The Relationship Between Buddhism and Christianity in China
This week The Church in Asia will turn to the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity in China. In China Buddhism was in close contact with Confucianism and Taoism almost from the beginning, and ultimately with Christianity, including Catholicism. While Buddhism has distinct teachings on the human person, its mystical teachings have often been found to have a special closeness to mysticism in the Catholic tradition.
Meet the Faculty Host: Gabriel Said Reynolds
Gabriel Said Reynolds is the Crowley Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology at Notre Dame and the Director of the World Religions and World Church program in the Department of Theology.
World Religions and World Church (WRWC) explores new ways of thinking about the study of world religions, global Catholicism, and the history of interactions between the Church and the religions of the world. This provides the intellectual foundations for engaging the student with religions of the world from within a Christian theological paradigm. These foundations both enable the study of the world’s religions with specific attention to their own particular historical contexts and modes of theological discourse and provide the necessary preparation for informed inter-religious dialogue.
Meet the Guest: Xueying Wang Ph.D. '14
Xueying Wang is a lecturer in the Department of Theology, Loyola University Chicago. Xueying came to the United States in 2007, to study classics and early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. She was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church on Easter 2008. Upon becoming Catholic, she changed the focus of her studies to Christian theology and earned a doctorate in historical theology in 2014. Her research is focused on Christianity in China and comparative religions. She is especially interested in studying the writings of Chinese Catholics during the Chinese Rites Controversy, whose voices had been largely ignored by modern scholarship.
Meet the Guest: Robert Gimello, Ph.D.
Dr. Robert Gimello, Ph.D., is a Research Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Gimello is a historian of Buddhism with special interests also in the Theology of Religions and in Comparative Mysticism. In the field of Buddhist Studies he concentrates especially on Buddhism in East Asia (China, Korea, & Japan), most particularly on the Buddhism of medieval and early modern China. The traditions of Buddhist thought and practice on which he especially focuses are Huáyán/Hwaŏm/Kegon 華嚴 (The “Flower-Ornament” Tradition), Chán 禪 (Zen), and Mijiao/Milgyo/Mikkyō 密教 (Esoteric/Tantric Buddhism), in the study of of which he is particularly concerned with the relationships between Buddhist thought or doctrine and Buddhist contemplative and liturgical practice, on the other. In the area of Theology of Religions, against the background of contemporary debates about the theological implications of religious pluralism, and in critical response to major trends in the ongoing Buddhist-Christian dialogue, he is concerned chiefly with the question of what Catholic Christian theology can, should, or must make of Buddhism. In the field of the study of mysticism, he joins regularly in the debates, chiefly among philosophers of religion, about the differences and similarities among various mystical traditions and about the relationship between mystical experience and the practices and beliefs that comprise religious traditions.
The Logos and the Dao: John C. H. Wu's Catholic Witness to China's Spiritual Traditions
Dr. Robert Gimelli, Ph.D., Research Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and former student of John Wu, gave this talk at Santa Clara University in 2019. Dr. Gimelli shares his observations on the legacy of John Wu and his contribution to the dialogue he fostered between Catholicism and Chinese culture and its ever increasing relevance to the contemporary needs of the Church in China.
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Featured Speakers:
- Gabriel Said Reynolds, Crowley Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology and the Director of the World Religions and World Church Program in the Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame
- Xueying Wang, Lecturer in the Department of Theology, Loyola University Chicago
- Dr. Robert Gimello, Ph.D., Research Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame