第五章 王怡神学的后自由主义特征

Footnotes

1. Gary Dorrien, “A Third Way in Theology? The Origins of Postliberalism,” Christian Century 118/20 (2001), 16. ↩

2. See, for example, Ibid.; and C. C. Pecknold, Transforming Postliberal Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 1. ↩

3. George Hunsinger doubts the existence of the so-called “Yale School” as a common theological program, arguing that it is more a “fiction,” or an “invention of theological journalism.” This argument serves his intention to distinguish between Frei’s “moderate propositionalism” and Lindbeck’s “pragmatism.” In this sense, he claims that Lindbeck’s theories of truth and doctrines are actually more “neoliberal” than “postliberal.” However, in terms of the theory of religion, Lindbeck remain postliberal. Furthermore, Hunsinger does not deny Lindbeck’s influence on postliberal theology, but rather attempts to narrow the scope of postliberalism in order to arrive at what he considers a more accurate definition. George Hunsinger, “Postliberal Theology,” in Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Kevin Vanhoozer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 42- 57. A defence against the accusation of “pragmatism” against Lindbeck, see Bruce Marshall, “Introduction: The Nature of Doctrine after 25 Years,” in George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, 25th Anniversary Edition (Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), xvii. prominent role in Wang’s thought. I contend this relates to his wariness towards virtue ethics— frequently associated with an emphasis on narrative—which emerged during his engagement with the Confucian worldview. This will be one of the main themes explored in the next chapter. This chapter will focus on analysing the cultural-linguistic characteristics of Wang’s theology. However, readers familiar with the rift between fundamentalist and liberal Christians in modern Chinese church history may immediately recognise the tension between Wang’s insistence on the “evangelical-fundamentalist identity” of house churches and the Christian ecumenical movement for which the cultural-linguistic approach was originally conceived. This may lead them to question the compatibility of Wang’s position with postliberal theology. As Yao Xiyi observes, early 20th-century “liberal church leaders and intellectuals viewed denominationalism as an obstacle to the contextualisation of the church and became the backbone of major ecumenical organisations.”4 With Western-influenced “denominationalism” as the primary target of opposition, Christian sinicisation and ecumenism were regarded as two sides of the same coin. The National Christian Council of China (NCC), the precursor to the TSPM established in 1922, listed both the Three-Self principles of “self-governance, self-propagation, and self-support” and the Christian ecumenical movement as its primary objectives.5 By also referring to the Reformed and fundamentalist affiliations within the house churches mentioned earlier, we can ↩

4. Yao Xiyi, “Jiaohui heyi linian de chongtu: Zhongguo Neidi Hui yu Zhonghua Quanguo Jidujiao Xiejin Hui guanxi zhi yanbian (1922-1926 nian)” 教会合一理念的冲突：中国内地会与中华全国基督教协进会关系之 演变 (1922-1926 年) [The Conflicting Visions of Church Union: The China Inland Mission and the National Christian Council, 1922-26], Daofeng: Jidujiao wenhua pinglun 道风：基督教文化评论 [Logos and Pneuma: Chinese Journal of Theology] 20 (Spring 2004), 236. ↩

5. Ibid., 237. Of course, during this period, China remained entrenched in the turbulent Warlord Era; hence the “Three-Self” doctrine stemmed more from the nationalist fervour of Chinese Christians than from the control mechanisms of the ruling powers. For a thorough study on the NCC’s historical trajectory towards “subjectification” and its eventual replacement by the National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China (TSPM), alongside the tensions and struggles between its radical and moderate factions, see Song Jun, Bianju zhong de jueze: Zhonghua Quanguo Jidujiao Xiejinhui lishi de zhongjie (1949- 1951) 变局中的抉择：中华全国基督教协进会历史的终结（1949-1951）[Choices in a Time of Upheaval: The Demise of the National Christian Council of China (1949–1951)] (Hong Kong: Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 2017). analytically distinguish two broad orientations in modern Chinese church history—an interpretive contrast that largely reflects Wang’s own construal of that history: one that may be characterised, at the level of theological and ecclesial practice, as “liberal-ecumenical-Three- Self,” and another as “fundamentalist-Reformed-house church.” Centainly, such a binary risks oversimplification. As many Sino-theological scholars have noted, the historical development of the National Christian Council and the Three-Self movement cannot be straightforwardly identified with liberal theology; their origins include significant evangelical influences, and their leadership and constituencies have long encompassed a range of theological positions.6 Nor does “ecumenical” necessarily coincide with “liberal” in any strict sense. Nevertheless, this contrast retains a certain analytical value insofar as it captures divergent patterns in how Christianity is related to cultural context, doctrinal articulation, and ecclesial practice, especially in their respective construals of catholicity. It is precisely this heuristic distinction that the present chapter seeks to reconsider and reconfigure through the lens of postliberal, cultural-linguistic theology. This chapter first explores George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine,7 highlighting the cultural-linguistic approach it proposes and the challenges it poses to the contemporary mainstream agenda of interreligious dialogue. Next, it addresses the question of the applicability of this postliberal perspective to Wang’s theology. This primarily concerns the differing attitudes of Lindbeck and Wang towards the Christian ecumenical movement. A review of internal dialogue within postliberal theology, particularly Hauerwas’s response to the ecumenical movement, demonstrates that the postliberal resources provided by The Nature of Doctrine have been applied to support a vision of catholicity that prioritises the locality of ↩

6. See, for example, Daniel H. Bays, A New History of Christianity in China (Chichester, England: Wiley- Blackwell, 2012); and Philip L. Wickeri, Seeking the Common Ground: Protestant Christianity, the Three-Self Movement, and China’s United Front (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1988). ↩

7. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine. particular worshipping communities. Finally, it summarises how Wang’s later theology resonates with the cultural-linguistic approach, and its significance for the ERCC’s insistence on anti-sinicisation agenda. 1.1. The Three Models of Religion The Nature of Doctrine opens with a question about ecumenism: Given the doctrinal diversity among various Christian denominations, is the reconciliation and unity claimed by Christian ecumenical movement self-deceptive?8 As a theologian deeply committed to the dialogue agenda between the Lutheran and Catholic churches, 9 Lindbeck insists that ecumenical reconciliation has its reality, which does not come at the expense of sacrificing the important differences between denominational doctrines. To this end, Lindbeck proposes his postliberal cultural-linguistic approach as an alternative to the two dominant models of religious theory that have contributed significantly to the predicament of contemporary universalist movements. On the one hand, the “cognitive-propositional” model treats doctrine as a series of propositions corresponding to truth, thereby framing doctrinal differences as a zero-sum contest between truth and falsehood.10 On the other hand, the “experiential expressionist” model, with strong affinities to liberal theology and influenced by Friedrich Schleiermacher’s experiential-centred theories of faith, tends to focus on the inner religious consciousness of the human being. Theologians who adopt this perspective tend to emphasise the mutual learning between religions, whose performances are regarded as rooted in the same inner human experiential consciousness.11 ↩

8. Ibid., 1-2. ↩

9. For a review of Lindbeck’s engagement in the dialogue agenda, and the post-Vatican II conciliar background of his postliberal proposal, see Marshall, “Introduction,” x-xi. ↩

10. “They [sceptics of ecumenism] are inclined to think that the very notion of doctrinal reconciliation without: doctrinal change is self-contradictory, and they suspect that the dialogue participants are self-deceived victims of their desire to combine ecumenical harmony with denominational loyalty.” Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 1. Parenthesis added. ↩

11. Ibid., 9. Despite Lindbeck’s enthusiastic concern for dialogue between Protestantism and Catholicism, he worries that the dialogue conducted according to the latter model may too readily affirm a common “basic experience” 12 underlying all religious symbols and expressions, thereby overlooking many religions’ assertions of their own unsurpassability. As he observes, a religion typically asserts that its truth teachings are not merely relatively truer than those of other religions in a limited sense, but rather “unsurpassably true.”13 It may be said that a dialogue approach which disregards the unsurpassability of religion appears to legitimise ecumenicalism’s principle of denominational mutual learning, yet does so in a self- destructive manner. For, as Lindbeck points out, this approach may easily add fuel to the fire of “the religious privatism and subjectivism that is fostered by the social pressures of the day,” leading to the indiscriminate abandonment of doctrines.14 Lindbeck’s insistence on unsurpassability may initially appear to align him with an anti- ecumenical, propositionalist position. However, Lindbeck also identifies a significant limitation of the cognitive-propositional theory: its failure to recognise the crucial importance of the entire intrasystematic context through which propositions acquire their meaning. For example, he suggests that when a crusader shouts “Christus est Dominus” while killing pagans, the utterance nevertheless “contradicts the Christian understanding of Lordship as embodying, for example, suffering servanthood,” despite the propositional overlap involved.15 Significantly inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic model understands religion as a “language-game,” conceived primarily as “a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought.”16 This ↩

12. Ibdi., 27. ↩

13. Ibid. ↩

14. Ibid., 63. ↩

15. Ibid., 50. ↩

16. Ibid., 19. framework is formed within a communal context and functions as the grammar through which members employ vocabulary and symbols meaningfully. 1.2. The Cultural-Linguistic Model and the Doctrine as Regulative Grammar The Wittgensteinian emphasis on the decisive role of grammar in language brings into focus the categorical dimensions essential for determining a sentence’s meaning and truth- value. Rather than prioritising vocabulary or isolated symbols, it foregrounds the contextual framework that enables symbols to acquire meaning and to relate coherently to one another. Applied to religion, this perspective suggests that while the formal expression of orthodox doctrine—such as the symbols and concepts used to articulate the three regulative principles— may vary across contexts, its content has “been abidingly important from the outset in shaping mainstream Christian identity.”17 Using the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Creed as orienting coordinates, Lindbeck identifies three ancient Christian principles that contributed to their formation: monotheism, historical specificity, and Christological maximalism. These principles function as regulative norms, shaping how Christians engage with contemporary contexts and articulate their faith. The form of doctrine, by contrast, consists in sentences composed of words, or in other modes of expression—such as aesthetic symbols—that may be meaningfully deployed and interconnected in accordance with the rules operative within this grammatical context. Moreover, it is worth noting that Lindbeck does not pursue a foundationalist approach to examine further the basis upon which those three regulative principles and the form of life of the early church upon which they depended were derived (such as more fundamental propositions or human religious consciousness). This may also be the influence of Wittgenstein, for, as Bernd Wannenwetsch observes, “according to Wittgenstein, … it is possible to see how ↩

17. Ibid., 81. a grammar works only as it is used; we cannot see how it is ‘made’.”18 For the form of life upon which grammar depends—the cultural-linguistic context as Lindbeck calls it—is something that “has to be accepted, the given.”19 As mentioned above, for Lindbeck, such a postliberal approach is mainly proposed to serve the ecumenical movement. It created the possibility to accommodate both the space for reconciliation between different denominations and the unsurpassibility of Christianity. On the one hand, Christianity’s identity rests upon the unique grammar borne and cultivated within the church’s given form of life, and it constitutes the content of doctrine and the very essence of catholicity. On the other hand, this content manifests through diverse expressions across different eras and contexts. These represent the forms of doctrine and the very reason denominational pluralism exists. From this perspective, the church’s inability to achieve unity represents a failure in linguistic competence. The key to ecclesial unity lies in mastering one’s “official tongue,” that is, the language wielded by those Christians regarded as “catholic” and“orthodox” in early church history, as well as those whom “we now call ‘ecumenical’.”20 A church incapable of realising unity resembles an individual confused by the manifold expressions of their mother tongue—be it dialects or shifts in vocabulary—due to insufficient familiarity with it, thereby failing to discern the unity within. The ecumenical movement, then, constitutes a campaign to master the church’s mother tongue. By becoming proficient in the church’s official language and its regulative grammar, the church can appreciate the diverse expressions of different denominations without compromising its assertion of its distinct identity vis-à-vis other religions. ↩

18. Bernd Wannanwetsch, Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens, trans. Margaret Kohl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 220. ↩

19. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), II xi 226e. Cited in Wannanwetsch, Political Worship, 220. ↩

20. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 86. 2. Postliberalism and the Search for Locality 2.1. Wang Yi and Postliberalism: A Possible Resonance? Once the dynamic character of Lindbeck’s regulative principles is brought into focus, together with their affinity to Wittgenstein’s emphasis on grammar, it becomes evident that their relation to religious expression bears a notable resemblance to the relationship between the life essence and external forms of the house church tradition as articulated by Liu Tongsu and Wang.21 At this point, however, the foregoing analogy encounters a significant difficulty. Despite the apparent conceptual affinity, their respective attitudes toward the Christian ecumenical movement diverge sharply. Wang once harshly criticised the Lutheran-Catholic unity movement: The Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church issued a joint statement on the doctrine of justification in 1999. It … is a vindication of Luther; the Pope no longer condemns Luther, but the reason is “actually, you did not oppose me.” Unfortunately, Luther’s descendants today lack the courage to say, “Either change yourself or continue to condemn me, because I truly oppose you.”22 Wang describes the Lutheran church as a group founder who has left the group. By publishing the declaration of reconciliation in 1999, which overlooked crucial doctrinal differences between the two denominations, it altered the meaning of Reformation Day to All Saints’ Day.23 These arguments seem to put Wang in a diametrically opposed position to Lindbeck on the issue of ecumenism. However, such an anti-ecumenical stance, as I will demonstrate, does not negate the cultural-linguistic characteristics of Wang’s later theology. As Marshall notes, ↩

21. See Chapter 3, sec. 2.1-2.2. ↩

22. Wang Yi, Fuyin de zhengbian: Zongjiao gaige chensi lu 福音的政变：宗教改革沉思录 [The Gospel Revolt: Meditation of Protestant Reformation] (Hong Kong: Covenant Publishing Limited, 2017), 139. ↩

23. Ibid., 140. The Nature of Doctrine is of “peripheral” importance in Lindbeck’s ecumenical quest, and the vast majority of studies of the book do not concern themselves with supporting the ecumenical agenda.24 This reveals that the postliberal theological vision Lindbeck offers has long been influential beyond the ecumenical purpose he set. We now turn to explore the postliberal theological resources that Hauerwas inherited from Lindbeck and further examine their divergent attitudes towards the ecumenical movement, thereby depict the subsequent development of postliberal theology. Then, by elucidating the direct influence of Hauerwas’s postliberal approach on Wang’s later theology, we will discover that this brief detour serves to deepen our understanding of the significance of Wang’s insistence on anti-sinicisation, as it further reveals the concern for locality that advances the critical force of postliberalism against liberal theology. 2.2. The Postliberal Antifoundational Character of Stanley Hauerwas’s Theology Hauerwas explicates the influences of Lindbeck and The Nature of Doctrine on him in several places, particularly in drawing his attention to the importance of Christianity as “performance.”25 For him, Lindbeck’s elaboration of the cultural-linguistic approach posed a significant challenge to liberal theology. It affirms the distinct origins of experiences formed in the particular communal life generated by Christian faith, and the chasm of incommensurability between these and other experiences. This reveals “the distinctive nature of Christian ethics” and the irreducible significance of the church within such an ethics.26 This echoes Hauerwas’s assertion that the church is itself “a social ethic.”27 ↩

24. Marshall, “Introduction,” xxii-xxiii. ↩

25. See Stanley Hauerwas, Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society (Minneapolis: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 1-9; and Stanley Hauerwas, Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence (London: SPCK, 2004), 78. ↩

26. Hauerwas, Against the Nations, 4. ↩

27. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 99-102. At the same time, Hauerwas also responds to the criticism levelled at his theology for its “sectarian” character by drawing upon the perspective opened up through Lindbeck’s engagement with liberal theology in his book.28 He clarifies that what postliberalism has proposed is a kind of antifoundationalism, opposing the notion that all religious convictions are underpinned by “universal principles or structures.”29 This antifoundational position cannot be reduced to a form of irrationalism, as James Gustafson supposes, because it does not “justify Christian belief by making Christian convictions immune from challenge from other modes of knowledge, particularly science.”30 Rather, it admits that the convictions of Christian communities should “open to the challenge of other perspectives,” but “without the outcome of those challenges being predetermined by legal or social power.”31 In other words, Hauerwas’s postliberal approach is not concerned with erecting a firewall around particular cultural-linguistic traditions to ward off external threats and ensure their stability; instead, it is about these traditions growing and interacting organically, free from the dominant mainstream social pressures. Science, from the perspective of postliberalism, belongs to these particular traditions just as much as religious doctrines do, rather than being a unifying principle or critical criterion that stands above them. Its own developmental history, including the renewal of scientific paradigms, clearly demonstrates this point. The above defences clearly demonstrate how Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic approach inspired Hauerwas. However, despite sharing these concerns, Hauerwas did not join Lindbeck ↩

28. See, for example, James M. Gustafson, “The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church and the University,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 40 (2013), 88-94. Retrieved from https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ctsa/article/view/3298. In this article, Gustafson also criticises Lindbeck’s sectarian tendency, which he believes significantly contributes to Hauerwas’s same tendency. Therefore, despite only mentioning Gustafson in one note, Hauerwas’s references to and interpretations of Lindbeck’s work in Against the Nations can also be seen as conducting a hidden dialogue between Lindbeck and Gustafson. For his direct response to Gustafson, see Stanley Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stoc, 2010), 2-21. ↩

29. Hauerwas, Against the Nations, 5-6. ↩

30. Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 9. ↩

31. Ibid., 11. in the ecumenical movement for church unity. We now examine their respective discussions on ecumenism to demonstrate how the profound emphasis on locality inherent in the postliberal cultural-linguistic approach finds more thorough attention and extension in Hauerwas’s work. This, in turn, advances postliberal theology’s deeper understanding of religious or denominational dialogue. 2.3. To Be Ecumenical, or Not, That Is Not the Question Lindbeck has interrogated Hauerwas’s stance on ecumenism directly. His primary aim in doing so is not merely to call upon Hauerwas and his followers to participate in the ecumenical movement as a general agenda, but to argue that in the face of the dispute within this movement between the “Faith and Order” and “Life and Work” approaches, Hauerwas and his followers ought to align themselves with the former position.32 That article appeals to Hauerwas’s argument in support of the unity of the church, pointing out that for Hauerwas: 1) “[T]he unity of the church is a necessary condition” for disciples to bear faithful witness to the gospel;33 and 2) This unity should become “a tangible communal reality in space and time.”34 However, Lindbeck does not use these arguments as indisputable grounds for insisting that Hauerwas should participate in the ecumenical movement. He correctly clarifies that Hauerwas would hold that “the visibility of the church’s unity is independent of ecumenism,” and would be more inclined to perceive this “visible unity” within “the broken fragments of the church.”35 He therefore acknowledges that, theoretically, Hauerwas’s theology need not concur with the ecumenical movement, yet maintains that “it is a practically necessary precondition for his work.”36 ↩

32. George Lindbeck, “Ecumenisms in Conflict: Where Does Hauerwas Stand?,” in God, Truth, and Witness: Engaging Stanley Hauerwas, eds. L. Gregory Jones et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005), 224-228. ↩

33. Ibid., 217. ↩

34. Ibid., 217. ↩

35. Ibid., 218. ↩

36. Ibid., 219. Reflecting on Hauerwas’s theological journey, it is certainly marked by elements transcending denominational boundaries. Taking as an example the profound influences of John Paul II and John Howard Yoder on Hauerwas, Lindbeck observes that without the achievements of the ecumenical movement, Hauerwas could not have so readily bridged the divide between Catholicism and Mennonitism. Nor could his theological endeavours have attained the present level of maturity and influence. Therefore, even though he could understand Hauerwas’s “apparent disengagement” from the ecumenical movement for the reason of “the division of labor,” Lindbeck remained convinced that Hauerwas’s theological mission and ecumenism formed an interwoven life-unity, bound together for better or worse.37 Consequently, he sought to find Hauerwasianism’s proper place within the internal controversies of the ecumenical movement. Lindbeck reviewed the development of the ecumenical movement, identifying a trend that caused him particular concern. He believed it was losing its vitality, primarily because, starting with the 1968 WCC assembly in Uppsala, its central focus had shifted from “Faith and Order” to “Life and Work.”38 He argues that the most profound effect of this shift lies in making “the unity of the world, not that of the church in service to the world’s unity” as its “direct goal.”39 This has generated a “God-world-church” imaginary as the new paradigm, supplanting the previous “God-church-world” one, and the devastating consequence is that “the world sets the agenda for the church.”40 This development clearly runs counter to Hauerwas’s teachings that the church is itself a social strategy and should constitute a “contrast society.”41 For this reason, in confronting the present predicament of the ecumenical movement, Lindbeck called upon ↩

37. Ibid. ↩

38. Ibid., 221 ↩

39. Ibid. ↩

40. Ibid., 223. ↩

41. Ibid., 227. For Hauerwas’s argument that the church does not possess a social strategy but is itself a social strategy, see Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2014), 43-48. Hauerwasians to join in promoting the restoration of an ecumenical agenda prioritising “Faith and Order.”42 However, Hauerwas declined Lindbeck’s invitation. His response43 can be seen to reveal that the greatest divergence between them lies in their imaginations of the relationship between the unity and denominational differences. Hauerwas cites Lindbeck’s statement that God’s ecumenical work within the church “is destroying us (denominations) bit by bit” just as “Christian sacrifice brings us closer to Christ.”44 This conflicts with the ecumenicity he learned from Yoder. Hauerwas points out that, from Yoder’s perspective, the unity pursued by the mainstream ecumenical movement is largely “the unity of government.” 45 The “bureaucratic achievements” attained through such endeavours may well numb the church to the very obstacles hindering genuine unity among the members of Christ’s body.46 For the pluralistic inclusion achieved under such circumstances rests upon the same conception of diversity as the “American pluralist cafeteria,”47 which attributes divergent concepts to the subjective domains of individual denominations, while the normative principle of tolerance governs interdenominational relations. In stark contrast, the unity of the body of Christ demands that believers take the authenticity of their particular convictions seriously. For this reason, reconciliation between denominations is inevitably arduous and cannot be resolved through cheap liberal-style tolerance. Considering that Yoder regards the church’s unwillingness to acknowledge its own “fallibility” as a defining feature of Constantinianism, the arduous task of reconciliation within ↩

42. “I for one cannot but hope that the call comes, not only to those who have influenced Stanley, but also to many of those whom he has influenced. Ecumenism needs them.” Lindbeck, “Ecumenisms in Conflict: Where Does Hauerwas Stand?,” 228. ↩

43. Stanley Hauerwas, “Which Church? What Unity? Or, an Attempt to Say What I May Think about the Future of Christian Unity,” Pro Ecclesia 22/3 (2013), 263-280. ↩

44. Ibid., 268. Citing here, John Wright ed., Postliberal Theology and the Church Catholic: Conversations with George Lindbeck, David Burrell, and Stanley Hauerwas (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2012), 118. ↩

45. Stanley Hauerwas, “Which Church? What Unity?,” 270. ↩

46. Ibid. ↩

47. Ibid. the body of Christ is thus understood as an expression of the church’s “disavowal” of Constantinianism.48 The church must faithfully confront its own “history of apostasy,” acknowledging that its beliefs and practices have at times been erroneous, requiring repentance and divine forgiveness.49 This is what is lacking in modern pluralistic ecumenical endeavours. The harmony produced by driving differences into the realm of subjective matter in the name of tolerance leaves no room for churches to accuse each other of serious adherence to certain positions on certain issues, nor for churches to repent for their own fallibility. In contrast, Hauerwas contends that the unity of the church does not require uniformity based on mutual agreement. Rather, churches need one another precisely because they acknowledge their own fallibility, allowing tradition to be continually challenged and renewed through debate. Based on this, Hauerwas argues that “difference can threaten unity, but unity cannot be Catholic without difference.”50 We might quote G.K. Chesterton to illustrate the ecumenical problem Hauerwas has identified: “The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it.”51 In the era of Christendom, differences were suppressed by Constantinian political forces. In modern times, Constantinianism found a subtle yet more radical expression in liberalism, under the guise of superficial respect and tolerance, marginalising all differences and rendering them insignificant. Within this understanding of catholicity, an emphasis on locality is made prominent. Concrete and specific local church communities have become the true sources of flourishing unity. On the one hand, this preserves the diversity of the body of Christ, while on the other hand, this diversity is not rigidified, but “must be tested … from one Eucharistic assembly to another Eucharistic assembly.”52 The communitarian character of Hauerwas’s theology is ↩

48. Ibid., 271. ↩

49. Ibid. ↩

50. Ibid., 273. ↩

51. G.K. Chesterton, Heretics (n.p.: Christian Classic Ethereal Library, 2002), 5. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/heretics.html ↩

52. Stanley Hauerwas, “Which Church? What Unity?,” 273. evident here. He draws upon Alasdair MacIntyre’s “account of tradition-constituted rationality”53 to illustrate the openness of such locality to challenges. This account maintains that although our perspectives are rooted in tradition, tradition itself is living, dynamic, and not self-enclosed. When confronted with an “epistemological crisis” arising from encounters with other traditions, tradition may overcome such challenges through reformulation, thereby evolving into a more mature tradition. Of course, the possibility of failure cannot be ruled out. A tradition may “be subject to … another tradition” if it fails to overcome its challenges.54 In this perspective, ecumenicity, as Hauerwas understands it, must emerge from local traditions that cannot be abstracted when confronted with their enduring “epistemological crisis.” They must persistently question how to “have confidence they (different Eucharistic assemblies) are worshipping the same God,” whilst upholding the truth of their own distinctive teachings and practices.55 This enduring challenge does not constitute a destruction of traditional life, but rather is essential to its growth and cannot be replaced by the unity of governance of the ecumenical movement or the liberal belief in tolerance. It can be observed that Hauerwas’s emphasis on tradition largely echoes what Lindbeck sought to achieve in The Nature of Doctrine through his introduction of the regulative theory of doctrine. On the one hand, both authors diverge from the contemporary political liberalism’s implicit conception of a “unencumbered self,”56 instead championing the constitutive role of tradition and community in the very formation of human agency. Moreover, like many communitarians, they endeavour to clarify the organicity and openness of tradition while emphasising the given cultural-linguistic context, thereby addressing criticisms of tribalism. Lindbeck’s normative theory, nevertheless, remains insufficient to satisfy Hauerwas’s pursuit ↩

53. Ibid., 276. ↩

54. Ibid. ↩

55. Ibid., 273. Parenthesis added. ↩

56. The term was employed by Michael Sandel in his critique of Rawlsian liberalism. Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ix-xvi. of locality. This divergence becomes evident through their different accounts of the sources of community and grammar. It is difficult not to be reminded of Immanuel Kant’s theory of the categories when considering Lindbeck’s exposition of religion as an “interpretive scheme” upon which human beings rely to generate experience in life. In Kant’s theory, the twelve categories constitute the a priori formal conditions of human intellectual activity.57 Applied to intuition, which provides content and material, they are the necessary conditions that render human cognitive activity concerning an object possible.58 Actually, Lindbeck occasionally refers to the interpretive schema as a “categorial framework,”59 though it remains markedly distinct from Kant’s in the following respects. Firstly, Lindbeck’s schema is not an a priori form of thought, but rather emerges within communal life. A second related distinction is that this schema possesses particularity due to differing formative elements within cultures,60 rather than being universal conditions of human reason, as in Kant’s account of categories. However, these differences are insufficient to support Hauerwas’s anti-foundationalist understanding of locality. For Lindbeck, in articulating the Christian paradigm, affirms its juxtaposition alongside other religious paradigms. For instance, when explaining how a paradigm can self-adjust within the historical process while maintaining its own constancy amidst change, he writes: There is nothing uniquely Christian about this constancy: supernatural explanations are quite unnecessary. This is simply the kind of stability that languages and religions, and to a lesser extent cultures, observably have. They are the lenses through which human beings ↩

57. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, unified edition, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1996), 124. ↩

58. Ibid., 175-177. ↩

59. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 66. ↩

60. For Lindbeck, the most decisive factor shaping the Christian framework is the Bible’s narrative. Ibid. see and respond to their changing worlds, or the media in which they formulate their descriptions.61 This appears to implicitly affirm a more normative category in terms of cultural anthropology, encompassing the Christian scheme alongside competing alternatives. This invites one to conclude that, although the Christian scheme is shaped by biblical narrative and the communal practices that blossom from it, we can still trace its formal origins back to some innate human capacity, inclination, or structure. This innate ground, to quote Charles Taylor, is that man is what Aristotle termed “zoon logon echon,” meaning “animal possessing logos.”62 Therefore, whether it be the Scriptures or the practices of the Christian community, they function under this innate form and generate interpretative frameworks, thereby influencing and endowing their outcomes with diverse, particular material elements. We can recognise that this scheme bears considerable resemblance to Abraham Kuyper’s interpretation of Christian principles’ organicity and how they generate a holistic form of life, as discussed in the preceding chapter. Both affirm the central role of certain innate human capacities—capacities that remain functional despite humanity’s fallen state—in shaping Christianity (whether as a cultural-linguistic tradition or a worldview). Christianity, as an interpretive schema, similarly shoulders the pivotal responsibility akin to Kuyper’s principle of “God’s sovereignty” of presenting Christianity’s particular character. Both serve to underscore the crucial distinctions between Christianity and other religions, despite superficially similar or identical propositions or expressions, thereby preserving Christianity’s uniqueness and unsurpassability. Simultaneously, they draw upon their organic dynamic qualities to sustain Christianity’s capacity for dialogue and openness within pluralistic societies. ↩

61. Ibid., 69. ↩

62. Charles Taylor, “Language and Human Nature,” in Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 217. However, Hauerwas’s sermon on the Pentecost event63 offers an interpretation of the formation of Christian community and grammar that is entirely distinct from the aforementioned approach, even though the sermon only implicitly replies to Lindbeck as its interlocutor. In this article, Hauerwas recalls Peter’s Pentecostal discourse, extolling the formation of the church and its apocalyptic character as a “new language” given by the Holy Spirit. His views diverge from Lindbeck’s cultural-anthropological approach to Christian grammar in the following respects. Firstly, the apocalyptic character indicates that the language and community bestowed at Pentecost constitute a “new creation” which concerns the end of history. Consequently, their formation are “not everyday affairs” but “dramatic in their power to make and consume time.”64 In contrast to the spatial terminology commonly employed in the social sciences when discussing ethnicity and culture, Hauerwas here adopts temporal terms to depict the advent of this new cultural-linguistic reality. This implies dismantling the juxtaposition that places Christian reality alongside other cultures under the normative categories of the social, narrative, or cultural nature of humanity. It demonstrates that the Christian locality he pursues is primarily a temporal “place”. It is not a specific member within a multicultural inventory that establishes its particularity and boundaries based on spatial imagination, but rather, as an alternative time distinct from secular time, it radically challenges the all-encompassing stability presupposed by that normative category. Secondly, Hauerwas adhered to the main theme of Pentecost, emphasising the Holy Spirit’s power and active work in this context. As he notes, “[t]he Spirit, to be sure, is a wild and powerful presence creating a new people where there was no people, but it is a spirit that they and we know.”65 And the reason we are able to participate in this eschatological reality of presence is because “[t]hat is ↩

63. Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 47-54. ↩

64. Ibid., 51. ↩

65. Ibid., 51-52. the work of the Spirit as we are made part of God’s new time through the life and work of this man, Jesus of Nazareth.”66 Hauerwas’s repeated references to “new time,” “new creation,” and “new people,” coupled with his emphasis on the powerful work of the Holy Spirit, all serve to highlight how profoundly his understanding of the possibility of Christian grammar diverges from Lindbeck’s. To borrow Wannenwetsch’s insight, Lindbeck’s conception of learning Christian language more closely resembles a “mother tongue” learning model. In contrast, the new apocalyptic language operating in the worshipping community “makes the Christian life more like learning a foreign language than understanding one’s own.”67 It “inevitably goes together with the (partial) unlearning of one’s own mother tongue” as “it should not be understood as a translation into a new conceptuality of experiences in the linguistic area previously inhabited (the form of life of ‘the old man’).”68 Following Lindbeck’s cultural-anthropological interpretative approach, I believe it is fair to infer that both the church and grammar are formally continuations of human capacity that persisted after the Fall. The Bible and the ecclesiastical practices derived from it provide the material substance enabling the emergence of particular interpretative schemes through which Christians engage with life experiences. On the other hand, one might also conceive that, given different material, the same inherent nature might produce non-Christian interpretative frameworks. Moreover, as Lindbeck asserts, the two modes—Christian and non-Christian—of generating interpretative schemes are not fundamentally distinct. Hauerwas, however, clarifies that the church’s cultural-linguistic new creation constitutes the free work of the Holy Spirit. Just as apocalyptic manifests and embodies its consummation without abolishing history,69 so ↩

66. Ibid., 52. ↩

67. Wannanwetsch, Political Worship, 39. ↩

68. Ibid. ↩

69. Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 51. the Holy Spirit’s creative work endows us with a new language and eschatological agency to discern God’s good purpose for the world—not by abolishing humanity, but through the renewal of the mind (Romans 12:2). In sum, Hauerwas’s response to Lindbeck advances the element of locality inherent in the latter’s cultural-linguistic theory. It leads postliberalism beyond the ecumenical goals Lindbeck set for it. Simultaneously, the apocalyptic character of locality renders it essentially understood as a temporal reality, a time heterogeneous to this world-age. The temporal dimension empowers Hauerwas to elevate locality from a spatial location within what William Cavanaugh terms the “political imagination”70 of modern liberal society to a higher position that challenges this normative imagination itself. 71 Furthermore, it reveals the universalist character of the normative framework shared by modern political liberalism and liberal theology, as well as its connection to Constantinianism. Therefore, in contemporary Western liberal societies, for the church to become a united, peaceable community, it must not do so primarily by reaching agreement with traditions situated in different spaces and holding divergent beliefs, nor by clinging to shared regulative elements between denominations while expecting differences to vanish eventually. Rather, it must acknowledge that while it and others are bound by unresolvable or even irreconcilable conflicts within history and human reach, they enter together into that heterogeneous time within the sacraments instituted by God and in worship, where they call one another brother and sister. ↩

70. William Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism (London: T & T Clark, 2002). ↩

71. Under this normative imagination, Cavanaugh insightfully points out, what discussions about the publicity of the church “have in common is the map, a formal figure of abstract places from which the dimension of time has been eliminated. Placing the Church on such a grid is a peculiarly modern phenomenon.” Ibid. 91. 3. Why Postliberalism? Why Anti-Sinicisation? 3.1. The Postliberal Character of Wang Yi’s Theology The postliberal characteristics of Wang’s later theology can be explicitly identified in his sermon on Matthew 13:1-23.72 There, he discusses the significance of Jesus’ use of parables. Jesus said he spoke in parables so that those who could understand might understand, but those who could not understand would not understand (Matthew 13:11-13). Wang explains that this ability or inability to know does not depend on intelligence; rather, Jesus’ parables “are a declaration of the finitude of our intellect, of our capacity for thought, of our being as creatures.”73 One’s understanding of truth relies upon God’s revelation, and “the very way of revelation itself determines and influences the content of that revelation.”74 In other words, he contends that Jesus’s “way” of using parables inherently carries the “content” that dismantles intellectual elitism. It reveals that only faith, not intellect, can comprehend teachings about the kingdom of heaven. Faith is essentially “the touch of the Holy Spirit,” “the work of God,” such that “without new life within you, you cannot possibly understand.”75 It is noteworthy that Wang does not thereby place Christian believers among the “understanding ones.” Rather, as if perceiving both faith and unbelief within believers, he emphasises the two ways in which the parables inspire Christians: The first is exposing. A parable always aims to teach us something we do not know! Therefore, it always requires explanation. Second, a parable also conceals something. The exposed part helps us understand, while the concealed part fills us with fear, making us ↩

72. Wang Yi, “Nimen de erduo shi youfu de (Tai 13: 1-23)” 你们的耳朵是有福的（太13:1-23） [Blessed are your ears (Matthew 13:1-23)], Wang Yi wenku 王怡文库 [Wang Yi Resource Library], 12 December 2017. https://www.pastorwangyi.org/post/你们的耳朵是有福的. ↩

73. Ibid. ↩

74. Ibid. ↩

75. Ibid. realise that we do not fully understand and that our limited understanding comes from God’s grace. We are able to believe in the Lord because of God’s grace; we are able to understand the parables Jesus spoke because of God’s grace; we are able to know that the parables Jesus spoke refer to Himself because of God’s grace. Therefore, parables bring both clarity and ambiguity.76 From this point, Wang’s sermon on the parable begins to resonate with the theme of the Reformation’s “seawater and flame” discussed in Fuyin de zhengbian, namely, the dual dimensions of faith’s rationalisation and emotionalisation.77 The dual characteristics of revelation—unveiling and concealing—lead Christians to pursue intellectual clarity while maintaining reverence for mystery. Such reverence is not merely a rational acceptance of the limits of human knowledge, but a lived experience that concretely guides the emotions and actions of believers. Within this tension, two prevailing understandings of Christianity emerge: The first is called propositional Christianity, which believes that everything in faith can be accurately expressed in logical propositions. There is a kind of Christianity called experiential Christianity, which cannot be accurately expressed; wherever you try to express it accurately, you blot out the work of the Holy Spirit, so the main thing is to feel it with the heart.78 Although within the context of this sermon, it is evident that the two models Wang refers to— propositional and experiential—are primarily directed at China’s conservative fundamentalist and charismatic churches, rather than the conservative orthodox and liberal theological positions Lindbeck encountered within the Western context.79 However, when supplemented ↩

76. Ibid. ↩

77. Wang, Fuyin de zhengbian, 133. See also Chapter 4, sec. 4.2. ↩

78. Wang “Nimen de erduo shi youfu de.” ↩

79. “The parable tells us that Christianity is both propositional Christianity and experiential Christianity. We Reformed Christians often criticise our charismatic brothers and sisters because they deny propositional by Wang’s discussion of the Reformation and the history of the Chinese church, a connection between the two can be discerned. We have already introduced the fundamentalist beliefs of China’s early house churches and Wang’s revisions in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 mentioned his use of Martin Luther’s “half seawater, half flame” faith to explain the theological characteristics of the Reformation. In his view, the Reformation’s rediscovery of the gospel necessarily emphasised both rational propositions and devotional experience at the same time. An exclusive focus on the former gave rise to the overly philosophised “combative Reformism,”80 while an excessive inclination towards the latter manifested in Lutheranism, which, through Pietism as its intermediary, made significant contributions to the development of liberal theology from Schleiermacher onwards.81 In this vain, his use of the term “experiential Christianity” can appropriately be said to encompass liberal theology. He expresses concern that the ERCC, as an institution championing the Reformed tradition, might place excessive emphasis on theological propositions and dogma while overlooking experiential sensibility. Hence, he cautions that “propositional Christianity and experiential Christianity ought to form a perfect unity.”82 This formulation may seem to suggest a spectrum between proposition and experience, with the Reformation tradition striving to maintain a central position. According to this imaginary, the church’s task would be to balance reason and emotion, avoiding extremes on either side. However, this interpretation risks presupposing a dualistic distinction between reason and experience that Wang never advocates. It confines the perspective to a flat, horizontal imagination, overlooking the depth and complexity with which Wang approached this issue. Christianity and their Christianity is only experiential Christianity. But we Reformed Christians are often criticised for being propositional Christians who lack genuine experience.” Ibid. ↩

80. Wang, Fuyin de zhengbian, 54-56. ↩

81. Ibid., 138-139. ↩

82. Wang, “Nimen de erduo shi youfu de.” The sermon’s emphasis on “context” unfolds a vertical dimension. Following his discussion of propositionalism and experientialism, Wang further elaborates: This is why Christ used parables. If you want to enter into Jesus, want to enter into the kingdom of heaven, and want to enter into His parables, you must not only enter into a series of propositions, but also enter into the true emotions. Even the Lord Jesus said that you must enter into the true context. What kind of context? Suffering persecution for the sake of the Word, suffering tribulation for the sake of the Way; you must also face a situation of worldly cares and the temptation of money.83 Two points are particularly important. Firstly, by substituting the verb “understand” with “enter,” Wang anchors the present epistemological theme on ethical grounds. Jesus employed imagery from everyday life to depict the kingdom of heaven, revealing that the kingdom is about “everything in one’s life, actions, and survival.”84 The controversy surrounding “understanding Jesus’ Parables” has been free from the seemingly endless tug-of-war between “proposition” and “feeling” and resettled on, to borrow the title of Michael Banner’s book, “the ethics of everyday life.”85 Secondly, he specifies that this context is a way of suffering. This paves the way for the later discourses on the ecclesiology of martyrdom. Wang goes on to explain that the point of the parable of sowing is not that people should become good soil, but rather God’s initiative. He says: “The Son of Man is the one who sows the seed in people’s hearts. The focus here is to tell you that the soil’s yield depends on the farmer.”86 And the good soil that Christ chose is the church: “The kingdom of heaven is solely through the coming of Christ, and only the church he has chosen inherits the kingdom of heaven.”87 ↩

83. Ibid. Emphasis added. ↩

84. Ibid. ↩

85. Michael Banner, The Ethics of Everyday Life: Moral Theology, Social Anthropology, and the Imagination of the Human (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). ↩

86. Wang, “Nimen de erduo shi youfu de.” ↩

87. Ibid. Like Hauerwas, Wang endeavours to shift the focus towards the concrete and particular life of the church community when engaging with doctrinal disputes, particularly in response to liberal theology. Moreover, this form of life is interpreted as an alternative lived out by the church, distinct from contemporary mainstream society. In this part, it is clear that Wang drew directly upon Hauerwas’s commentary on Matthew.88 After he has finished speaking about the fertile soil found only in the church, he immediately turns to the theme of martyrdom. There he mentions: An American pastor once said that no passage of Scripture better describes the state of the church in Europe and America today than this parable. He said that we are in decline, and this parable tells us that it is difficult to be a disciple of Christ and a rich man at the same time. Our concern for this world because of our wealth will only stifle our imagination of the kingdom of heaven. … He said that Christians in the United States cannot imagine that being a Christian, being a disciple of the Lord, might put them in tension with the American with the mainstream American way of life. … Regardless of their political stance—whether they are left-wing or right-wing—they all face this issue. Both left-wing and right-wing Christians in the United States believe that the necessary condition for being a disciple of God in today’s American society is the pursuit of freedom.89 The above ideas clearly comes from Hauerwas’s commentary on Matthew 13.90 Wang believes the Chinese church faces the same problem of being trapped in the imagination of mainstream ↩

88. Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2007). ↩

89. Wang, “Nimen de erduo shi youfu de.” ↩

90. Hauerwas, Matthew, 129-130. I am not sure if Hauerwas would be willing to be generally referred to as an “American pastor.” Considering his fierce criticism of “Americanism,” he might prefer to be known in the Eastern world as a “Methodist pastor.” However, context is important. He has also once written in his work: “I love America and I love being an American.” Stanley Hauerwas, War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 19. Cited in Brian Brock and Stanley Hauerwas, Beginnings: Interrogating Hauerwas, ed. Kevin Hargaden (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 169. In his conversation with Brian Brock, Hauerwas was asked to elaborate on this statement. He replied that he did not want his opposition to the American ideology of war to deprive people of their appreciation of “the beauty of the American land” and “the generosity of the American people.” Ibid. However, compared to the answer society. Taking the American church as a lesson, Wang reminds the ERCC that when the church becomes increasingly mainstream through publicisation,91 it may be the beginning of spiritual decline, blocked by “worldly thoughts and wealth.”92 Persecution sometimes provides an environment and opportunity to live an alternative life. This is not a rejection of the vision of publicisation, but rather an echo of his contemplation on the essence of Reformation. Whether public or private, whether religious rights exist or not, the focus is not on the superficial propositional disputes, but on ensuring the form of life that gives the issues of publicisation proper meaning, namely, the martyrdom of discipleship. Therefore, it is fair to say that a Christian who supports the vision of publicisation mainly out of liberal concerns may be further removed from the meaning of publicisation pursued by the ERCC than a church that insists on private gatherings for reasons of martyrdom. 3.2. Reflecting Kuyperianism The postliberal perspective deepens our understanding of the problems inherent in the current mainstream Kuyperian interpretative framework for Wang’s theology. To be specific, Kuyperianism simultaneously incorporates features of propositionalism and experientialism. here, I find Hauerwas’s remarks on Christian patriotism in the same series of conversation more suggestive. There he said that “the way Christians committed to nonviolence as well as Christians not so committed can best serve this land called America is by refusing to be recruits for the furtherance of American ideals.” For him, the “United States” that must be vigorously opposed is “that abstraction called the United States.” The only way to overcome “the temptations to serve the (American-liberal) universal ideologies of the empire” and serve the beautiful land and people “is through the concrete relations that make our actual lives possible.” And for him, such relationships are exactly the “lives of the people who worship” in concrete local communities. Ibid., 96-97. Parenthesis added. These words better reflect his perceptive observation of the affinity between the universalist character of liberalism and the violent ethics of war, as well as his emphasis on the locality in which nonviolent life is rooted. As will be shown later in this chapter, Wang also has a strong focus on locality throughout his intellectual journey, which may be one of the important reasons why he has been attracted to Hauerwas’s position. In any case, I believe that the label of “American pastor” here would likely be welcomed by Hauerwas, as it reflects a particular Christian life resisting the ideology of “the land” within the specific context called “America” he lives. ↩

91. “The spirit of the Reformation means that the Church must become a non-mainstream mainstream and a non- political politics in modern culture.” Wang, Fuyin de zhengbian, 99. See also Chapter 4, sec. 4.3. ↩

92. Wang, “Nimen de erduo shi youfu de.” Being “blocked” obviously corresponds to the seed that fell among thorns in the parable. This further reinforces my earlier argument that when Wang speaks of the Church as good soil, he does not entirely equate it with the visible church community, but rather observes both believing and unbelieving characters coexisting within the lives of believers. This relates to the Lutheran account of the hiddenness of the true church, which will be further discussed in the next chapter. As outlined in the preceding chapter, it mainly defines Christianity as a worldview formed by a propositional system. This system posits God’s absolute sovereignty as its most fundamental principle, holding that by embracing it, humanity can ideally attain a correct and comprehensive understanding of itself, the church, society, politics, and every sphere of the world. However, on the other hand, Kuyper maintains that the process from God’s sovereignty to Christian propositions in other spheres relies on the inherent human capacity for perception and rational, formal reasoning—a capacity not destroyed by sin. Therefore, when referring to the organic unity of Christian principles, it represents a collaboration between propositionalism and experientialism. Moreover, as analysed in the previous chapter, experientialist elements constitute the true source of this organicity. The divergent attitudes among Chinese neo-Reformed Christians towards sinicisation actually reflect differing emphases on these two types of intellectual resources (propositional and experiential) within Kuyper’s system. On the one hand, both the traditional and urban intellectual house church movements within neo-Calvinism exhibit propositional tendencies. The former, however, regards dialogue with traditions that do not share the foundational proposition (Christ’s absolute sovereignty) as unproductive. The latter, inspired by Kuyperian teachings on Christianisation, adopts a polemical stance towards politics and society, seeking to implement the values of a Christian worldview across all social spheres. On the other hand, recent Chinese theological scholarship—particularly under the influence of Herman Bavinck’s theology—has highlighted experiential elements centred on the account of organicity.93 This approach seeks to advance a dialogue agenda with other religions (especially ↩

93. Represented by the Studies in Dutch Neo-Calvinism Series, a substantial body of research on Bavinck has been published in the Chinese world in recent years. Translations of Bavinck’s works include: Herman Bavinck, Gaige zong lunli xue 改革宗伦理学 [Reformed Ethics], ed. Xu Ximian, trans. Liu Bin et al. (Edinburgh: Latreia Press, 2020); Herman Bavinck, Heerman Bawenke de jiaomu shenxue 赫尔曼‧巴文克的教牧神学 [Herman Bavinck’s Pastoral Theology], ed. Xu Ximian, trans. Wei Feng, Niu Hong, Luo Zhen (Edinburgh: Latreia Press, 2021); Herman Bavinck, Jidujiao yu shijie guan 基督教与世界观 [Christendom Wereldbeschouwing], ed. Xu Ximian, trans. Zhu Juan Hao and Xu Ximian (Edinburgh: Latreia Press, 2022); and Herman Bavinck, Zongjiao kexue he shehui wenji 宗教、科学和社会文集 [Essays on Religion, Science and Society], trans. Liu Lunfei Confucianism) through a shared focus on common grace, without compromising the importance of the gospel mandate. Neither of the above approaches can satisfy the postliberal quest in Wang’s later theology. If Christian faith is primarily a cultural-linguistic reality endowed with a unique grammar, within which beliefs and propositions derive their meaning, then the expectations of Chinese theologians regarding the consensus achieved or achievable through interfaith dialogue appear overly optimistic. Such optimism risks underestimating the untranslatability and incommensurability inherent between two distinct religions, rooted in their distinct contexts and grammar. Take Xu Ximian’s proposal for dialogue between Bavinck and the New-Confucian Mou Zongsan as an example.94 He believes that as long as the Christian notion of God is appropriately and correctly distinguished from Kant’s, which is fiercely criticised by Mou, a “buffering place” can be created for Christianity, or at least for Bavinck’s neo-Calvinism, to engage in dialogue with Confucianism.95 The following will demonstrate that such optimistic assertions overlook the more fundamental conflict between Mou Zongsan and Christianity. By exposing the methodological crux of this conflict, we will see how Xu’s dialogue proposal instead reveals the critical importance of the postliberal approach’s observation regarding the incommensurability and untranslatability of language that arise between distinct cultural- linguistic contexts. (Edinburgh: Latreia Press, 2022). Translations of James Eglinton’s studies on Bavinck include: James Eglinton, Sanwei yiti he youji ti: Heerman Bawenke de youji zhuzhi xinshi 三位一体和有机体：赫尔曼‧巴文克的有机 主旨新释 [Trinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif], trans. Xu Ximian (Edinburgh: Latreia Press, 2022); and James Eglinton, Heerman Bawenke shengping pingshu 赫尔曼‧ 巴文克生平评述 [Bavinck: A Critical Biography], trans. Dong Xiaohua and Xu Ximian (Edinburgh: Latreia Press, 2024). A Translated Collections of Essays on Bavinck, see, Xu Ximian, ed., Heerman Bawenke lun Helan xin Jiaerwen zhuyi 赫尔曼‧巴文克论荷兰新加尔文主义 [Herman Bavinck on Dutch Neo-Calvinism], trans. Shao Dawei (Edinburgh: Latreia Press, 2019). ↩

94. Xu Ximian, “The Dialogue between Herman Bavinck and Mou Zongsan on Human Nature and Its Quality,” Journal of Reformed Theology 11 (2017), 298-324. ↩

95. Ibid., 319. 3.3. A Hasty Reconciliation: The Dialogue between Neo-Calvinism and New Confucianism Xu places the focus of this dialogue on the mutual illumination between the Christian conception of the imago Dei and the Confucian conception of the immanentised heavenly decree within the human heart-mind. He argues that both of them are, firstly, “related to the being of humans,” and secondly, “concerned with morality.”96 And these “parallels” can provide “the breakthrough in the dialogical relationship.”97 They enable Chinese Christians to consider the imago Dei from the perspective of Confucian heavenly decree, and the latter can also benefit from the supplement and refinement provided by the former. To be more specific, ontologically, both the heavenly decree and the imago Dei pertain to human existence, but in distinct ways. For Mou, the transcendent, impersonal heavenly decree descends and is immanentised within humans, constituting human nature. For Bavinck, the true imago Dei is Christ within the Trinity; in creation, this image is communicated to humans, relating them to the transcendent imago Dei without absorbing it.98 He believes Bavinck’s account of the imago Dei offers a more concrete elaboration of the nature of this intrinsic moral basis for humanity than Mou’s impersonal heavenly decree.99 Moreover, the contradiction arising from the mutability of the human heart—stemming from “Mou’s moral ontology” which “makes the human being the basis of the being of everything”—and the immutability of “the ontic foundation of things” can also be overcome through the corrective supplementation of the imago Dei.100 Lastly, he argues that Mou’s account of heavenly decree is ontologically deficient because it regards the creative heavenly decree as identified with the moral nature of ↩

96. Ibid., 320. ↩

97. Ibid., 319-320. ↩

98. “[A]lthough Mou employs the notion of the heavenly decree to expound human nature, his definition is rather vague. … [I]t is explicit that he refrains from expounding the essence of this standard.” Ibid., 320. ↩

99. Ibid., 321. human beings,101 which leads to a tendency to reduce ontology to or subordinate it to ethics.102 This is problematic for Xu because “‘being’ is not merely qualified by the languages of ethics.”103 He contends that human beings can be defined by terms beyond “moral”, such as “spiritual” beings. Consequently, beings must constitute a broader foundation, while morality ought to be understood merely as reflecting certain aspects of their character and attributes. He suggests that Bavinck’s imago Dei, therefore, offers a better option that encompasses both moral and ontic dimensions.104 Xu’s dialogue proposal shows two significant problems. Firstly, while Bavinck and Kant’s conceptions of God are certainly distinct, this distinction does not, as Xu contends, constitute a buffering place for dialogue with Confucianism. In Mou’s view, Western philosophy, influenced by Plato and Christianity, has long prioritised knowledge and objectivity over morality and subjectivity, thereby determining the heteronomous character of Western ethics.105 Kant’s ethics of autonomy, which transformed God from the original legislator and giver of moral law into merely one of the postulates ensuring the consistency of virtue and happiness, already represented a major breakthrough in Western philosophy, moving in the right direction. This created an important opportunity for connection with China’s more developed moral doctrines. Thus, it may be argued that reinstating the Christian doctrine of the ↩

100. One of the most prominent manifestations of Mou’s account of “moral creation” lies in his interpretation of Daoist ontology. He interpreted “wu” (无 nothing), the key concept in Daoist theory of the generation of all things, as a moral vision attained by the sage. He thus characterised the Daoist ontological theory as a form of “metaphysics in the line of vision,” (境界型态的形上学 jingjie xingtai de xingshang xue) contrasting it with the Western tradition of “metaphysics in the line of being.” (实有型态的形上学 shiyou xingtai de xingshang xue) Mou Zongsan, Zhongguo zhexue shijiu jiang 中国哲学十九讲 [Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2005), 69-81. See also, Mou Zongsan, Caixing yu xuanli 才性与玄理 [Physical Nature and Speculative Reason] (Taipei: Linking Publishing Company), 2003, 140-145. ↩

101. Xu, “The Dialogue between Herman Bavinck and Mou Zongsan on Human Nature and Its Quality,” 321. ↩

102. Ibid. ↩

103. Ibid. ↩

104. “The door to subjectivity has always remained closed in the West, both in the Greek tradition and in the Christian tradition, because Christianity detests subjectivity and emphasises objectivity, affirming a transcendent and objective God. In contrast, Eastern culture places great emphasis on subjectivity.” Mou, Zhongguo zhexue shijiu jiang, 337. Triune God not only fails to create a buffering place but actually exacerbates the conflict between the two traditions, for Kant precisely functions as a mediator between Eastern and Western religion and philosophy within Mou’s system.106 More significantly, the second problem is that Xu fails to recognise a fundamental and sharp methodological divergence between himself and Mou on ontological matters. While demonstrating Christianity’s complementary role, even though Xu has grasped how Dutch neo- Calvinism’s account of organicity affirms the organic and dynamic character of Christian principles, 107 his ontological argument relies on a widely presupposed framework of traditional Western metaphysics—specifically, a view that understands substance as a container bearing a thing’s attributes, and as more fundamental and prior than the latter in defining what an individual thing is. This point reveals the profound methodological divergence between Bavinck and Mou. At the heart of Mou’s criticism of the Christian conception of God is a direct challenge to this presupposition of the Western ontological tradition. Mou’s methodology in comparing religions and philosophies is that of “panjiao” (判教 classifying teaching) and “yuanjiao” (圆教 perfect teachings).108 The term “panjiao” originates from Buddhism, referring to the internal classification system used to categorise the various schools that inherit the Buddha’s teachings. While the criteria differ between schools, each fundamentally positions its unique teachings or scriptures at the highest tier of this system. Mou primarily references the Tiantai school’s classification system, which designates “yuanjiao” as the supreme tier. Xu also refers to Mou’s elaborations on these two concepts in his proposal for the dialogue. He correctly discerns their significance within Mou’s theory of Gongfu (工夫 ↩

105. “Christianity has never developed the discipline of solitary self-cultivation, and thus cannot claim that we may become like Jesus through moral practice. Within Western philosophy, … it was Kant who established the concept of the subject. Therefore, when we now discuss Confucian scholarship and seek to connect it with Western philosophy, the only point of contact lies with Kantian philosophy.” Ibid., 339. ↩

106. See Chapter 4, sec. 1.2. ↩

107. The English translations here correspond to those in Xu, “The Dialogue between Herman Bavinck and Mou Zongsan on Human Nature and Its Quality.” moral discipline), including how they “enlighten human reason” to attain “yuanshan” (圆善 the perfect good). 109 His argument, however, fails to describe the more fundamental methodological status of these concepts within Mou’s entire system. Mou’s moral ontology posits the creative heavenly decree as identical with the moral nature of human beings. This theoretically conferred a primacy of practical reason over theoretical reason. However, the twentieth-century Chinese cultural context confronting Mou should not be overlooked. His formative years coincided precisely with the May Fourth and post-May Fourth movements, a period marked by heightened consciousness of the pursuit of modernisation in China. Later, following the Chinese Civil War, with the Kuomintang regime relocating to Taiwan, the New Confucianism that developed in the liberal and democratic societies110 assumed a dual responsibility: to revitalise Confucianism as the representative of Chinese culture, while simultaneously integrating modern values such as science and democracy into its orthodox discourse. His panjiao system forms an essential part of this endeavour, wherein the perfect teaching occupies the highest position. He argues that the concept of the perfect teaching is absent in the West, as Western notions of perfection, influenced by Platonism, tend to attribute “the perfect” to the object towards which the teaching points—such as the Platonic idea or God—rather than to the teaching itself. Mou further claims: “Any system expressed through language and text cannot be perfect teaching, for all doctrines are contradictory and divergent. Christianity has its own system, Islam has another; since each has its own system, none can be perfect teaching.”111 His judgement is in fact grounded upon the Confucian premise of humanity’s universal moral nature, or what is regarded as the Buddhist concept of “all sentient beings possessing Buddha- ↩

108. Ibid., 304-305. ↩

109. Of course, the liberal democracy here is in comparison to Communist China. Following the Kuomintang regime’s relocation to Taiwan, the island remained under martial law until its formal lifting in 1987. ↩

110. Mou, Zhongguo zhexue shijiu jiang, 248. nature.” Such teachings maintain that the basis for the perfection of human nature is internalised, and that various religions, doctrines, and schools aim to guide individuals through practice to realise this inherent nature. In this sense, Mou also affirms the efficacy of Christian teaching, but because it is essentially a form of “belief dependent upon others” (依他之信 yita zhixin),112 it fails to recognise that God is also the external manifestation of the infinite free mind of human beings. This renders Christian teaching capable of occupying only the “lijiao” (离教 partial teaching) level, inferior to the perfect teaching.113 Moreover, Mou also critiques the entire tradition of Western philosophy through his panjiao system, arguing that since Plato, it has been excessively focused on the dimensions of knowledge, objectification, and pure reason. This is why, in his view, Kant represents the peak of Western philosophy. Kant’s emphasis on practical reason marked a crucial turning point in Western philosophy, paving the way for the subsequent German idealists’ preoccupation with subjectivity. However, he contends that the Western inheritance and development of Kantian philosophy are fraught with problems. And the fundamental reason lies in Kant’s attribution of intellectual intuition to God alone, which obstructs Westerners from recognising that the ontological basis of metaphysics and the origin of moral consciousness within the human heart are one and the same.114 Therefore, although Kant provided the impetus for shifting focus towards moral subjectivity, Mou criticises German idealism as having “developed poorly, particularly Hegel, who often provokes aversion.”115 He argues that for Western philosophy to ↩

111. Mou Zongsan, Shengming de xuewen 生命的学问 [The Learning of Life], 7th ed. (Taipei: San Min Book, 1994), 107. ↩

112. “God manifests His efficacy only when He becomes internalised as the infinite mind that constitutes our very being, or when the infinite mind is God Himself. … In this sense, the incarnation of Jesus … represents one mode of manifestation … possessing value in enabling us to recognise the objective existence of an infinite Being. … But mere contemplation suffices not; the infinite Being, existing objectively alone, remains of no use. This is what I call lijiao.” Mou Zongsan, Xianxiang yu wu zishen 现象与物自身 [Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself] (Taipei: Linking Publishing Company, 2003), 469. ↩

113. Mou, Zhongguo zhexue shijiu jiang. ↩

114. Ibid., 339. adoption by an era’s thinkers—derive not from pure theoretical certainty, but rather from the broader context of life, practice, and culture. For instance, the context forged by the two world wars significantly influenced what modes of expression Western philosophy tended to accept as meaningful, what was readily regarded as valid, or what criteria should be prioritised, and fostered the dominant position of existentialism and phenomenology in critiquing the essentialism of traditional metaphysics. The concern for the cultural-linguistic context significantly constitutes what Lindbeck termed the untranslatability and incommensurability between traditions. They cannot be bridged by identifying commonalities in higher-order rational elements, such as overlapping propositions, concepts, or symbols. Rather, it depends on the practical context of the tradition in question. This is precisely why, when outlining Mou’s panjiao system, I deliberately situated it within the background of modern Chinese intellectuals’ pursuit of modernisation and the Chinese Civil War. Only thus can the foundational concerns underpinning Mou’s entire philosophical enterprise be truly revealed.117 The entire construction of his moral ontology centres on the nationalist mission articulated in “A Manifesto for a Re-appraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture,” co- authored with other New-Confucian scholars.118 This manifesto unreservedly signified the enduring passionate nationalistic consciousness of Chinese scholars in that era, stemming from the Confucian scholar-official tradition, and became the common ground on which different authoritative Confucian scholars collectively engage in the endeavour known as “New Confucianism.” The notion that the New-Confucian panjiao system is primarily a theoretical ↩

115. I believe this interpretative approach shares considerable common ground with Hauerwas’s interpretation of Barth in his 2001 Gifford Lectures. The lectures focus mainly not on Barth’s “system,” “position,” or “method,” but rather on the “cultural challenge” confronting Christians within the context of Germany during the First World War and the Nazi era. The very way in which Barth did theology thus becomes the essential lens for understanding Barth’s witness in that situation. See Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001), 141-171. ↩

116. Carsun Chang et al., “A Manifesto for a Re-appraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture.” The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought 2 (1958), 455-483. construct, which then serves as a rational criterion for evaluating the value and relative standing of various comprehensive doctrines, thereby revealing Confucianism’s superiority, is unrealistic. On the contrary, it represents a crisis theology, embodying a paradigm shift when the alliance of shared destiny between Confucianism and the Chinese Celestial Empire, as a longstanding form of “normal science,” encountered “anomalies” (modern Western colonial powers).119 This shift aimed to reposition Confucianism and Chinese culture in a superior position within the modern liberal universalist order.120 Consequently, Mou’s discourses on panjiao frequently conclude with earnest exhortations for the Chinese intellectual sphere to return to a Confucian subjectivity approach.121 It follows that, when considering the differences in cultural practices that determine the meaning of religious theories and propositions, if religious dialogue is not merely an attempt ↩

117. See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). Although Hauerwas, in responding to Gustafson’s accusation of tribalism, mentions that he avoids “all appeals to a Kuhnian-like position (with which Kuhn may unfairly be identified) designed to protect theological convictions from possible scientific challenge,” I find that his point is not so much to disagree with Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts itself, but rather with its erroneous extension and application to ensure the isolation and unchallenged status of various scientific traditions. In particular, after writing this sentence, he immediately goes on to question what kind of science Gustafson wishes to employ as the measure for revising theological convictions. He observes that “[t]he history of modern theology is littered with the wrecks of such revision undertaken on the basis of a science that no longer commands any credibility,” which leads him to harbour greater reservations about assigning “to science qua science an overriding veridical status.” This hints at the influence of Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shift upon him, though he refrained from directly citing such sources precisely to avoid misleading readers into thinking he sought to “protect theology or Christians from such challenges” of sciences. Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 9. Parenthesis added. ↩

118. Mou’s proposal of the “new outer kingliness” thus becomes the parting agent that rescues Confucian moral doctrine from its symbiotic relationship with the precarious traditional monarchical political system, and links it to democratic politics. Discussions on this topic are primarily found in Mou Zongsan, Zhengdao yu zhidao 政道 与治道 [The Way of Politics and the Way of Governance] (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 1961). In distinction, at the dawn of the 21st century, as China rose to become the world’s second-largest economic, military and political entity capable of challenging the Western liberal democratic camp led by the United States, Confucianism in mainland China began to develop along a different trajectory. The political Confucianism that has gradually gained prominence in mainland China seeks to restore the ideal of the virtuous rule of the monarch from the traditional outer kingliness, albeit by re-embedding it within the modern Chinese Communist Party bureaucratic system, viewing this system as the appropriate arena for selecting capable and virtuous leaders. See, for example, Daniel A. Bell, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). This divergence, in my view, largely validates the postliberal perspective that cultural practice precedes theoretical construction. ↩

119. See, for example, Mou Zongsan, Zongguo zhexue shijiu jiang, 346-347; “Fulu: zhexue zhihui yu Zhongguo zhexue de weilai” 附录：哲学智慧与中国哲学的未来 [Appendix: Philosophical Wisdom and The Future of Chinese Philosophy], in Zhongguo zhexue de tezhi 中国哲学的特质 [The Characteristics of Chinese Philosophy], ed. Luo Yijun (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2005), 190-192. by one religion to abstractly borrow conceptual resources from others for its own inspiration (a mode of inspiration that may appear highly problematic to the borrowed religion), but rather aims at genuine collision, mutual understanding, and collaborative exploration of pathways between traditions, then the Christian sinicisation agenda centred on academic thoughts appears excessively simplistic and optimistic. In such courses of dialogue and reconciliation, the communal practices constituting the entire Christian grammar—such as worship and the sacraments—have been marginalised. As Marshall, quoted and endorsed by Hauerwas, states: “The gospel of which the world is supposed to be convinced by the church’s unity … implies the existence of this visible eucharistic community … in space and time.”122 These stones discarded by academic craftsmen are treasured by postliberal theologians as the headstones for genuine ecumenicity, and also as the key for Christians to break through humanity’s self- enclosure and truly reach out to others. 3.4. Beyond Communitarianism: Seeking the Pentecostal Locality So, what is the determining context that shapes the meanings of Wang’s propositions and terms? The first three chapters of this thesis have already made this clear. Although Wang’s intellectual journey underwent numerous pivotal shifts, he consistently maintained a sharp vigilance towards the cultural imagination centred on Confucian scholar-official tradition and the nationalist reverence it embodies. “Localism” was proposed by Wang even before his conversion as an alternative concept to resist the homogenising political imagination in China and its inherent tendency toward centralisation. It was also regarded as possessing the potential to propel a constitutionalist transformation.123 However, during this period, his understanding ↩

120. Bruce Marshall, “The Disunity of the Church and the Credibility of the Gospel,” Theology Today 50/1 (April 1993), 82. Cited in Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, 217n26. ↩

121. “The rise of localism, under conditions of constitutional inadequacy, serves to dissolve, counterbalance, and in a sense, act as a ‘preliminary constitutionalism’ against the centralised system.” Wang Yi, Xianzheng zhuyi: Guannian yu zhidu de zhuanlie 宪政主义：观念与制度的转捩 [Constitutionalism: The Turning Point of Ideas and Institutions] (Jinan: Shandong renmin chubanshe, 2006), 176. of locality remained entangled with his earlier individualistic convictions. Consequently, this comprehension, much like his poetry, found itself trapped within a paradox: a yearning for genuine connection with others coexisted with a self-protective individualism that fostered deep wariness towards authentic engagements. This internal conflict perpetuated a paralysis, preventing him from transcending self-enclosedness.124 Therefore, his transition from lamentation to praising hymn also signifies his renunciation of seeking the sources of locality within the inner self, instead looking upward toward the grammar bestowed that connects one with the other.125 This profound shift in aesthetic sensibility exerted a slow yet steadily progressive influence upon his political theology. Its impact was first manifested in his abandonment of the alliance between the Christian worldview and Lockean liberalism, prompting him instead to embrace a communitarian conception of selfhood that emphasised the constitutive role of significant others in shaping identity. This signified that he no longer anchored his resistance to the Chinese scholar-official tradition and the “Tianxia” worldview primarily in atomised individuals. Instead, he anchored ↩

122. This predicament is reflected in his early ambiguous interpretations of the relationship between individualism and localism. At times he affirmed that localism actually represented an extension of individualism; for instance, in one lecture he declared: “Localism is individualism on an expanded scale.” The rise of localism was seen as echoing the emergence of individual consciousness, both themes having long been suppressed within Chinese tradition. Wang Yi, “Difang zhuyi yu Zhongguo de xianzheng zhuanxing” 地方主义与中国的宪政转型 [Localism and the Constitutional Transformation in China], Duli zhongwen bihui 独立中文笔会 [Independent Chinese PEN Center], 12 August, 2016. https://www.chinesepen.org/blog/archives/56217. The lecture was originally delivered in 2006. In another article, however, he characterises localism as “a middle ground between individualism and statism”. That is to say, individualism and statism appear to constitute the two extremes of a spectrum, while localism is described as a “middle way” that avoids both the anarchic consequences of individualism and the centralised tendencies of statism. Wang Yi, “Da tusha yu wailai zhengquan: Chengdu da tusha 360 zhounian ji” 大屠杀与外来政权：成都大屠杀360周年祭 [The Holocaust and Foreign Regimes: Commemorating the 360th Anniversary of the Chengdu Massacre], in Meide jingdong le zhongyang 美得惊动 了中央 [So Beautiful that the Centre Is Startled] (Self-published, 2004), 241-247. This description clearly diverges from the earlier characterisation of localism as an extension of individualism; otherwise, nationalism could similarly be described as a further “extension” of the two, much like localism is to individualism. It is difficult to imagine Wang endorsing such a view. Just as he could not distinguish in his aesthetic experience whether poetry was lovemaking with the infinite or mere masturbation, he remained utterly uncertain during this period about how the individual might possibly reach the other. This also meant he could not offer a convincing explanation—either to others or to himself—of how the individual might transcend the self-enclosedness to reach others and form a genuine local community. ↩

123. See Chapter 2, sec. 3.1. it in the pursuit of an intersubjective community centred on Scripture and worship. In the shared act of reading and contemplating God’s word, this community is endowed with an alien grammar capable of piercing the boundaries of self-protection, living out an authentic communal form of life within the intersubjectivity it fosters. Subsequently, this focus on authentic communal life led him, like many communitarians, to side with the good in the contemporary ethical debate over the primacy of right versus good. In the preface to the second edition of his influential thesis Liberalism and the Limits of Justice,126 the communitarian Michael Sandel clarifies the meaning of his assertion regarding the priority of the good in response to his critics. Far from allowing the demands of the communal good to override the protection of individual rights, he affirms that some “rights are so important” to the degree that “even the general welfare cannot override them.”127 Rather, it challenges the notion that one can understand rights independently of discussions about the related goods and ends to which the rights in question are tied, such as through the procedural thought experiments in Rawls’s theory of justice, which serve as the primary target of critique in Sandel’s thesis.128 In short, such a communitarian approach contends that the widely presupposed competition between “the good and the right” within contemporary political philosophy, along with the associated conflict between “community values and individual freedom,” is misleading. Such competitive frameworks distort the inherently interdependent relationship between these two concepts. However, the good is indeed affirmed as taking priority over the right in a specific sense: when confronting issues related to rights, one must contemplate the end (good) that right serves in order to truly grasp its legitimacy and the significance of its status as a “right.” Given that our conception of goods is essentially shaped ↩

124. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, ix-xvi. ↩

125. Ibid., x. ↩

126. Ibid., x-xi. within communal life, Sandel affirms that the individual’s self-identity as the subject of rights is profoundly embedded within the community. We have already noted how Wang’s increasingly profound reflection on spontaneous order has led him to adopt a communitarian conception of the self.129 Like Hauerwas, however, he has taken the communitarian insights to a further theological horizon.130 Firstly, although he shares with communitarians the prioritisation of the good, he does not merely focus, as the latter do, on citizens’ discussions of the ends that particular rights serve. Instead, he offers a theological interpretation of “rights” themselves as possessing a common purpose. He suggests: “The gospel preserves human rights in the sense of survival while simultaneously subverting them in the spiritual sense—this is the higher mission of conscience and freedom upheld by the church.”131 The paradox of rights lies precisely in the fact that, much like Christians who gain life by sacrificing it through following Christ, their higher purpose “is to be relinquished.”132 This leads the meaning of the freedom of conscience beyond safeguarding civil liberties of speech and religion, pointing instead to “the freedom of a Christian” Luther characterised as embodied in two seemingly contradictory propositions: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none,” and “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”133 Secondly, he is not satisfied with the perfectionist political proposals put ↩

127. See Chapter 4, sec. 3.3. ↩

128. Hauerwas commends Michael Quirk’s observation regarding his relationship with communitarianism. Quirk notes that while Hauerwas inspired by communitarians’ resources, he ultimately parted ways with them. The crux lies in Hauerwas’s insistence on the alienness of the church, which ultimately prevented him from endorsing the communitarians’ agenda of “civil republicanism.” Hauerwas further clarifies that his position is not an “indiscriminate rejection of the secular order,” but rather that Christians must “withdraw their support” only when this republicanism “resorts to violence” to maintain its own stability and order. Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 14-15. ↩

129. Wang Yi, “Rihui lu” 日悔录 [Daily Confessions], in Dasheng de moxiang 大声的默想 [Contemplation Loudly] (Hong Kong: Covenant Publishing Limited, 2017), 196. ↩

130. Wang Yi, “Meng yu zhenxiang: Aiqing pian” 梦与真相：爱情篇 [Dreams and Truth: The Chapter of Love], Wang Yi wenku, 1 May 2014. https://www.wangyilibrary.com/post/sermon-228046; and “Xuxin de ren youfu le (Tai 5:1-12)” 虚心的人有福了（太5:1-12）[Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit (Matthew 5:1-12)], Wang Yi wenku, 7 August 2016. https://www.wangyilibrary.com/post/xu-xin-de-ren-you-fu-le. ↩

131. LW 31, 344. forward by communitarians, nor does he justify the significance of the Christian community through an agenda of virtue cultivation aimed at promoting social solidarity. Lastly, he refuses to ground the hope for a genuine intersubjective community in the Aristotelian notion of the inherent political nature of human beings, on which communitarians widely rely.134 Just as in the aesthetic experience, he ultimately discerns that the hope for breaking through the self-enclosedness lies not in the words themselves, but in the grammar that has been externally given. Only when a genuine community, as the one of Pentecost mentioned in Hauerwas’s sermon, arrives, can people step out of the power struggles of self-protection and mutual damage, and truly become the political. I consider it reasonable to attribute Wang’s orientation to the resonance between the martyrdom tradition of Chinese house churches and Hauerwas’s postliberal ecclesiology. This allows him, like Hauerwas, to adopt an apocalyptic perspective guiding the pursuit of locality, maintaining critical engagement with the normative political imagination of Western liberalism while resisting the imperial polity of Eastern virtue- based monarchs. In the next chapter, we further explore the significance of this apocalyptic eschatology for Wang and the ERCC’s faithful disobedience. It is worth mentioning in advance that we will continue the dialogue between Wang and Hauerwasianism within the context of disobedience movements in the East Asian Chinese social context in order to reveal the tensions between the two. The issue of narrative theology, which was set aside in this chapter, will also be addressed. Finally, drawing upon resources from Lutheran theology, I will point to a promising direction for the future development of Wang’s theology. ↩

132. See, for example, Charles Taylor, “Atomism,” in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 189; and Alasdair MacIntyre, “Four – or More? – Political Aristotle,” in Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Aristotelianism: Modernity, Conflict and Politics, ed. Andrius Bielskis et al. (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 11-24. ↩