Hermeneutics of the “Fourth Teaching”: Two Chinese Scholars on Christianity and Ruism in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines the works of two twentieth and twenty-first century Protestant Chinese Christians, Wú Léichuān and Shí Héngtán, probing their hermeneutics for similarities to the way Buddhism entered into Chinese culture that might suggest a possibility of Christianity becoming a “fourth teaching,” alongside Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. A theological framework first described by Christian historian Andrew Walls, which he calls the “Ephesians Moment,” will be used to evaluate the hermeneutical choices made by Wú and Shí.