Sheng Ren in the Figurists’ Reinterpretation of the Yijing

Sophie Ling-Chia Wei

doi:10.3390/rel10100553

Abstract

Christian missions to China have sought to make their message more acceptable to their Chinese audience by expressing, in translations of Christian texts, Christian terms and concepts in language borrowed from China’s indigenous Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist traditions. The Jesuits were especially renowned for their accommodation policy. Interestingly, when the Jesuit Figurists arrived in China in the early Qing dynasty, they conducted exhaustive studies on the Chinese classics, studies in which they identified Tian and Di of Chinese culture with God or Deus in Latin; their descriptions of Jesus and Adam were decorated with “chinoiserie” through their association with the Yijing and Chinese mystical legends. Each Figurist, in investigating Figurism and interpreting the Yijing, had his own identity, focus, and trajectory. The Figurist use of sheng ren was employed in this paper to distinguish each signature approach and how they explained the image of Jesus and prelapsarian Adam using the ethical emotions and virtues of a sheng ren 聖人 in their reinterpretation of the Yijing and the Dao. This also led to the European people aspiring for a more in-depth understanding and more discussion of the Yijing and the Dao.

Highlights

Christian missions to China have sought to make their message more acceptable to their Chinese dience by expressing, iCnhtrraisntisalantimonisssioofnCs htoriCsthiainnatehxatvse, Csohurigshtitatno tmeramkes tahnedircmonecsesapgtse imnolarengacucaegpetable to their Chinese rrowed from Chinaau’ds iienndciegbenyoeuxsprBeussdidnhgi,sitn, tCroannsfulactiiaonn,saonfdCDhraiostiisatntrtaedxtisti,oCnhs.riTsthiaenJetesrumitss awnedreconcepts in language pecially renownedbfoorrrtohweierdacfcroommmCohdinaati’osninpdoilgiceyn.oIunsteBreusdtidnhgilsyt,wChoennfuthcieaJne,saunitdFDigauoriissttstraardriivtieodns
Classical and vernacular Chinese, he analyzed the compositions of Chinese characters; it was he who used the two hexagrams Tai 泰 (Peace) and Pi 否 (Stalemate) to indicate the image of the sheng ren
In this catechism, when there is a question about what the believers should believe in, the answer from a Western scholar concluded that the believers should believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ3 and explained that after the crucifixion, Jesus went to limbo and saved the spirits of the condemned and the saints. In this Chinese work, sheng ren was mentioned more than 100 times, mostly as a descriptor of saints or men of virtue. When it came to the early Qing dynasty, this group of Jesuit Figurists, Joachim Bouvet, Joseph Henri-Marie de Prémare, and Jean François Foucquet, took a bold step by describing Jesus as a sheng ren in their reinterpretations of the Yijing

Summary

Introduction

Christian missions to China have sought to make their message more acceptable to their Chinese dience by expressing, iCnhtrraisntisalantimonisssioofnCs htoriCsthiainnatehxatvse, Csohurigshtitatno tmeramkes tahnedircmonecsesapgtse imnolarengacucaegpetable to their Chinese rrowed from Chinaau’ds iienndciegbenyoeuxsprBeussdidnhgi,sitn, tCroannsfulactiiaonn,saonfdCDhraiostiisatntrtaedxtisti,oCnhs.riTsthiaenJetesrumitss awnedreconcepts in language pecially renownedbfoorrrtohweierdacfcroommmCohdinaati’osninpdoilgiceyn.oIunsteBreusdtidnhgilsyt,,wChoennfuthcieaJne,saunitdFDigauoriissttstraardriivtieodns. The concept of sheng ren are explored through the Chinese, Latin and French manuscripts of those Figurists; a close comparison and examination of their Chinese writings and manuscripts in European languages is made to identify the similarities and differences in their approaches in identifying Jesus and Adam as a type of Jesus, with sheng ren In these rarely examined Chinese, Latin, and French manuscripts, Jesus, as a sheng ren, has plural and dialogic identities, which mitigated the differences between Christianity and the Yijing and reflected a new facet of the sheng ren to Chinese readers and helped communicate the Dao to Europe

Saint or Sage?

Bouvet’s Confucian Sage

The Sheng Ren in Foucquet’s Astronomical Descriptions

The Sheng Ren in Prémare’s Anatomy of Chinese Characters and Hexagrams