The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ, Volume 3a ed. by Roman Malek, and: The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ, Volume 3b ed. by Roman Malek (review)

Book Reviews 169 The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ, Volume 3a Edited by ROMAN MALEK, S.V.D. Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica & China-Zentrum, 2005. Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, L/3a. xv, 466 pages. ISSN 0179-261X, ISBN 3-8050-0524-5. €60.00 hardback. The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ, Volume 3b Edited by ROMAN MALEK, S.V.D. Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica & China-Zentrum, 2007. Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, L/3b. xii, 429 pages. ISSN 0179-261X, ISBN 3-8050-0524-5. €60.00 hardback. Published in the Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ has garnered the attention of those interested in the study of Chinese religions and cross-cultural interactions. In these two volumes, Roman Malek has brought together a team of historians, philosophers, and theologians to discuss the representations of Jesus Christ in twentiethcentury China. Volume 3a presents a multi-dimensional study of the perceptions of Jesus before the Communist Revolution of 1949 and volume 3b looks at the continuity and change of such perceptions from the Maoist era (1949-1976) to the present. The case-study chapters and the anthological essays are wide-ranging and vary in research scope and interest. They draw on an enormous amount of empirical data to examine the transmission, reception, and appropriation of Jesus Christ in Chinese arts, literature, philosophy, popular religions, and society. The cases under discussion range from the Christian encounters with Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and popular religions, to tensions and conflicts between Christianity and the Maoist ideology, as well as the construction of Chinese Catholic and Protestant theologies. These cases are chosen to illustrate how Chinese from different intellectual, religious, cultural, and political backgrounds came to grips with Jesus Christ as a historical and mystical figure, how they accommodated Jesus’ teachings with their preexisting cultural mindsets and ethical values, and how they interpreted the story and legacy of Jesus Christ to specific Chinese audiences. The findings and insights of these two edited volume reveal a multifaceted Jesus in different Chinese historical contexts and provide new perspectives on the indigenization of Christianity in China. Volume 3a consists of thirteen chapters and twenty-four anthological essays. The first two chapters explore the interactions between Christianity and Islam in modern China. The study by Donald Daniel Leslie and Yang Daye draws on several Chinese Islamic texts to show that Jesus Christ was portrayed as a true Muslim prophet. Although Chinese Muslims rejected the Christian doctrines of Trinity and of Jesus as the Son of God, they regarded Jesus as a great sage (dasheng 大聖), ranked with Abraham and Moses, second only to Muhammad. Because most illiterate Chinese Muslims relied on their well-educated teachers for interpreting the sacred text, the Evangelical Protestant missionaries were determined to convert Muslim intellectuals and recruit them as Christian evangelists. Through a critical examination of the Protestant missionary literature among Chinese Muslims, Françoise Aubin 170 Journal of Chinese Religions argues that the missionaries publicly talked about similar doctrines between Christianity and Islam, and distributed fragments of the New Testament and other Chinese literature about Jesus and the fulfillment of God’s truth through Christianity. At the grassroots level, the missionaries produced colorful posters full of Islamic cultural symbols and Arabic scripts in order to portray Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb, the Door leading to the Truth, and the Light of the Spirit. This evangelistic strategy enabled the Protestant missionaries to establish strongholds in the predominantly Muslim region in western China. Francis K. H. So shifts the focus towards coastal China and uses the Nanjing de Jidu 南 京的基督 (Christ in Nanjing), a Japanese story written by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke 芥川龍之 介 in 1921, to address the distortion of Christianity among East Asian intellectuals. The story includes a series of conversations between a Japanese traveler and a Chinese Catholic teenage courtesan in Nanjing about sin, salvation, and redemption. In the story, the Catholic courtesan believed that Jesus Christ would save her, even though she had to entertain foreigners at night in order to make ends meets and to take care of her aging father. Despite her strong Catholic faith, she remained a social outcast and waited for someone to lift her out of the prostitution...