China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures

Abstract

Jacques Gernet's invigorating new book turns the tables on traditional approaches to the history of Christianity in China, presenting for the first time a coherent analysis of the impact of Christianity in the seventeenth century from the Chinese point of view. The aim is to reveal what the Chinese said and wrote about the Jesuit missionaries and, beyond this, to ask a profound general question: to what extent do the reactions of the Chinese at the time of their first contacts with the 'doctrine of the Master of Heaven' reveal fundamental differences between Western and Chinese conceptions of the world? For the missionaries themselves, the Chinese were men like any other, but corrupted by superstition and unfortunate enough to have remained in ignorance of the Revelation. But, as Professor Gernet shows, the missionaries, just like the Chinese literary elite, were the unconscious bearers of a whole civilisation. The problems they encountered were generated by different languages and logic and, ultimately, by very different visions of the world and of man.