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Theosis and China

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Theosis, Sino-Christian Theology and the Second Chinese Enlightenment

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan’s Christianities of the World ((CHOTW))

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Abstract

The contextualization of theology is the attempt to understand the Christian faith in a particular context. Often, the major theological questions posed originate from the sociopolitical concerns of the day or from a particular demographic of society. Yet these questions have also been at times nuanced by the religious and philosophical heritage of the context as well. As we have seen in our three main case studies, Chinese Christian thinkers in the past hundred years have in varying degrees needed to wrestle with these two poles: the sociopolitical and the religiophilosophical. Though the latter was seen by many revolutionaries of the May Fourth Enlightenment as a remnant of feudalism’s past, the Second Chinese Enlightenment has brought upon a zongjiao re (religious fever) where religion is now at the forefront of intellectual discourse. This has resulted in a growing interest in “foreign religions” like Protestantism and Catholicism, as well as a revival of China’s institutional and diffused religions.

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Notes

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  1. Alexander Chow
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© 2013 Alexander Chow

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Chow, A. (2013). Theosis and China. In: Theosis, Sino-Christian Theology and the Second Chinese Enlightenment. Palgrave Macmillan’s Christianities of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137312624_7

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