Reading China Reading the West: the Relevance of Republican-era Theology Today

Chloë Starr

Yale University

Recent scholars working in Sino-Christian theology have often been dismissive or critical of Republican era theologians, arguing that they were too concerned with Confucian values and reading patterns, and not concerned enough with the realities of war-torn China. In keeping with the theme of the conference, Sinology and the World today, this paper argues that the experience of Republican-era thinkers and their reading of both the bible and western theology is of great relevance for contemporary Chinese Christian studies and its relationship with world scholarship. A comparison of Zhao Zichen’s Life of Jesus and Wu Leichuan’s Christianity and Chinese Culture shows just how familiar their questions were—how central the fate of the nation and the relation of culture to state was to contemporary thinkers, for example—and how traditional scholarship could be marshalled to very different ends by two different writers. Given the close relationship of Republican theologians to currents of international scholarship, the paper explores not just what their work teaches about biblical literacy and a literary sinicization of theology, but about what sinology has to say to the wider world, and whether reading Chinese theologians is (should be?) an act of theology or sinology.

解读中国对西方的解读：民国时期神学对今天的意义

司马懿

耶鲁大学

当今研究中国基督教神学的学者常常对民国时期的神学家持不以为然和批评的态度，认为他们还是带有太多儒家的价值观念和阅读模式，而与遭战争涂炭的中国现实距离太远。与本次会议主题“汉学与当今世界”相契合，本文提出，民国时期思想家的经验和他们对圣经与西方神学的解读，对当代中国基督教研 究及其与世界学术之间的关系具有重要意义。文本通过比较赵紫宸的《耶稣传》和吴雷川的《基督教与中国文化》，将证明他们所关心的问题对今天的我们仍然相当 熟悉——比如民族的命运、文化与国家的关系对思想家如何重要，还将说明传统学术如何能够被两个不同作者导向非常不同的目的。考虑到民国神学家与当时国际学 术界的紧密关联，本文探讨的不仅仅是他们的作品都教授了什么圣经知识、神学如何中国化，还有汉学对更广阔的世界能做出怎样的贡献，研究中国神学家是（应该 是？）一种神学的还是一种汉学的行为。