Product Description
by Khiok-Khng Yeo (Author)
The book is a manifesto or apologia for Chinese Christians. It seeks to articulate how it is possible to maintain a Chinese identity and a Christian identity at the same time without capitulating to some western or other cultural model of Christian identity. To be a Chinese Christian is to adopt a distinctive, unique identity that owes much to both traditions but is sui generis. Providing great resources for the construction of a Chinese Christian theology, Confucius and Paul converge across a surprisingly broad front. Yet, the Christ of the Cross completes or extends what is merely implicit or absent in Confucius; and Confucius amplifies various elements of Christian faith (e.g., community, virtues) that are underplayed in western Christianity. The Christ of God as found in Paul's letter to the Galatians brings Confucian ethics in the Analects to its fulfillment while protecting the church from the aberrations of Chinese history and while protecting China against the aberrations of Christian history in the west. Chinese Christianity has something to give the church that needs to be heard. China can develop its distinctive vision of Christianity for the sake of the church universal. Chinese Christianity will have its global mission if it can find its own authentic Chinese-Christian identity. Insofar as that identity brings the best of the Confucian tradition into the Christian story, it will help revivify global Christianity.
Author Biography
K. K. Yeo is Harry R. Kendall Professor of New Testament at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary and a Visiting Professor of Peking University as well as Zhejiang University in China. A Lilly Scholar (1999) and Henry Luce III Scholar (2003). He has published over twenty-seven Chinese books, and authored/edited nine English books. He is the author of Musing with Confucius and Paul (2008), The Spirit Hovers (2011), Zhuangzi and James (2012), Jesus Without Borders (2014). As a Chinese Christian born and raised in Borneo, Malaysia, educated in the United States, and currently serving the global church by preparing academic and ecclesial leaders in the U.S. and China, Yeo's teaching and research have focused on culture and the Bible, with a special emphasis on the tasks of building nations, transforming local communities, fulfilling the ideals of culture, saving individuals from chaos, meaninglessness, injustice, and moving them toward wholeness/shalom and beauty/glory.