Search Results (390)

Zhang Chunyi (张纯一) was a significant thinker in modern Chinese intellectual history, but his profound ideas had long been marginalized. He demonstrated exceptional intellectual creativity in his practice of dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity. His religious identity evolved from that of a Confucian scholar to a Christian, and finally to a Buddhist who advocated “Buddhicized Christianity”. This faith-based transformation constituted a theological revolution grounded in internal religious dialogue and rational reflection, ultimately heralding the construction of an original theological system of Buddhicized Christianity. With Mahayana Buddhism as its hermeneutical foundation, this system employs strategies like conceptual correspondence, the ontological internalization of mind–nature, the transference of meaning, and the harmonization of practices in order to systematically and creatively reinterpret core Christian doctrines. Not only does it provide unique historical resources for theories of interreligious dialogue, but it also profoundly reveals the internal tensions and interpretive boundaries inherent in creative transformation. The intellectual experiments and religious practices of Zhang Chunyi, drawn from a Chinese religious context, provide invaluable historical references and theoretical insights that can still inform key contemporary issues such as interreligious dialogue and multiple religious affiliations. Full article

This article offers a point-by-point overview of the concept of Christian education as understood by popes Francis and Leo XIV. It could be argued that the writings of these recent popes return to the early Christian idea of paideia Christi. Pope Leo XIV refers directly to the term ‘paideia’ by using the phrase ‘Christian paideia’. Francis’s educational anthropology, on the other hand, is theologically and pedagogically consistent with the tradition of Christian paideia. Although Francis does not use the term ‘paideia’, his understanding of education is also centred on the human person and their integral development. In this theoretical framework, education is no longer viewed merely as a tool for achieving salvation. However, it serves to enable the human person to grow in their humanity and thereby attain integral maturity, the pinnacle of which is union with God. It is within this theoretical perspective that the significance of education for building peace and social order should also be understood. In this view, peace emerges as the result of a humanistic education; hence, to achieve genuine peace among people, the emphasis must be placed on a genuinely humanistic education. The idea is rooted primarily in the ancient Greek understanding of paideia. It has also been taken up throughout history, for example, by Comenius in Pampaedia, Dewey in Democracy and Education (1916), Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968/1970), and, more recently, by Nussbaum in Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010). Pope Leo XIV also sees this perspective of internal coherence between authentic personal development. From the very beginning of his pontificate, one can observe in his teachings a linking of these two issues. In one of his earliest addresses, Pope Leo XIV emphasised that the concern for peace amongst people does indeed stem from the Christian faith. It could be said that building peace within human society is a Christian imperative, arising from the sharing of the gift which the Church has received from Christ himself: ‘Peace be with you!’. In this context, it is worth noting that the mission of bringing about peace is not merely the result of specific human activity, although this is, of course, important, and Leo indicates how it should be carried out. Nevertheless, what is crucial to the fulfilment of this mission is that the surest guarantee of its success is a personal relationship with Christ, from which flows the transmission of Christ’s gift of peace to the world. The Pope addressed the Italian Bishops’ Conference with the following words: “the relationship with Christ calls on us to develop a pastoral focus on the theme of peace”. Pope Leo thus points out that the path to building authentic peace in the world, which “is not the absence of conflict”, is the path of personal growth in one’s relationship with Christ, who is the source of peace. In this way, the maturing of a person of faith is the surest way of building—though in this context it would be more accurate to say: conveying—peace in the world. Full article

This paper adopts a multisemiotic perspective to examine the significations of monuments in city spaces in Calabar, Nigeria. Data were generated through photo documentation, participant observation and semi-structured interviews in a three-year fieldwork involving 34 participants. Drawing from interactions between the designers, the monuments and the social audience, findings present the monuments as multisemiotic significations of the benefits derived from Western education, gains from missionaries’ activities and their interface with the locals, abolition of the slave trade, sociocultural heritage, histories and identity, potential in tourism and carnivals, and an emerging shift from African traditional religion to Anglo-Christian beliefs. These representations are dialogic expressions of lived experiences and histories of residents that (re)construct memorials of their past and provide a guide for the present and project expectations of the future. The symbolic images integrate localised intentions of the designers drawn from the environment and the people, with appropriate interpretations by the social audiences to situate their indigenous significations within varying global discourses on monuments. Full article

This article presents the late eighteenth-century origins of debates concerning the Christianization of the Romanians, focusing on the controversy between Franz Joseph Sulzer and the representatives of the Transylvanian School. It argues that this early dispute already formulated key interpretative models later developed in modern historiography. Rather than being limited to the issue of Roman continuity, the debate also addressed questions of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, ritual affiliation, and the influence of South-Danubian and Bulgarian Christianity. The study further examines the political use of Sulzer’s arguments in the context of the Supplex Libellus Valachorum, as well as the role of Petru Maior in transmitting and reshaping the controversy for the nineteenth century. By reassessing both the original texts and their later reception, the article highlights the need to reconsider the historiographical construction of Romanian Christianization narratives. Full article

Friar Hernando de Talavera can be considered the main strategist of evangelisation at the end of the 15th century in the recently conquered Kingdom of Granada. To this end, he used the publication Breve y muy provechosa doctrina de lo que debe saber todo cristiano together with eight other very useful treatises [Brief and Very Useful Doctrine of What Every Christian Should Know, with Eight Other Very Useful Treatises], which he accompanied with his Instrucción a los vecinos del Albaicín [Instruction to the Residents of the Albaicín]. Successive editions of the catechism and some books included under the generic title Breve y muy provechosa doctrina [A Brief and Very Useful Doctrine] throughout the 16th century demonstrated its doctrinal soundness and pastoral effectiveness. Furthermore, they were later used not only for catechesis but also for literacy in the Kingdom of Granada and in the early days of the American conquest. The study will systematically present the different editions and their intentions from the Granada incunabulum to the present day. The texts composed by the first archbishop of Granada were the words used to unite several kingdoms and conquered territories in the faith and in the Castilian language. The aim of this study is to provide a systematic overview of the various editions published throughout history and to analyse the influence that some of them exerted on the subsequent development of evangelisation in Granada, Castile, and possibly the Americas. Full article

This paper reconsiders Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy through the lens of early modern European encounters with Chinese ethics. Against the standard view that Kantian ethics excludes ritual and embodied practice, it argues that Kant’s formalism represents a critical transformation of a problem long addressed by Confucian moral philosophy: how stable moral judgment can be cultivated without reliance on revelation or external authority. By tracing the transmission of Confucian ethics through Jesuit mediation and Christian Wolff’s rational reconstruction, the paper situates Kant in a shared problem-space of moral formation, repetition, and regulation. It analyses the abstraction of ritual into form and the role of relational alignment in both Confucian li and Kant’s categorical imperative. The paper concludes by suggesting that Confucian models of cultivated action can illuminate the practical limits of modern moral formalism. This study distinguishes between intellectual history and comparative reconstruction: the former provides the historical context of early modern engagements with Chinese philosophy, while the latter interprets Kant not as an opponent of ritual, but as a philosopher who reformulates its stabilising function under the conditions of modern moral autonomy. Full article

Late eighteenth-century Chosŏn Korea presents a distinctive case in the history of Christian missions: a Catholic community emerged without the sustained presence of foreign missionaries. This article examines that distinctiveness through the lens of text-mediated local reception. Since the seventeenth century, the writings of Matteo Ricci had rendered Christian doctrine intelligible within a Confucian framework through Jesuit accommodation. In late Chosŏn, these texts moved beyond scholarly curiosity and became a medium of criticism, moral reflection, and, for some readers, communal religious practice, particularly among politically marginalized Namin (Southern) circles and Silhak (Practical Learning)-oriented thinkers. The reception of Catholicism unfolded in stages. Sinographic texts composed by Jesuit missionaries were first understood within an existing Confucian horizon and then selectively appropriated by local readers. In some cases, this process led to baptism, early lay organization, and communal religious life. Through comparison with China, Japan, and Vietnam, this study argues that Chosŏn represents a distinctive case in which translated Christian texts, local appropriation, and community formation converged without a sustained missionary presence. It further shows that this process was shaped not by one-way transmission alone, but by the active agency of local readers and a bidirectional process of cultural translation. Full article

The biblical commentaries of Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376–444) represent a major contribution to the development of patristic exegesis. His Commentary on the Gospel of John demonstrates the close interaction between Christological theology, allegorical interpretation, and ecclesial polemic within late antique biblical interpretation. While Cyril’s exegesis has often been praised for its theological sophistication, modern scholarship increasingly recognizes that his interpretive framework also contains a pronounced anti-Judaic dimension. This study examines several key passages from Cyril’s Commentary on the Gospel of John in order to analyse how typology, supersessionist theology, and polemical rhetoric function together in his interpretation. Particular attention is given to Cyril’s portrayal of Jewish ignorance, his attribution of responsibility for the death of Christ, and his typological reinterpretation of Jewish law and history. The analysis demonstrates that Cyril integrates anti-Jewish rhetoric into a broader theological system in which the Mosaic law is presented as a provisional anticipation fulfilled in Christ and realized in the Christian Church. Full article

For the low-lying atolls across Pasifika, climate change is neither hoax nor hypothesis but an imminent and lived reality. If theology is always contextual, then this is our context: ecological collapse unfolding in real time, exposing the fragility of some of our most cherished doctrinal frameworks. This paper responds to the growing call to reconsider the nature and function of doctrine under such pressure. Anglican theologian Mike Higton speaks of the “unfinished conversations” and “many voices” addressing the environmental crisis. This study extends that talanoa by bringing the emerging ‘Pasifika Household of God’ tradition into conversation with the Church’s first sustained post-apostolic household theology: Irenaeus of Lyons’ vision of the oikonomia theou. Bringing the Pasifika tradition as developed in the Pasifika Conference of Churches (PCC) declarations into conversation with Irenaeus’ cosmic ktisiology, this paper challenges the dominance of Western doctrinal formulations and calls for repentance through a return to humanity’s true vocation of theosis—divine participation within and as part of what creation itself is becoming in Christ. This vision stands in stark contrast to empire’s apotheosis: the pursuit of false divinity through conquest, neoliberal success, and escapist eschatologies. In the Patristic–Pasifika partnership here proposed, doctrine is not a static catalogue of propositional beliefs but a sacramental indwelling. Doctrine becomes dwelling as depth of tradition meets depth of place. Full article

The classic definitions of God and Trinity involving the concept of personhood are grounded in the lexical fields of ancient theological and philosophical discourse. They raise the question of the extent to which a believer is required to enter into those worldviews and conceptualities. If a semantic approach is adopted, it becomes apparent that a term like “person” may be re-accentuated according to context. This is an approach which is itself found within patristic methodology, not least in the transitions from Hellenistic philosophy to Greek Christian theology, and then from Greek to Latin. With this method in place, readers may approach such terms using materials derived from their own culture and context, not just those of antiquity. The Kiswahili proverb, Mtu ni watu (a person is people), provides an example of such a term, used to define personhood. Its adoption means that African Christians may approach a core doctrine of the Christian faith easily from their own cultural perspective without requiring a grounding in European thought and history, using a methodology already adopted by their Christian ancestor, Augustine of Hippo. Full article

This article offers a rhetorical close reading of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. While the report presents itself as an institutional reckoning with a legacy of slavery, racism, and white supremacy, this analysis argues that its rhetoric simultaneously minimizes the significance of those injustices. Three recurring rhetorical moves structure this dynamic. First, the report centers the experiences and dilemmas of the seminary’s white leadership, producing narrative empathy for institutional actors while decentering the experiences of those harmed by the institution’s history. Second, it employs subtly pejorative characterizations of external critics and other historical actors, reinforcing an evangelical “embattled identity.” Third, the report rhetorically constructs the concept of the “gospel” in a manner that separates core Christian doctrine from concerns of racial justice. Drawing on agenda-setting theory, this study introduces the concept of religious agenda-setting to describe how religious leaders rhetorically prioritize certain moral concerns while marginalizing others. Together, these strategies allow for the report to confess historical wrongdoing while simultaneously preserving institutional legitimacy and authority. Full article

This paper argues that the colonial introduction of Christianity in Africa must be understood as a reordering of personhood, moral feeling, and the conditions under which lived experience becomes intelligible, rather than as a change in formal religious affiliation alone. Drawing on scholarship in African philosophy, religious history, European intellectual history, and African psychology, the paper traces how missionary Christianity reclassified African spiritual worlds, recoded suffering and misfortune, and disrupted the transmission of spiritual knowledge across generations. Crucially, it situates this encounter within the longer history of Christianity’s own disenchantment: the suppression, within dominant Protestant and Enlightenment traditions, of enchanted practices that had characterised European Christianity for over a millennium. The missionary traditions that condemned African spirit mediation, ancestral veneration, and ritual healing were carriers of a tradition that had practised structurally analogous things before disciplining them out of its own self-understanding. The paper shows that colonial religion produced layered forms of subjectivity in which ancestral obligation, Christian doctrine, communal personhood, moral anxiety, and therapeutic pluralism coexist in tension. The concept of ontological compression is proposed to name the condition under which parts of the self become unsayable within authorised vocabularies, a condition rendered doubly intense by the fact that the compressing tradition had already performed this narrowing upon itself. Rather than treating African spirituality as residue, superstition, or cultural background, the paper proposes that it should be approached as a living philosophical and psychological archive through which many people continue to interpret suffering, relation, responsibility, and reality itself. Full article

In modern China, the introduction of Science from the West posed a significant challenge to Chinese Buddhism, which was already in a state of decline. The intellectual currents of the New Culture Movement (1915–1923) and the subsequent anti-religious movement, which initially targeted Christianity but expanded to include all religions, subjected Buddhism to severe criticism and pressure for reform. In response, Buddhist intellectuals developed the idea of “Buddhism being scientific” as a defensive strategy. On the one hand, they direct parallels between Buddhist concepts, such as the microscopic world described in scriptures, and modern scientific discoveries like microbiology and the theory of relativity, aiming to demonstrate Buddhism’s empirical validity and superiority. On the other hand, they argued that Buddhism could supplement the shortcomings of science, particularly in addressing spiritual and moral needs, thus positioning it as a necessary complement to a purely materialistic worldview. Under the dominant influence of the scientific paradigm, Buddhism underwent a profound academic transformation. Its teachings were systematically integrated into modern disciplinary frameworks, such as Buddhist history, philosophy, and psychology, shifting from a primarily faith-based practice to an object of scholarly study. This scientization process stripped many traditional elements of their sacred character, reinterpreting them through a rational lens and ultimately redirecting the course of modern Chinese Buddhism. Full article

In the history as well as historiography of Chinese Buddhism, the tradition has often been closely associated with death-related cultural practices and ideas, an association that has frequently carried negative connotations. Early twentieth-century reformers such as Taixu famously criticized Buddhism as a religion of ghosts and funerals and sought to redirect Mahāyāna Buddhism toward engagement with an urban, modernizing society. Contemporary Taiwanese Buddhists have realized many aspects of this socially engaged vision. Yet concern with death remains deeply embedded in Buddhist life. Far from standing in contradiction to social engagement, this concern has become one of its central expressions, most visibly in the emergence of modern Buddhist palliative care. Focusing on the writings of the scholar-monk Shi Huimin, this article examines the development of Buddhist palliative care in Taiwan in response to a secular, multireligious, and rapidly aging society, with primary attention to Huimin’s conceptual work. Rather than treating death in isolation, Huimin situates dying within a broader ethical horizon that links good death to good aging, good living, and community formation. Through his reinterpretation of the Five Śīlas and his notion of a Community Pure Land, he extends prevailing concerns with dying well toward a more comprehensive reflection on everyday moral cultivation, healthy lifestyles, and communal responsibility. In this sense, the study reads Buddhist palliative care as a site that “provincializes” dominant Euro-American frameworks of spiritual and palliative care, highlighting their particular historical and Christian-inflected origins while tracing how they are reconfigured and made productive in a multireligious, secular context. By foregrounding Huimin’s conceptual contributions, this study highlights how palliative and spiritual care are localized and reworked within Taiwanese Buddhism, connecting end-of-life care to broader questions of life, aging, and community well-being. Full article