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Anti-Christian Polemics in Seventeenth Century China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Douglas Lancashire
Douglas Lancashire
Affiliation:
Professor of Chinese, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
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Extract

In several articles and books published in recent years attempts have been made to examine the anti-Christian tradition in China and to seek for the causes of the failure of Christianity to substitute itself for the religious and philosophical traditions of the Chinese people. Reflective analyses of missionary policy and strategy, as well as of the Chinese milieu within which missionaries carried on their activities, have been made by theologians, historians and sociologists in order to determine what “went wrong.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , June 1969 , pp. 218 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1969

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References

1. See, for example, Cohen, Paul A., China and Christianity, 1963Google Scholar; George, H.Wong, C., “The Anti Christian Movement in China: Late Ming and Early Ch'ing,” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, New Series III, No. 1, May, 1962.Google Scholar

2. Levenson, J. R., Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, 1958, p. 118.Google Scholar

3. Paton, David, Christian Missions and the Judgement of God, 1953, p. 12.Google Scholar

4. Fitzgerald, C. P., Revolution in China, 1952, ch. 5.Google Scholar

5. Yang, C. K., Religion in Chinese Society, 1961, p. 363.Google Scholar

6. Levenson, op. cit., pp. 121–2.

7. Hereafter abbreviated to SCPHC.

8. SCPHC, Introduction, p. 2a.

9. A Chin-Shih of 1592. Shen Ch'üeh was vice-president of the Board of Rites at Nanking in 1616. In that year he instituted legal proceedings against the Catholic Church in China. See Hummel, A. W., Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, I, 453.Google Scholar

10. For an account of the influence of Buddhism on the educated classes of China during the last years of the Mïng dynasty see Ch'en, KennethBuddhism in China, 1964, Ch. 16.Google Scholar

11. A native of Tech'ing in Chekiang, Hsü Ta-shou's writings occupy the whole of chüan 4 in the SCPHC.

12. SCPHC, chüan 5, pp. 23b-24a.

13. SCPHC, chüan 3, pp. 37a-38a.

14. Needham, J., Chinese Astronomy and the Jesuit Mission: An Encounter of Cultures, 1958, pp. 1–2Google Scholar

15. Book of History: Hung Fan. See Karlgren, B., “Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities,” No. 22, p. 33.Google Scholar

16. SCPHC, chüan 4, p. 37a, b.

17. For the teachings of Chu Hsi and Wang Yang-ming see Yu-lan, Fung, A History of Chinese Philosophy, II, 533ffGoogle Scholar; Wang Yang-ming, Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings, trans. by Wing-tsit Chan, 1963.

18. For accounts of the Tung-lin school see Hucker, Charles O., The Tung-lin Movement of the Late Ming Period, in Chinese Thought and Institutions, ed. by Fairbank, John K., 1957, pp. 132–162Google Scholar; Busch, Fr. Heinrich, “The Tung-lin Academy and Its Political and Philosophical Significance,” in Monumenta Serica, XIV, 1949–1955, pp. 1–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Busch points out that the Chief Grand Secretary (1608–1614 and 1621–1624) Yeh Halangkao was at one and the same time patron of the Tung-lin Academy and of the Jesuit missionaries, op. cit., p. 159. Not all Tung-lin scholars were so favourably inclined however. The writings of two of these men are included in the SCPHC, and the well- known Tung-lin official, Feng Ts'ung-wu (1556–1627), wrote against Christianity, Ibid., p. 160.

20. See China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, trans. by L. J. Gallagher, S.J., 1953, p. 448.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 448.

22. See Hummel, op. cit., I, 316.

23. The relevant portion of this memorial is quoted by Maurus Fang Hao in his article “Adaptation by Catholics of Confucian Tenets during the late Ming and Early Ch'ing Dynasties,” Bulletin of the College of Arts, National Taiwan University, No. 11 (08, 1962), p. 156.Google Scholar

24. A native of Hsiachang in Chekiang.

25. SCPHC, chüan 3, p. 86.

26. SCPHC, chüan 1, p. 23a.

27. SCPHC, chüan 3, p. 19b and Confucian Analects, XV:29.Google Scholar

28. Wang Yang-ming, op. cit., p. 34, with slight adjustments to the translation for the purposes of this article.

29. SCPHC, chüan 3, p. 20a, b.

30. SCPHC, chüan 1, p. 23b.

31. SCPHC, chüan 5, pp. 10a-lla.

32. SCPHC, chüan 1, p. 23b.

33. Fr. Guilio Aleni (1582–1649).

34. SCPHC, chüan 4, pp. 11ff.

35. SCPHC, chüan 4, pp. 12a-13b.

36. SCPHC, chüan 4, pp. 16b-19b.

37. SCPHC, chüan 3, p. 9a, b.

38. Hereafter abbreviated as Collected Documents.

39. George H. C. Wong, op. cit., pp. 197–199.

40. SCPHC, chüan 7, pp. 31ff.

41. SCPHC, chüan 8, p. 23a.

42. The Pien T'ien Ch'u Shuo (Debate on Heaven) by Yüan Wu included in chüan 7 of the SCPHC, p. 12.

43. Yü, Shun-hsi, a Chin-shih of 1583Google Scholar and a retired official, wrote to Ricci advising him to refrain from attacking Buddhism about which he seemed to know so little. Two essays by him are included in the SCPHC, chüan 5, pp. 12ff. In the first he attacks the views of the Jesuits on the taking of life, and in the second he criticizes other doctrines and practices.

44. Hummel, op. cit., I, 452.

45. Ibid., p. 894.

46. For details concerning the publication of Chu Hung's essays and the Collected Documents see Fonti Ricciane, ed. Pacquale M. D'Elia S.J. (1942–1949), II, 306,Google Scholar n. 1.

47. SCPHC, chüan 7, pp. 1ff.

48. SCPHC, chüan 8, pp. 3ff.

49. Suzuki, D. T., Studies in the Lanka vatara Sutra, 1930, pp. 146–7.Google Scholar

50. SCPHC, chüan 8, pp. 26ff.

51. Gallagher, op. cit., p. 448; Maurus Fang Hao, op. cit., pp. 154, 156.

52. Ch'en, op. cit., p. 439.

53. The “rites controversy” resulted In a turning away from Ricci's policy of “Completing Confusianism.” Its effects are to be seen In later editions of Ricci 's The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven where traditional Chinese terms for deity are expunged and replaced with others coined by the church. See Maurus Fang Hao, op. cit., p. 200. For the reasons underlying the “rites controversy” see Hay, Malcolm, Failure in the Far East, 1956.Google Scholar