Nearly seven years ago the author of this large book completed his dissertation and defended it successfully, having worked through a long and difficult process of reading, interpreting, reassessing, maturing, and coming to some decisive judgments. In the end he had gained some important insights into his basic pastoral concern about overcoming expressions of repressed forms of self that prevailed particularly in the Chinese societies in which he lived and worked in East Asia. What the Rev. Dr. Hwang has achieved through this study is worth the difficulties of reading through what are at times fairly technical arguments and nuanced readings of original sources. For example, he has prepared in the appendices carefully compiled lists of the features of repressed forms of self presented in various sociological and social psychological accounts of these problems, especially as they occur within contemporary Chinese settings within East Asia.
Having returned to read this revised monograph seven years after the Rev. Dr. Hwang completed it in the form of his PhD dissertation, I am all the more appreciative of three major dimensions of this work that deserve highlighting.
First of all, I appreciate his summaries of the psychological and socio- psychological studies of post-traditional / contemporary Ru-influenced Chinese societies. To accomplish this, he had to resolve problems that arise in translating into English many Chinese terms that are at times notoriously ambiguous. Also, because this realm of critical sociological and social-psychological studies is rarely researched and applied to problems in the humanities, the Rev. Dr. Hwang has made a major contribution by summarizing numerous studies published in both Chinese and English. These need to be considered seriously by all those concerned about the problems associated with repressed forms of self that occur within contemporary Chinese communities.
Secondly, I appreciate the thoroughness he has displayed in this theoretical comparison of claims made by the well-known Ruist advocate, Tu Wei-ming (1940–), and the well-respected German Protestant theologian, Jürgen Moltmann (1926–2024). The former has published books and articles in both English and Chinese languages, but often uses different voices and alternative interpretive approaches to addressing the same topic in those different linguistic milieux. This creates interpretive difficulties that the author has tried to handle in a nuanced manner by referring to two major interpretive trends in Tu’s works. With the regard to the latter, Moltmann is seen by some as being a radical theologian influenced by Hegelian Marxism, a complicated and erudite German Protestant theologian, and so one who writes with technical theological terms and phrases that can be difficult to understand. Though Moltmann published works primarily in German, he was very competent in communicating in English, and has gained an international readership that is remarkable for any theologian to attain. Unfortunately, at the age of 98 he has passed away within a month of the writing of this preface.
The Rev. Dr. Hwang’s theoretical comparison has focused on how both Tu and Moltmann characterized ‘the relational self.’ This concept appears in numerous works of Tu in both Chinese and English publications, but the concept is developed from a more narrow framework in Moltmann’s case, one in which he discusses the Eastern Orthodox social trinitarian doctrine and its related anthropology. Within this theological discussion, a reader gains an awareness that Moltmann’s theology is not merely immanent, but is an expression of a dialectic between the divine and the human, between a real Trinity and the realities of humanness, an insight that provides for some creative developments in the author’s own considerations. But more about this will come near the end of this preface.
Since both Tu and Moltmann have had very extensive and prolific influences in Anglo-European contexts in particular, but also in many international contexts that include contemporary Chinese settings (but only within the last twenty years of Moltmann’s life), this comparison is long overdue. Nevertheless, the Rev. Dr. Hwang’s book gives readers a rare look into ways a post-traditional Ruist historian and philosopher and an unusually broad ranging contemporary German Protestant theologian might address answers to the concrete problems that arise with those who suffer from repressed forms of selfhood (whether in Chinese contexts, or elsewhere in East Asia, Europe, or North America, though this study focuses on contemporary Chinese cultural contexts).
The author did know that Tu and Moltmann had already met in a public ‘inter-faith dialogue’ in Beijing in November 2010, on a theme addressing ecology and a ‘culture of peace,’ as seen on p. 21, 165 of this book. From that dialogue there was no hint that principled differences in their presuppositions related to their conceptions of ‘relational self’ could be identified and critically analysed in the ways that the Rev. Dr. Hwang has done in this volume.
So, this brings me to the third and last point of appreciation I have in reading this work. There are a number of very creative aspects within this study that are important contributions made by the Rev. Dr. Hwang himself to both his theoretical comparison and his pastoral concern regarding freeing contemporary Chinese persons from various degrees of a repressed form of selfhood. While the author does not advocate either a New Ruist or a radical Protestant interpretive position within this work, he provides insights into two major interpretive trends within Tu’s works and finds resonances within Moltmann’s social trinitarian anthropology for his own pastoral project. He does this by assessing the claims of Tu and Moltmann by means of psychological insights drawn from the works of the Swiss psychoanalyst, Paul Tournier (1898–1986). Those concepts consistently related to Tournier’s accounts of the ways human beings use ‘masking’ to fulfil and complicate their social roles, and ways in which they may break through the negative impacts of that masking in order to reveal ‘the true person.’ On this basis, then, he boldly reveals theoretical assessments of Tu’s and Moltmann’s different accounts of ‘the relational self,’ and subsequently applies Tu’s and Moltmann’s claims to possibilities of liberating repressed forms of personalities experienced by some contemporary Chinese persons. His conclusions are as riveting as they are revealing: the conception of relational self advocated by the ‘resistant Tu’ is unhelpful, while the claims of the ‘responsive Tu’ are only somewhat less problematic; nevertheless, the unusual accounts drawn from Eastern Orthodox sources by Moltmann prove to be promising. These judgments may well be unexpected by many readers, but they are carefully argued, and I consider them to be compelling.
In the process of his analyses the Rev. Dr. Hwang also presents some new ideas that are worthy of further attention. While discussing Moltmann’s claims, he coins the phrase ‘open relational self’ to portray a subcategory within ‘relational selves.’ This aids him in distinguishing between that special form of relational self and ‘a closed relational self,’ and so highlights a form of relational self that is undeniably oppressed by the problems of unhealthy and even destructive repressiveness. In addition, he coins the phrase, ‘gracious moral cultivation,’ in order to describe growth within truly open relationships, whether in revealed divine experiences or manifested in and through relationships with other humans. This is the author’s own Protestant theological contribution to the possibility of liberating repressed forms of self among persons living in contemporary Chinese settings. Undoubtedly, I should reiterate, these ideas have the potential to be considered in other Ru-influenced cultural settings as well.
Resisting over-generalized characterizations of both Ruist and Christian traditions, the Rev. Dr. Hwang offers some new critical assessments within this volume that deserve philosophical, theological, psychological, and social psychological attention, especially as they relate to post-traditional Ru-inspired cultural contexts within contemporary Chinese societies.
Lauren F. Pfister
Rector, Hephzibah Mountain Aster Academy
Pleroma Residence, 1 July 2024