinese evangelical tradition, see Xi Lian, Redeemed by Fire, The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2010); Kevin Xiyi Yao, The Fundamentalist Movement among Protestant Missionaries in China, 1920–1937 (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2003); Leung Ka-lun, Huaren chuandao yu fenxing budaojia 华人传道与奋兴布道家 [Evangelists and Revivalists of Modern China] (Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 1999). 3 For the studies on the evangelical student movement in China of the 1940s and 1950s, see Ming-chang Kuo, Genyun qinchun – xiaoyuan tuanqi wushinianlai de guiji 耕耘青春 – – 校园团契五十年来的轨迹 [Cultivating the Young: The Contours of Campus Evangelical Fellowship’s Work over the Past Fifty Years](Taipei, Taiwan: Campus Evangelical Fellowship, 2007), Chapter One; Leung Ka-lung, Tamen shi weile xinyang – beijing jidutu xueshenhui yu zhonghua jidutu budaohui 他们是为了信仰 – – 北京基督徒学生会与中华基督徒布道会 [By Faith They Did It: Beijing Christian Student Association and Chinese Christian Evangelistic Band] (Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary 2001).