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This series is as of 2019 continued as the Journal of Religion and Demography

The Yearbook of International Religious Demography presents an annual snapshot of the state of religious statistics around the world. Every year large amounts of data are collected through censuses, surveys, polls, religious communities, scholars, and a host of other sources. These data are collated and analyzed by research centers and scholars around the world. Large amounts of data appear in analyzed form in the World Religion Database (Brill), aiming at a researcher’s audience. The Yearbook presents data in sets tables and scholarly articles spanning social science, demography, history, and geography. Each issue offers findings, sources, methods, and implications surrounding international religious demography. Each year an assessment is made of new data made available since the previous issue of the yearbook.
This book solves the long-standing mystery of a Christian monastery near Samarkand, seen and described by two Arab travellers in the tenth century. Despite several attempts made since the 1890s, its precise location had never been established. The first part covers the quest, the find, and the archaeological excavations’ results. Then the author proceeds to search for a mediaeval Christian enclave near modern Tashkent, which appears to have been washed away by a river that changed its course over centuries.
Apart from the Christians, the book also touches upon the Manichaeans, Buddhists, Zoroastrians and other Sogdians, their languages, faiths, and material remnants.
Free access
In: Journal of Chinese Theology
Author:

Abstract

This essay offers a comparative analysis of aspects of classical Chinese philosophy with those of Reformational (Neo-Calvinist) philosophy. Such aspects form a shared root in prioritizing temporal experience (over abstract reasoning) and conceptualizing the entirety of reality as contingent and relationally dependent. At the same time, however, what marks the divergence between the two philosophies is the underlying assumptions as to what this integral reality points toward – a directionality that is critical to meaning and being. For classical Chinese philosophy, the source and meaning of reality is found within reality itself, not beyond it, construing such reality not as independent and self-contained but necessary and sufficient. This conflicts with the notion of reality as contingent and dependent. From a Reformational perspective, on the other hand, reality (i.e., all of creation) is constituted as it stands in relation to an independent and necessary Creator. The crux of Reformational philosophy is that the origin and meaning of all reality must point outside of itself to its origin in God.

In: Journal of Chinese Theology
In: Journal of Chinese Theology

Abstract

Theology and philosophy are strange bedfellows: although they share many similar interests and constantly influence each other, their relationship is fraught with suspicion or even enmity. This problem is especially acute for those who want to harmonize their commitment to sola Scriptura with the use of philosophy in their theology. Drawing insights from Herman Bavinck’s Neo-Calvinist worldview, I argue that this apparent competition is mainly caused by the failure to recognize the organic unity between both disciplines. Without theology, all disciplines would be meaningless, but without philosophy, all disciplines would be unintelligible. Portraying the harmony between theology and philosophy depends on the success of locating the difference and relationship between the universality of theology and that of philosophy. Further, the organicity that suffuses all things and affirms the primacy of special revelation reflects the Neo-Calvinist belief in both sola Scriptura and the sacredness of all vocations.

In: Journal of Chinese Theology
Author:

Abstract

This article aims to retrieve Abraham Kuyper’s theology to develop Reformed theology in mainland China. It shall argue that Kuyper’s concern about the varying contexts where theology is practiced shows an underdeveloped proto-Reformed contextual theology. Nonetheless, his idea of common grace serves as a conceptual apparatus through which his proto-Reformed contextual theology can underpin the construction of Sino-Reformed theology, a Reformed theology that is organically united with the history of Christianity while taking root in Chinese culture and interacting closely with the Chinese context. Such a contextualised Reformed theology can make Reformed faith an indigenous plant in the garden of Chinese Christianity on the one hand and prove conducive to the development of an organic Reformed community and theology on the other.

Open Access
In: Journal of Chinese Theology
Author:

Abstract

This article brings Bavinck and Pannenberg into dialogue and comparison on the theme of history. Despite the differences in their theological and social context, Bavinck and Pannenberg both seek to integrate history with theology while striving to overcome the dualism that has dichotomized history and faith since the Enlightenment. They share a common debt to the varieties of modern thought. Bavinck and Pannenberg provide modern theology with a valuable perspective on how theology might become more open and scientific in response to the difficulties posed by historical studies.

In: Journal of Chinese Theology