中欧社会论坛 - China Europa ForumThe Localisation of Christianity in China
Authors: Tang, Yi
Extract from ” Studies in World Religions, 1999, No. 2, pp.43-50“
The basic presumption of this paper is as follows: The process of a foreign concept system being rooted in the local culture is a process of semantic adaptation. Only under the premise that the system of a foreign concept could to some extent share semantics with the local context, the foreign system could become comprehensible, acceptable, active and with lively cultural values in local discourse. The process of integrating Buddhism into China is thus. Under the basis of this presumption, the paper presents a three-level theoretical model: adoption of semantics, the compromise of concepts, and the fulfilment of values, in order to explain how the Christian faith has been localised in the Chinese context but not fully completed.
1) The adoption of semantics
The adoption of semantics means at the preliminary stage to interpret the foreign concept by adopting local words and sentences. The core issue is to maintain the doctrine of the original religions through the full use of the Chinese language resources so as to facilitate the dissemination of religions. However, once the foreign ideas are translated into Chinese words or sentences, the Chinese language system is already being involved. Therefore, ideas are formed based on the Chinese pragmatic context, and finally are dominated by the discourse structure in certain regions and times, and thus are beyond the control of the author or the translator. The Chinese translations of classic Nestorianism have expressed the difficult situation on the aspect of adopting semantics when Christianity entered China in early years, resulting in failure in the end.
2) The compromise of concepts
The compromise of concepts is to endeavour to transplant foreign concepts with the existing concept of local context with the aim of facilitating popularity. It also means to reconcile the form of these concepts, which are contradictory in logic or heterogeneous and conflicting in value. However, this method fails to seek a unified theory to solve the contradictions in logic or conflicts in value. The adoption of semantics is in general unaware of misleading the religion, while the compromise of concept is mostly integrated consciously. Such compromise is expressed not only in the form of texts, but also in practice.
3) The fulfilment of values
The fulfilment of values is to realise that it is not only inappropriate to adopt the existing local concept, but also that it has distorted the original concept. Thus some special semantic measures must be taken, such as semantic neutralisation, the restrictive tone, creation of new meanings, and transformation of the original language or symbolic form, in order that the external value can be established in China. Fulfilment of values is to reinterpret the Chinese culture and to give it an unprecedented new meaning, based on the original meaning of some form of Christian faith. Its distinguishing features are: to maintain a fixed unwavering Christian doctrine (often based on Sectarian doctrines as the diversion), to seek a new expression of the Chinese culture or re-interpret the concept of the Chinese culture, in order that Christianity can be promoted. Therefore, as one of the localisation methods, the fulfilment of values can be divided into two types: one is to express the Christian faith with the use of Chinese cultural forms; the other method is generally to adopt the Christian faith to interpret various cultural values, including traditional and modern concepts.
In short, despite the efforts of these three types of localisation methods in the long history, success has not yet been achieved. The fundamental reason lies in the fact that during the process of semantic adaptation at these three levels, there is no common ground for the system of the foreign belief and the local context in terms of world outlook and life attitude. In other words, no shared semantic premise is found. As a result, in the three-stage process of adaptation in terms of adoption of semantics, compromise of concept, and fulfilment of values, if Chinese culture is reserved, it could stray from the original doctrine of the religion; and if the original doctrine is maintained, it could drift off from the Chinese context. Therefore, the Christian faith comes from the Christian faith, and the Chinese culture comes from Chinese culture. The two have not yet formed a complete harmonious picture.