Confronting Confucian Understandings of the Christian Doctrine of Salvation

Paulos Z. Huang, Ph.D. (1996, Helsinki), Post-doctor (2000, Tokyo), Th.D. (2006, Helsinki) in Sinology and Theology, is professor at the Insitute of Sino-Christian Studies (Hong Kong) and Adjunct-professor in the University of Helsinki (Finland). He has published extensively on Daoism, Chu culture, Theology and religious dialogue.

Theologians, Sinologists, student, church people, political officers and anyone interested in the Sino-Western cultural encounter.

Preface and Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
1.1 Aim
1.2 Sources
1.3 Method
1.4 Previous research
1.5 Motivation
1.6 Structure and notational convention
2. The preconditions for the dialogue
2.1 The legacy of Matteo Ricci for the Confucian-Christian dialogue
2.2 Confucianism
2.3 The Confucians who have mostly commented on the Christian doctrine of salvation
2.4 The Christian concept of God in Chinese terms
3. Confucian ideas of the Saviour in Christianity: The assimilation of God to the Chinese concepts of Shangdi 上帝 and Tian 天
3.1 Neo-Confucian ideas of the assimilation
3.2 Cultural Nationalist Confucian ideas of the assimilation
3.3 Modern Confucian ideas of the assimilation
4. Confucian ideas of the object of salvation in Christianity: created humanity and its status
4.1 Human beings as part of creation
4.2 The status of human beings
5. Confucian ideas of the means of salvation in Christianity
5.1 The existence of transcendence in Confucianism
5.2 The transcendence of the Christian God and that of the Chinese Heaven
5.3 The superiority of the internal transcendence to the external transcendence
6. Basic Problems in the Confucian-Christian dialogue
6.1 The tacit difference of the ways of thinking
6.2 Four obstacles in the Confucian-Christian dialogue
6.3 Affirmative elements in the Confucian-Christian dialogue
Summary
Appendices
Bibliography
Index