1 Introduction

At some point between the late Qing and the early Republic, around the time of the collapse of the monarchy and the language revolution, another line of demarcation was breached. But just as the reforms took decades, imperial demise segued from Cixi 慈禧 to Puyi 溥儀 (restored briefly in 1917, and again in 1934 in Manchukuo), and classical modes of writing continued for decades alongside the evolving vernacular, so the transmission of faith from Protestant missionary publications and concepts to the agency of the Chinese church is more clearly delineated in the retelling. Overall, the pattern is clear: xin 信 in Protestant texts of the late nineteenth century primarily translates the English term “faith,” and renders contemporary western understandings of faith. The content of the term is understood as a doctrinal given, whose (universal) meaning can be interpreted directly into Chinese. By the second and third decades of the twentieth century, xin appears more frequently as a compound term, and the semantic scope and philosophical content of “faith” as expounded by Chinese theologians and church leaders has been expanded and developed in the light of their own understanding and beliefs.

If the scope of use of xin in Christian publications in the late nineteenth-century was driven by western mission sources, it was also informed by prior Chinese-language usage. By the 1920s, as compound baihua terms containing the character xin were consolidated, tensions emerge in the range of usage defined by the re-imported Christian faith and its patterns of thought. In the theological discussions of the early Republic, the question is not just what these new compound terms mean, but whether the meaning and concept of faith is analogous in imported western liturgical texts and theologies and in the understanding of contemporary Chinese Christian leaders.

This chapter begins with a brief survey of the use of xin in late Qing publications, before taking Zhao Zichen’s 趙紫宸 (T.C. Chao, 1888–1979) 1920 essay on the Apostles’ Creed and his creation of a new creed for the Chinese church as a starting point to explore the developing interpretations of xin among Chinese theological educators and church leaders in Republican China.

2 From the Late Qing to the Republic

The spread of knowledge about Christian life and faith was much enhanced by the mission press in the late nineteenth century. Secular thinkers and politicians who became leading spokespersons on religion, such as Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927), garnered the greater part of their knowledge from Protestant missionary publications (Kang even entered and won a Wanguo gongbao 萬國公報 prize essay competition in 1883).¹ Unlike the specialized Christian press or church press of the Republican era, the late Qing press followed “for profit” publication models and a broad missionary sense of purpose in presenting an eclectic mix of news, scientific and secular topics alongside Christian apologetics. There was not only considerable personnel crossover between “secular” and church publications, but also between Chinese and foreign presses.² Articles from the Church Times might find themselves excerpted and reproduced in the Shanghai Xinbao 上海新報.³ Leading newspapers like the Wanguo gongbao were widely read among the intelligentsia—reputedly from the emperor downwards⁴—and their language use as well as patterns of thought and social frameworks permeated into Chinese discourse. Wanguo gongbao (which was sponsored by the Scottish-founded Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge in China) had a circulation of almost forty-thousand in its heyday, a far cry from the first samizdat Protestant mission periodical of Robert Morrison in 1815, and proved a prime means for Christian vocabulary to enter Chinese speech prior to the broader reach of the Heheben 和合本 Union bible in 1919. A key precursor of the Wanguo gongbao was the cross-denominational Jiaohui xinbao 教會新報 (The Church Times), founded in 1868. This had a greater Christian thematic content than its more popular successor, and ran multi-part articles, such as the series “Xin zhu lun 信主論” (On Faith in God).

Just as western notions of the role of a regulatory, free press were incorporated into late Qing editorials and ideals, western notions of Christian religious structures came to affect national structures of belief, and to guide practitioners of other religions, at a time when religious terminology was being standardized.⁵ The impact that “Europeanized-Chinese” (ouhua baihua 歐化白話)—developed in missionary writings across the nineteenth century—had on the evolving grammar of vernacular Chinese has been described by scholars of Chinese literature, but remains a sensitive and understudied topic.⁶ Christian publications abounded with odd grammar and very specific, translated word usage, but the regularity of the appearance of Christian terms and phrases does suggest a transfer of understanding and input of new semantic range into religious terms in the late nineteenth century.

In late Qing writings, the character xin 信 mainly appears as a single character, with many occurrences variations on “belief” or “faith” in verbal and nominal forms, in a linguistic pattern consonant with use in earlier Chinese texts. The provocative headline of a Wanguo gongbao article of 1878 provides an example: “Believing in (信) Jesus is divine; believing in idols is diabolic.”⁷ A number of compound terms relating to xin as “faith” also circulated in the 1860s and 70s, but binomes appear less prevalent than monosyllabic use. Compounds or quasi-compounds include the neologism danxin 單信 for “faith” itself;⁸ xinzi 信子 or xinyou 信友 for “believer;” jing xin 敬信(天主) “devoutly believe;” zhong xin 終信 “to believe wholly;” du xin 篤信 “to believe truly” or “firm belief;” jianxin 堅信 “to establish in the faith,” with jianxinli 堅信禮 as the rite of Confirmation, and chongxin 崇信(者), “worshipper.”⁹ Use of xin in Christian journal articles can be cumbersome, but frequently makes more sense in back-translation from English.¹⁰ Such use of Chinese terminology in a western frame (linguistic or conceptual) did not cease in the late Qing, and is found in isolated examples well into the Republic. An edition of the Roman Catholic True Way 真道期刊 magazine from the 1920s, for example, reprinted an engraving of “Religio” depicting her as a lady with a full-body halo holding a chalice and large cross, with the three characters 信 望 愛 below: “faith, hope, and charity/love.”¹¹ Here xin is the cardinal virtue that abides; a stand-alone noun or sign depicting the entirety of (Christian) religious belief and assent.

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Faith, hope, love

From Zhen Dao qikan 12, coverpage, n.d. (1911?)

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The meaning of xin as faith is frequently unexplored or taken for granted in late Qing Christian journal articles. This is in part a function of format, of predominantly short articles in magazine formats and their intent for general consumption, although multi-part articles spread over several editions also existed, allowing for more extended treatment of topics. Where the nature of faith is considered, the authors of these pieces frequently fall back on stock biblical phrases and ideas. One Suzhou Presbyterian teacher or pastor (教師) surnamed Bao, for example, offers a conventional starting point for a discussion of faith in a three-part article entitled “If you believe you will be saved” (Xin ze de jiu 信則得救), but one which affords little discussion or elaboration: “human faith comes from the grace of God, and is not self-sustained” (人之信由神之恩非人自持).¹² Another example is seen in a thousand-character piece by Guo Qianshen in the Wanguo gongbao, entitled “Exhorting faith in the True Way” (Quanxin zhendao 勸信真道).¹³ Following a sweetly naïve pastiche of the opening of the Analects,¹⁴ the author narrates how, after coming to “believe in the Way” xin dao 信道, he experienced a healthy body, peaceful heart and all that he wished for—while his unbelieving spouse knew none of these. The article, perhaps a sermon transcript, circles around the phrase from John 14, “believe in God, believe also in me” and limns the hypocrisy of faith not acted upon, as in Peter’s three-fold denial of Christ. Variations on the phrase “to believe with the mouth but never make the intent sincere” (口信而意未誠) are repeated, but with no definition of “faith” implied other than that of being willing to lay down one’s life for Christ—that is, the acting out of what St. Peter failed to do. The relatively unsophisticated level of debate is seen in the language describing the hypostatic union and its relation to faith.¹⁵ In many such articles, phrases abounding in faith (信) usually require the meaning to be input by the reader, and in some cases appear if not tautological, then paradoxical. As Guo reaches his conclusion, exhorting his readers towards a truthful, active faith in Christ and God, he paraphrases the gospel of John, with interwoven commentary: “the faith of the one who does not believe in God but believes in me is inferior; one ought to believe in God and believe in me, and only then is faith achieved.”¹⁶

On the rare occasions where the nature of faith is addressed, an apologetics motivation may guide discourse. Several articles in church periodicals contrast the nature of true faith and false (假) faith. A short article in Jiaohui xinbao in 1870 entitled “Similarities and Differences in the ways in which Confucianism and Christianity prove faith”¹⁷ expands on the notion from the Zhongyong 中庸 (Doctrine of the Mean) that without proof people will not believe (wu zheng bu xin 無徵不信), and describes the dangers of the populace not being followers (xintu 信從, those who believe and obey). The crux of the matter for the author lies in a query from a reader asking why miracles have been rare since the time of Jesus and the disciples, given that without proof, people will doubt. The author’s response is two-fold: there is enough proof in the records of the actions of Jesus and his disciples transmitted through generations in the gospel to please all; but faith should not, in any case, be based on miraculous occurrences. On the question of why such miraculous events as those recorded in Mark of exorcising demons, touching snakes and safely drinking poison were not replicated in the present, the author explores the conundrum of faith from a Christian perspective: just as Jesus criticized those with stubborn, unbelieving hearts (心頑不信者), faith was a prerequisite for a miracle, not a proof; those who put their trust in miracles were in danger of being deluded by tricksters and illusionists. The dao of Jesus was not something that could be fathomed; faith had first to be actualized in the heart/mind. Miracles might follow, but would not be constitutive of faith (the argument is notably similar to that which Wu Leichuan propounds several decades later in The Hope of Christians (Jidutu de xiwang 基督徒的希望, 1940).¹⁸

If much of late Qing discussion of faith in the Christian press presents a somewhat unreflecting, wholesale import of biblical language, with a concep- tual frame rooted in the transmitting culture, certain writings were more nuanced, exploring the term and the meaning of “faith” from a rather more incul- turated perspective. Unsurprisingly, these tended to come from liberal-leaning missionaries of certain denominations, and from scholars who had spent longer in a Chinese cultural and textual world. An article “On Faith” in the Wanguo gongbao co-authored by Timothy Richard and Chen Yunhe 陳雲鶴 in 1875, for example, takes a more abstract philosophical approach and standpoint, beginning in natural law territory with the innate understanding of principles and belief of those who lived prior to Christ’s incarnation. (This is notable closer to the mode of argumentation on faith from reason that Matteo Ricci and confrères propounded).¹⁹ The subsequent teaching of the Way is described in terms of cardinal Chinese virtues (ren yi zhi dao 仁義之道), and while the essay was clearly Christian apologetics, it explores the dangers of misplaced faith (or trust) via a series of worked examples and logical progression, rather than simple appeal to scripture.²⁰

In articles adopting a Chinese frame of reference, the blurring of conceptual worlds is most evident, often predicated on the ambiguity of single-character usage of 信. In a short article also with the title “On Faith” (Lun xin 論信),²¹ Pastor Bi, an English priest from Guangdong, posits faith as a civic good. This might be taken as the sort of article that Matteo Ricci would once have deemed “preparatory” material for evangelism, a Christian exposition of shared topics of interest, except that it becomes clear that the article is really about the notion of “trust” and not of “faith,” and should perhaps be better translated “On Trust.” The article is signalled as Christian—published in the Church Times, by a priest, under a title that in many other instances would be translated On Faith—yet here 信 is a Chinese term and expresses the concept of trust. Pastor Bi begins with the statement that “Faith/Trust is one of the Five Constants; trust is the key to the Five Relationships” (信為五常之一信為五倫之要), before arguing that the five relationships are fixed by heaven and the five constants are a gift from heaven. All human exchange relies on trust, notes the author; even acts of goodness have to be trusted as such—we have to take it on trust that the actor is not seeking glory through their good deeds. The multivalence of the terms in such writings allows Christian virtues and vocabulary to coalesce with Chinese ones.

The broad possibilities of xin 信 in late Qing Christian writings, particularly in single-character usage, allow a degree of obfuscation in the referent, and so of how the notion of faith was conceived. The transport of terminology had yet, in the Protestant world, to realize a common understanding between author and reader. By the 1920s, a more fixed vocabulary of faith terms is evident, especially in compound terms, although there remains divergence between Protestant and Roman Catholic usage. The evolution from the multivalent xin 信 to the narrower “faith” or “belief” of xinyang 信仰 (or xinxin 信心)²² was paralleled in Roman Catholic texts by greater compound use, with xinde 信德 remained the prevalent term. The prolific print production of Protestant missionaries, and their greater interaction with the more widely circulating secular press, meant that for specialized church vocabulary, Protestant usage was winning out nationally. (The Jesuit Xu Zongze 徐宗澤 [1886–1947] was still lamenting in the 1930s the adoption by young Catholics of Protestant vocabulary, such as xintu 信徒 for jiaoyou 教友 [believer], or libairi 禮拜日 for zhuri 主日 [Sunday; the Lord’s Day]).²³ But more striking than vocabulary is the sheer number of writings on the topic, and the evolution in the level of theological acuity, including of scholarship which challenges inherited interpretations. Critical, constructive theology by Chinese Christians burgeoned in the early twentieth century as the cumulative effects of scriptural translation, didactic materials and education in the Christian colleges engendered the finest generation to date of Chinese Protestant theologians.²⁴

3 Reformulating the Credo

“Faith 信仰,” wrote Zhao Zichen, “is the light and strength that guides life forwards, and is also the creative spirit produced by a thriving life.”²⁵ Among theologians of the 1920s and 1930s, Zhao Zichen (1888–1979)²⁶ was acutely aware of the need to shape a new Christian faith in the new environment of Republican China—and of the dangers and divisive potential attendant in discarding elements of the “old” faith. Several of his articles in both English and Chinese specifically address the question of faith. In an essay on “The Indigenous Church,” where Zhao acclaims the indigenous church as one which “conserves and unifies all truths contained in the Christian religion and in China’s ancient civilization”²⁷ but is also freely enriched by Chinese “theological definitions and modifications,” he suggests that the Chinese church “cares nothing about theological controversies,” foremost among which were the niceties of the historic creeds.²⁸ The tension between what Zhao regarded as a natural tendency in China to love tradition and the need to reinterpret Christianity for its strange new environment was heightened by the anti- imperialist clamour of the day and its rejection of western hegemony in thought and praxis; yet the dangers of engagement remained real. Defining and categorizing the “faith” was, to a certain degree, inimical to that faith and its practice. The Chinese church would have its own creed, wrote Zhao, but:

To the Chinese mind tolerance is easy and theological debates that divide and destroy the inner life of believers as well as that of the church appear to be absurd and to be a pastime only for theological warriors who can afford to leave the whole church dying before then “for just a little bit of love” while they fight their sham battles for the historical faith in the most unhistorical way.²⁹

Four years earlier, in 1920, Zhao strode across this battlefield of the historic faith by offering a reassessment of the Apostles’ Creed.

Creeds (and Confessions) are evidently historical milestones in the church. From the Westminster Confession to the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, modern confessions have differentiated new church bodies from existing ones and formulated new emphases in the relation of humanity to God. (The term “confession” is used for a denominational statement of faith, while “creed” is reserved for those texts universally agreed among Christians, which is why they are historic and few). In an article entitled “My View on Creeds” published in one of the major new Christian apologetics magazines, Life (Shengming 生命),³⁰ Zhao sets out a three-part dissection of the nature and purpose of the Apostles’ creed.³¹ In the article he re-evaluates the relationship between the historic creeds and contemporary Chinese Christian thought; explores the nature of faith—and, by doing so, expounds on the scope and meaning of xin 信; and creates his own confession (or statement of belief; literally, “faith scripture” xinjing 信經). If the historic creeds are inseparable from the nature of faith, this third element is their outcome: a living, embodied statement of faith, at once practical and textual. Creating a new creed, in Chinese and for a Chinese audience, was a bold move—Zhao notes that a lack of courage had delayed its dissemination—and an announcement of the theological and ecclesial independence of the Chinese church. The widespread perception of the need for a local confession is seen in the afterlife of Zhao’s text, as his confession was taken up by others.³² Zhao’s analysis of the nature of “faith” as a cultural and theological construct draws on his western theological training and his Chinese literary background. As in the late Qing, the linguistic scope of 信 intersects, but is not always contiguous with, these debates.

Zhao Zichen was an avid educator, and many of his most important writings were written for students and youth. He begins his article on the Apostles’ Creed by noting that his ambivalence towards it stemmed in part from the difficulties that his students who wished to be baptised had in assenting to it, especially the clauses “born of the Virgin Mary” and “the resurrection of the body.” The notion that believing in the precepts of the historic creeds was not necessary to contemporary faith was widespread among more liberal Christians in the 1920s. In an excursus on whether faith precedes hope or hope comes first, Zhao’s colleague Wu Leichuan says of the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds that “although they still retain some residual authority, following the changing needs of the times and the progression in our knowledge, the majority of those old beliefs (信仰) have become mere formalities (juwen 具文).”³³ At this point in his life, Zhao Zichen himself believed that a physical resurrection was antithetical to science and human experience.³⁴ The questions his students raised, and the points on which they differed, concerned whether such individual creedal statements were a necessary requirement for faith, baptism and membership of the church—or, as some believed, whether one could slip into the church with partial insincerity in the recitation of the creed and then work to remedy the problematic clauses from the inside.

Zhao rehearses at length the reasons for the Chinese church to retain or to discard the historic creeds. His translation of a quotation from Philip Schaff’s History of the Apostolic Church³⁵ supports their retention as a common heritage of the world-wide church, and exemplifies some of the new compound uses of xin-terms. Zhao’s translation of his citation from Schaff reads:

… the so-called Apostles’ Creed. This symbol, though not in form the production of the apostles, is a faithful compend of their doctrine; comprehends the leading articles of the faith in the triune God and His revelation … and to this day is the common bond of Greek, Roman and Evangelical Christendom.

這個《信經》的各式雖不是使徒的產品， 卻是他們教義上信實的綜合， 其中包含‘三合說’和上帝的啟示， 及從創世到永生的主要信條。。。直至今日，猶然是希臘，羅馬， 改正教中間共有的聯絡.

Returning “symbol” to its ancient usage as creed, composed in common, Zhao utilizes three xin-compounds in swift succession: xinjing 信經 (Apostles’ Creed); xinshi 信實 (faithful); xintiao 信條 (articles of the faith). He continues Schaff’s argument, by noting the ecumenical force of a single, common “document acknowledging faith” (renxin wen 認信文) at baptism, and accepting that any selective attitude (xin bu xin 信不信) towards the creeds constituted doubt of the bible itself. The danger for the Chinese church in discarding the historic formulations, as he notes, lay in losing the goodwill of the western (and Eastern) churches.

Zhao concedes that for many Christians throughout history the creeds have been as important as the Lord’s Prayer or the Decalogue, and recognizes the near-impossibility of any given body in China agreeing to a new formulation, but his article nevertheless sets out his five objections to the Apostles’ Creed. These allow us to see how he understands “faith,” how he construes differences between inherited western and Chinese understandings of the nature of a creed, and finally his own contextual interpretations of the essence of Christianity.

Zhao’s first grievance is the inclusion of what he considers non-credal statements (不是信條的話) in a statement of faith. That Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was nailed to the cross, died and buried are, he holds, all facts, historical realities, and not articles of faith (不是信仰的條件). In other words, one does not need faith (xin 信) to believe in (xin 信) objective facts. “We must also believe in (xin 信) history, he writes, “but history is realities already past, which we can use historical and scientific methods to collate and gather corroborative evidence” to verify: we should, he argues, make real deeds the corner-stone of religious faith, while there is no need for them to be articles in a creed. Here Zhao adds his own voice to a long line of Christian texts from the late Ming onwards debating the nature of creedal clauses as statements one “should” believe in, and of belief in matters unseen, as discussed in Nicolas Standaert’s essay in this volume. For Zhao in the 1920s, faith needed a more scientific basis than the incredible elements of the historic creed allowed for.³⁶ The paradox is, of course, that the corner stone of Christian faith was to be verifiable historic facts, and not anything that required “faith” to believe.

What, Zhao asked, was the doctrinal core of Christianity? Not only did the Apostles’ Creed contain non faith-based elements, but it included, in his estimation, a number of non-essential sayings too—including the virgin birth and the resurrection of the body—which “the majority of those with a scientific philosophical understanding do not believe in.” These have soteriological implications and go to the procedural heart of what a faith-statement is for:

If we say these are things Christians must believe (xin 信), then we should ask: for all those who do not believe these two sayings yet believe that Jesus is their personal savior, and are people who strive to learn God’s ways and manifest God’s character in their lives: will they not be saved? And can they not all enter the church?

The demands of absolute creedal belief, or promoting the entire creed as a sine qua non of faith and church belonging, entail the danger of a sort of institutional “don’t ask don’t tell,” or emergent hypocrisy. If people are given to believe that they shouldn’t criticize or amend the Apostles’ Creed, yet those who do not believe each and every clause can still join the church: doesn’t this negate the nature of the creed as the “measure of the Holy church”?, asks Zhao. Forcing a tension between creedal rigidity and truth-seeking leads to the situation where would-be believers think they can “assent by mouth but deny in the heart,” and revise certain elements of the faith after they are baptized. This, he warns, makes the church into a liar, an organization that merely “dons the mask of truth-seeking.”³⁷

If Zhao Zichen’s first two complaints against the Creed were targeted at its content, his remaining three cavils relate to what it omits. His analysis of what is absent from the early church creed allows us to see more clearly the shape of faith that Zhao envisages. The Apostles’ Creed presents a certain understanding of the human and view of society, but it contains nothing on how one should live in the world, suggests Zhao. If Jesus’ ideal society is described in the Matthean Kingdom of Heaven, then where is the Kingdom, or the “new person” (xinren 新人) in the creeds, he asks? Zhao quotes Ian McLaren (pen name of Rev. John Watson) approvingly: the Beatitudes were the heart of Christianity, its narrow path, while the creed merely furnished a broad path.³⁸ The Apostles’ Creed contains only abstruse, or mystical theology, and no ethics—a “flaw” in all of the historic creeds—“From their first word to their last, they are physical or metaphysical, not ethical.”³⁹ Belief for Zhao in the 1920s is thus not a mental assent to propositional truths, but has to be embodied in a lived life, a life lived on a social plane. Such category problems, and the Confucian-centered critique they imply, are compounded by the omission of any reference to Jesus’ character.

As for many Republican-era thinkers, Christian and non-Christian alike, Jesus’ nature or character was for Zhao “the central point of Christianity, the root of Christianity.”⁴⁰ Without Jesus’ character as the center of faith, nothing else, from the atonement to canon law, held any meaning. Character and action were, as Zhao reiterates, indivisible, and so the biblical and credal emphasis on action was misguided: Jesus’ essence was his character.⁴¹ A generation of Protestant Chinese thinkers in the late Qing had thought through and rejected a Confucian “self-cultivation” in favor of the Christian necessity of external salvation,⁴² but the link between Jesus’ own character and his salvific power held strong for many. In an essay on the Christian Student Movement, Zhao developed one of his clearest expositions of the links between character, faith, and (national) salvation.⁴³ Addressing the beliefs and mission of the student group and what it needed to do to tackle pressing national problems, Zhao explored the need for a strong inner self (內心力), and for Christians to inculcate this in others. The aim of Christianity was, for Zhao, the creation of a new society and new lives, and at a time when the existence of the nation was itself under threat, the core problem was one “of character, of vigor of mind” (xinli 心力). He exhorted the student movement to “create character, muster character, develop character, in order to hold together the true life of the nation.”⁴⁴ Character was itself dependent on faith, since “in order to establish character, there must be a stable, unwavering, central faith (信仰), one that gives life and for which one would die.”⁴⁵ Jesus’ own vitality and greatness of spirit (jingshen 精神) came from his faith, and was inseparable from that faith—and it was faith in God that enabled Jesus to have faith in people, and to build up stupid, poor, uneducated, powerless peasants like Peter and James into the most powerful prophets and revolutionaries in the world.

If the creed omitted a core datum of faith—character formation—in Chinese understanding, Zhao’s biblical and theological study (at Vanderbilt and in China) persuaded him that the creation of creedal texts was a slow, human-centered process in the post-apostolic period, and not a matter of instant revelation. The spiritual authority of the creeds came later: only after church (or worldly) powers supported their formulation did they come to be seen as a heaven-sent ideal. As a human enterprise, the writing of the Apostles’ Creed was of its era. The history of composition was itself, for Zhao, an argument for the church to determine its teachings as it saw fit,⁴⁶ and amending, critiquing, or producing a new creed would be a “bold action, a valuable work” for the Chinese church, since the transmitted Creed was no longer able to express contemporary faith adequately, “but is rather a stumbling block to many believers xinjiao 信教 of understanding and moral integrity.” Zhao’s own ten-point constructive statement of what a creed should or should not be shows his ideal in the positive and the negative. It should:

Have scripture as its base

Propose ideals and standards with a faith value in each clause (有信仰价值的理想与标准), not just a description of historical events

Comprise only significant clauses

Encompass the most important doctrines of the faith

Be in simple language

Express an appropriate global social perspective

Foreground the character of Jesus and love as the basis of Christianity

Express clearly the means of salvation

Include discussion of ethical standards, moral life, or matters of the spirit.

Those who draw up the creed, moreover, should not rely on any authority or ancient transmission, but be free of bias, employ no arbitrary assertions, not contravene any truths established by science—yet at the same time should speak to the eternal glory of religion.

A disinclination towards abstract theology alluded to in the penultimate point is complemented by an emphasis on the moral character of those drafting such a creed in the final clause: those creating a creed should recognize their own limitations, be rooted in good faith, and able to discard language at odds with the established truths of scientific thought.⁴⁷

The confession Zhao writes, and which he describes as a Tentative Draft Confession (Zan ni xinjing 暫擬信經), is a deceptively simple six-point statement of faith (see Appendix below). Each of the six clauses begins, as with the Apostles’ Creed, with wo xin 我信 (“I/We believe”) and the first three follow the Trinitarian formula of the Apostles’ Creed. Each clause is meticulously crafted and rooted in scripture: Zhao cites biblical texts to elucidate or corroborate his point thirty-three times in the short text. If the first three clauses attest to the triune God, father, son and spirit, the remaining three affirm beliefs relating to Christians, the church, and the Kingdom of Heaven. Zhao provides a commentary on his own creed in the article, pointing to its innovations and potential friction points. The three most significant innovations, as he avers, are its Christology; its philosophical underlay, and its ecological message linking God to all creation rather than just humanity. The first clause on God the Father is based on philosophical theism and biblical creation, with a key emphasis on God as the standard for human morality.⁴⁸ Zhao believes that he has retained the Trinity, but the “content has changed a little.” His ecclesiology is functional, inclusive, and aimed at dismantling barriers between church groups. The low ecclesiology and the relative lack of emphasis on the church in clause 5 is noteworthy, prefiguring both the “post-denominational church” beyond missionary divisions of the 1950s, and the interpretations of contemporary scholars like Liu Xiaofeng, who have regarded the church as secondary, or dispensable, to Christianity.⁴⁹

The most telling break with tradition is in Zhao’s depiction of Jesus’ “self-established character,” which as Zhao notes is “bound to be attacked by some.” He pre-emptively rebuts these attacks by arguing that all humans have to develop their character, and if Jesus had been born wholly good, he would not be identical to us, and could not represent or save us—a premise of Athanasius. If character must be established, then what is not established or achieved is not character, and our “revered and beloved Jesus” would count as not having any character, so could not teach us how to establish character. His perfect, achieved character enabled Jesus to be “equal in substance and alike in glory” with God, since the element of divinity lay not in his natural character, but his achieved moral character. While Zhao does not dismiss the cross, this is clearly not a crucicentric theology.

Zhao Zichen published two more statements of faith, a brief but powerful two page composition entitled “Wo xin 我信” (I believe) in 1932, and an essay in English entitled “What I believe” in 1941.⁵⁰ The first of these was a statement of optimism in the face of Japanese occupation, a statement of belief in the essential righteousness of the universe, and of hope and trust that righteousness would eventually prevail over sin and evil, as well as in the Chinese people and eventual flourishing of the Chinese state. In this statement Zhao deliberately couches his trust in language accessible to non-Christians, speaking of the eventual liberation from Japanese occupiers and all imperialism, while offering parallels from within Christian thought. The second is a more extended essay, written from within the darkness of war and imprisonment, and represents a different phase in Zhao’s theology, affirming the authority of God to rule and judge; the reality of Christ’s incarnation and atoning self-sacrifice, and of the transforming, overcoming Spirit. In light of despairing humanity, Zhao proposed a renewed faith in “man, the incomplete, finite and sinful being;” in the good of the Christian community, and in democracy as the best form of political organization. In 1941, Zhao the iconoclastic creed-creator concludes that in the midst of world change “we do not need a new set of beliefs, but that as Christians we need to reaffirm very strongly the old beliefs in the light of present day world need, for these are eternal truths.”⁵¹

4 Conclusion

Throughout the late Qing, many of the circulating Protestant writings on faith were documents translated or written by foreign missionaries. The didactic and evangelistic nature of many such texts discussing xin is clear: their purpose is not to debate or expound the meaning or faith or philosophical bases of belief, but to transmit doctrine, to reproduce an understanding conjured by a source text, usually in English, in accurate Chinese, or to produce definitions for memorization. Language was understood as a vehicle, and much learning and expertise was expended in producing parallel or translated texts.

By the time that the New Culture Movement and the Anti-Christian Movement were simmering down (c.1923), a generation of Chinese scholars had grown up bilingually and biculturally, trained in the universities and seminaries of the US, France and elsewhere. The debates on faith in their writings, as exemplified by the essays of Zhao Zichen, are no longer so much linguistic as theological and philosophical: what does it mean to have faith? Not to believe blindly in the “supernatural” elements of the Christian story but to develop a mature Chinese faith in keeping with the cutting-edge science and moral philosophy of the era? To propound a creed that professes a Confucian-inflected faith in accord with the aims of the indigenizing movements (bensehua yundong 本色化運動), and determine the purpose of faith for contemporary society? The strength of this shift should be clear: it was the redefinition of “faith” itself, as the indigenizing drive within the church, advocated by both missionaries and Chinese theologians alike, met with the latest theologies and the textual debates espoused by foreign-trained seminarians. Faith was not to be an inherited doctrine but a living reality, shaped by both deep engagement with church tradition and the changing linguistic and social context of revolutionary China.