Musing with Confucius and Paul

Yeo's intriguing volume is an apologia for Chinese Christians. It articulates how a Chinese identity and a Christian identity can co-exist without capitulating to some Western or other cultural model of Christian identity. To be a Chinese Christian is to adopt a distinctive, unique identity that owes much to both traditions but is sui generis. Providing great resources for the construction of a Chinese Christian theology, Confucius and Paul converge across a surprisingly broad front. Yet, the Christ of the Cross completes or extends what is merely implicit or absent in Confucius; and Confucius amplifies various elements of Christian faith (e.g., community) often under played in Western Christianity. The Christ of God as found in Paul's Letter to the Galatians brings Confucian ethics in The Analects to its fulfilment while simultaneously protecting the church from the aberrations of Chinese history and protecting China against the aberrations of Christian history in the West. China can develop a distinctive vision of Christianity, and will fulfil its global mission if it can find its own authentic identity.The Confucian tradition within that identity will revitalize global Christianity.