Christian embodiment of neo-Confucian active mysticism: a study on Jia Yuming's spirituality

Abstract

Jia Yuming is one of the most prolific Chinese theologians of the twentieth century. He is often considered a Chinese fundamentalist theologian. This thesis is dedicated to challenging this prevalent understanding and providing a more comprehensive grasp of Jia by looking at his spirituality. It will argue that a more thorough dialogical engagement with Jia’s influences from Western Christianity and neo-Confucian mind-heart school can demonstrate a more nuanced picture of him as a mind-heart mystical theologian. We will adopt the approach of comparative theology to examine Jia’s spirituality from two perspectives: Jia’s Western theological resources and the neo-Confucian mind-heart school. The approach of comparative theology will enable us to reveal the substrata of Jia’s way of thinking—neo-Confucian mind-heart mysticism. Through a historical survey of Jia’s life experiences and a close reading of his writings, we will clarify Jia’s major Western theological resources: the American Holiness Movement, Wesleyan Perfectionism and Quakerism, as well as the neo-Confucian mind-heart school. We will then examine Jia’s spirituality, including anthropology, hamartiology, pneumatology and sanctification, in comparison with Wang Yangming’s teachings, the latter being the most important representative of the mind-heart school within neo-Confucianism. In doing so, we will reveal in what ways Jia’s thinking reflected the holistic and experiential features of Wang Yangming’s thought. We will compare Jia’s idea of Christ-human (Jidu ren) and the effort of withdrawal and cultivation (tuixiu gongfu) with Wang Yangming’s teaching of the totality of equilibrium and harmony (zhong he) and the Confucian way of conscientiousness and altruism (zhong shu zhi dao). Through this comparison the active mystical mind embodied in Jia’s spirituality will become clear. We will demonstrate how this active mysticism at the core of Jia’s spirituality enabled him to value both spiritual and social dimensions of the Christian life. These characteristics of Jia’s spirituality, which showed the unity of the spiritual and the mundane, the individual and the public, will challenge the landscape of Chinese theology. Looking at Jia’s theology through the lens of Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder’s tripartite typology as well as Alexander Chow’s adjusted version in the context of Chinese theology will show that Jia’s theology carries not only the type A law-oriented features but also the type C history-oriented inclination. This thesis will argue that it was because of Jia’s active mystical mind that his theology can marry the two types of theology. Analysing the complex roots manifested in his theology offers a more comprehensive grasp of Jia and overturns the oversimplified interpretation of him as a fundamentalist. Jia’s active mysticism will broaden our understanding of Christian mysticism, which has often been considered as confined to the individual, other-worldly oriented realm. Jia’s theological construction, itself a fruit of what may be termed comparative theology rather than simply a contextual theology, will deepen our understanding of the formation of Chinese theology.