The Chinese Rites Controversy: Confucian and Christian Views on the Afterlife

Abstract

The Chinese Rites Controversy is a question that is as much ecclesiastical or missiological as sinological, and the researcher, therefore, has to attempt to embrace two very complex and demanding fields. It was, of course, an argument about cross-cultural understanding (and misunderstanding), and the peculiarities of Chinese religion and language; and an episode in the fraught historical relations between China and the West. But the controversy itself was ecclesiastical, among ecclesiastics, and it was the papacy and its offices which determined the outcome.

Neither Zarathushtra nor Pope: Zoroastrianism as a Front for the Anglican Church’s Attacks on Catholicism

“…His fragmentary writings are lacking in this regard, yet it should be noted that this issue was a matter of controversy for the Roman Catholic world at the time. The Faculty of Theology in Paris criticized the Chinese rites, and in 1704 (a year after Hyde's death) Pope Clement XI condemned them against the wishes and petitions of the Jesuits (Liu 2020;Rule 1994). This transnational scholarly state of affairs provides some much-needed context for all of [55] the attacks that Hyde's work endured from his posthumous critics, who surreptitiously attacked their religious adversary under the guise of scholarly criticism.…”