In this epilogueâas a kind of summary of observations from this volumeâwe will attempt two things in a very tentative way: In a first step I will sketch out some common structures of the semantic field of xin as well as the relatable field of faith/belief. We will collect here observations on both the Western genealogy (drawing among others on the chapter by Jiang) and, in particular, its Chinese counterpart that has been the main focus of this volume.
In a second step I would like to provide a comprehensive picture of the genealogy of xin in China and eventually summarize its results in four theses. These theses will shed light on its history of semantics from antiquity to present times as a complex history of linguistic interactions taking into account different traditions, fields, and milieus that have shaped its modern usages.
1 General Structures of the Semantic Field: Possible Dimensions for Mapping xin and Trust/Belief in China and the West
1.1 Basic or Everyday Meanings of xin ä¿¡ (and pistis/credo/fides) in Contrast to Conceptual Uses
While the project has taken its main starting point from the idea of a global genealogy of religion and accordingly is focusing on religious language, Chinese or Western terminologies of xin, trust or belief/believe originally occur in everyday language. Their conceptual use is in fact derived from it (see esp. the chapters by Jiang, Gentz, and Meisterernst). It is therefore important to differentiate between more general everyday (and non-religious) uses of the term in contrast to more abstract and complex conceptual uses (see nos. 1.2â1.5). Xin (as much as the Greek term pisteuein) often simply means putting trust in somebody as a person, in his/her actions, his/her words or deeds. Often it can be simply understood as: âtrusting or believing somebody about something,â or in a more abstract wording: âputting trust in a truth claim of another person.â It correlates with the importance of trust and trustworthiness as the very basis of sociality and humans as communicative beings. In this everyday use, trusting and believing appear as almost interchangeable though believing might point more to that which is believed (e.g., a truth claim), while trusting puts a stronger emphasis on human relations and the person who is trusted. This basic meaning also occurs in many religious texts.
1.2 Conceptual Uses I: Ascribed Trustworthiness as Value and Virtue
This leads to a second aspect when trustworthiness is ascribed to a person as a virtue or prescribed as a desirable human quality: Anthropologically speaking, this aspect of meaning expresses a universal value reflecting the relevance of trust and trustworthiness in human relations as a basic necessity in any functioning human society in contrast to distrusting outsiders. It denotes an important value that is of high importance in social co-operation, including customs, institutions, legal contracts1 (often âby handshakeâ), etc. In common language context, trusting a person, or regarding him/her as trustworthy, and believing the truth value of a personâs claim are often closely interrelated. It is therefore no surprise that trustworthinessâsimilar to specific trust-related virtues like sincerity, loyalty, or devotion to somebody (as found in component terms like chengxin
1.3 Conceptual Uses II: âReligiousâ Uses or Believing in Invisible Entities and Their Power
Furthermore, religious vs. secular uses can be differentiated cautiously (although the concept of the âreligiousâ has to be problematized as soon as we leave the relatively firm ground of the modern Western linguistic world). From a genealogical view such uses that explicitly relate to âreligionâ semantically or to a certain tradition that we nowadays call âreligiousâ can be included here. However, at this point we would like to highlight another approach emphasizing usages that apply the human act of trusting from tangible or visible to invisible objects of trust. In a functional perspective trust in, say, an invisible source of the foundations of life or of superhuman support fulfills important functions as a coping strategy in overcoming or reducing the feeling of uncertainty in human life generally, and in times of change and crises in particular.2 Sharing belief (or trust) in the same invisible, symbolically charged and superhuman authority of trust may not only create strong conviction (as a feeling of certainty) for the individual, but also strengthen a group in mutual trust and confidence to each other.
In emic language the mode as well as object of trust, belief, or xin can be characterized in specific ways. In particular it can be contrasted to seeing or knowing (rationality). The motif of believing as being certain of âwhat we do not seeâ is expressed explicitly not only in the bible,3 but appears also in modern Chinese debates.4 The issue of faith (fides) as trusting in invisible truths in contrast to rationality had been a major topic of debate already in medieval western scholasticism.5 Putting both in clear contrast has been, however, a rather modern phenomenon.6
Often the trust in an invisible entity will be mediated through visible or tangible entities or through living persons. To trust in the trustworthy guidance of a spiritual (or even political) leader, in what a priest in the authority of his position speaks, or what tradition (or a written scripture) reveals as trustworthy truth are examples for this. In the Greek New Testament, pisteúein was originally understood as putting trust in the living (tangible) Jesus as an authoritative person who possesses powers of healing and forgiving (given by the transcendent God), and believing in his words and deeds, and above all in his distinctive role (Messiah or Christ).7 After his death and supposed resurrection (followed by his ascension to heaven that made him ultimately intangible), believing implies trusting the words of the witnesses about his epiphanies after resurrection (handed down in a âchain of trustâ of trustworthy witnesses, the apostles).
In Buddhism, trust or belief in the Buddha (ÅraddhÄ) and his teachings is an important prerequisite.8 In the dissemination of Buddhism it was mediated through images, sutras, and the saá¹ gha as representing the Three Jewels. In some early medieval Daoist scriptures even dao (the Way) became a possible object of xin, as Assandriâs chapter attests.
Thus, trustworthiness as reliability in human matters is here applied to spiritual (or invisible) and superhuman entities.
1.4 Conceptual Uses III: from Trusting or Believing as Simple Action to Dogmatic Belief or Faith
The conceptualization gains more complexity when faith or belief as a noun does not only denote the simple act of believing (fides qua creditur, in scholastic terms), but shifts semantically to its content, or âwhat is believedâ (i.e., the belief in God [his existence], or any âdogmaticâ truth claim) (fides quae creditur). Such a use for the object of believing surely reflects the significant role of dogmatic truth claims and creeds in the Christian tradition. Only if the above-mentioned aspects are taken together, âfaithâ (fides) can be understood as the summarizing epitome of the Christian message that includes both aspects, believing as an act as well as what is believed.
It is very obvious that in Chinese this linguistic ambiguity and complexity is originally not present. Accordingly, the adoption of such semantics marks a major change in the Chinese genealogy. In modern Chinese, linguistic differentiations were made when individual doctrinal teachings had to be translated as xintiao
1.5 Conceptual Uses IV: Faith or Belief as a Universalist Concept: Religious and Secular
The highest degree of conceptualization (and abstraction) is obtained when the term no longer denotes a human capacity of believing as an act (fides qua creditur) or single objects of âwhat is believedâ (fides quae creditur), but an abstract and complex idea of a âbelief system.â As a general and comparative term, the idea of âfaithsâ/âbeliefsâ (or âbelief systemsâ) beyond the Christian faith only developed rather late (in the nineteenth century). In this case, âfaithâ or âbeliefâ (as a noun!) is not only an element that can be located somewhere, fulfilling a (minor or major) function within a tradition, but it becomes a signifier for the totality of a (religious or even secular) tradition. Also, the idea of âsecular beliefsâ developed only in the nineteenth century when the idea of âfaithsâ or âbeliefsâ as summarizing generic terms for basic systems of thought (âbelief systemsâ) developed. This kind of non-quotidian belief (as belief in any kind of Weltanschauung) appeared now as a typical âuniversalist conceptâ and was hypostasized as a basic anthropological capacity (similar to Rudolf Ottoâs idea of the Holy as a human a priori).
It therefore could be used almost synonymously to âreligionâ and play a role in the new concept of a âuniversal history of religionâ (and of âcomparative religionâ). In the newly written textbooks for the emerging discipline of âHistory of Religionsâ or âComparative Religion,â belief could further denote specific comparative aspects. Aside from the use as synonym for a specific religion or tradition, it could imply belief in contrast to ritual, i.e., cognitive aspects in contrast to religious action. It could also be related to different forms of theism (polytheism, monotheism). In evolutionary models of religion, belief could mark a higher plane than that of magic (associated with primitive ritual), and if a religion had a distinct and reflective doctrinal system of belief(s), it could be ranked as high as Christianity. This is also reflected in China when the academic field of religious studies was introduced and the new term was applied to its traditional âteachings.â9
Aside from religious beliefs, however, it became popular to apply the term to new secular teachings as ânew beliefâ (David Friedrich StrauÃ, 1808â1874) that saw themselves not only in intellectual competition with Christian or generally religious teachings (âold faithâ), but that also combined collectively shared and propagated âfaith convictionsâ with practical application (such as revolutionary activities like in Marxism). Positivism (Comte) or scientism could be understood as such secular beliefs and would hereby be distanced from âblind believing,â instead claiming a rational basis for their beliefs. It is striking that the term belief was still used with a new âpositiveâ content while any kind of religion became denunciated as irrational or blind beliefs and therefore superstition (German Aber-glaube, Chinese mi-xin). This use of â(new or) secular beliefâ was imported to China in the early twentieth century by Republican intellectuals10 and is still relevant in Chinese Marxism. The element of a strong (individual and collective) conviction in the semantics of belief may have been one reason for maintaining the term. Especially in ideological groups such as the Guomindang or the CCP this aspect appears as part of their rhetorics.11
2 A Comprehensive Semantic History of xin ä¿¡ : Global Genealogies and the Issue of Interaction
Building on the observations above, I will now attempt to draw a brief but comprehensive picture of the genealogy of xin. This volume has made clear how the semantics of xin
This is true already for the pre-modern period. Gentz has shown in his chapter that while xin has been applied in the meanings of âbelieve,â âtrust,â or âtrustingâ already in ancient everyday use, it was never used in this time as a qualified concept of its own. Conversely, whenever it was used as a conceptâtypically forming a component term together with other terms such as a âtrustworthy companionââit had always the meaning of trustworthiness, never that of belief. The first major change occurs already in late antiquity and early medieval time when Buddhism and its new semantics enter the stage and interact with local Chinese semantics. As Meisterernstâs chapter shows, in Early Middle Chinese, particularly in the Buddhist literature, xin adopts more and more the meaning of âbelievingâ in non-human entities and abstract concepts, taking up early colloquial use. Assandri adds to this perspective by showing how this is true at least in some degree also for Daoist texts where in some cases even dao (âWayâ) can become the object of xin. The major shift can therefore be reconstructed as result of the confluence of semantic histories of Chinese and Indian (Buddhist) origin.
It is therefore not by accident that a large portion of this volumeâ altogether eight chaptersâdeals with Buddhism in pre-modern or modern China and Japan. As several chapters (Meisterernst, Tam, Kleine, cf. Deeg) make clear, the new concept of trust or confidence in the Buddha and his teachings, translated from Sanskrit ÅraddhÄ, was understood as a prerequisite for the following steps in the Buddhist path of enlightenment. As Kleine presents in his chapter, in the JÅdo-ShinshÅ« (True Pure Land Sect) in Japan the emphasis on faith in the Buddha AmitÄbha and his grace, in order to become reborn in the Western Paradise, would go so far that Jesuit missionaries reported home that the Lutheran heresy obviously had reached already the Far East. In this context, the semantic leap from traditional Chinese to Western influenced meanings of xin appear as much smaller. Accordingly, the ostensible mis-translation by Christian missionaries who translated credo or fides with xin appears as less distorted or âwrong.â
The early genealogy of xin already shows us how earlier meanings were not erased or completely replaced by new meanings but how these semantic shifts rather added to its complexity. The actual meaning depended much on its use in specific contexts such as public or inner-religious use. This is, for example, evidenced by Drorâs chapter on Chinese Islamic uses from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Xin could here not only denote faith in the monotheistic God, but simultaneously refer to Confucian values of loyalty or even relate to authenticity in Chinese Islamic textual scholarship (similar to contemporary evidential scholarship or kaozhengxue
It is furthermore striking how early in time xin was used as translation of monotheistic faith as Deeg demonstrates already for the Jingjiao (âNestorianâ) use. As we have seen, this specific conceptual use was prepared not only by colloquial, but also Buddhist and early medieval conceptual usages. Later, in the Jesuit mission, faith was translated in the same way as xin, though there is no evidence for a direct link to those early Christian instances. Standaert points us also to the fact that the Jesuits did not put so much emphasis on the concept of faith or xin. Moreover, xin was related strongly to the semantics of li
The next major shift occurs in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when the balance of power was changing and leading to the hegemony of Western global orders of knowledgeâand thereby of semantics. To understand the modern changes of xin we have to understand first some changes in the long Western genealogy of faith (or pistis/fides) (see esp. the sections on the modern history in Jiangâs chapter). Most important was the detachment of the concept of faith or belief from its original historical semantic relations in the Judeo-Christian tradition, where it was linguistically bound to the ideas of (the monotheistic) God, Jesus as Messiah, the resurrection, etc. This development was based on the long process of hypostatization of the concept of faith already mentioned above. While in the New Testament the verb pisteúein (
In China, also, this universalist concept of faith became powerfulânot only through Christian mission (chapters by Jansen, Starr), but even more through secular channels of transferâin its translation as xin or xinyang, thereby adding another radically new aspect of meaning. Meyerâs chapter highlights the role of academia, focusing on the central example of religious studies for introducing faith as a universalism (as in the idea of a universal history of religion and the related idea of religious experience). However, this broadened concept of faith is also found in writings of secular thinkers such as Liang Qichao or Hu Shi (Fröhlichâs chapter) or in the new ideologies such as those of the National Party (Guomindang, see Kleinâs chapter) or even in most recent political speeches of Communist leaders such as Xi Jinping (as Wielander shows in her chapter).
In the framework of a global history of semantics the question arises now how these newer Western-influenced semantics relate to older ones and if they replaced older local nuances of meaning completely. The chapters on various religious traditions that reacted to modernity from the late nineteenth century and the Republican period (Starr, Krämer, Travagnin, Broy) until today (Chau, Huang, Lüdde) make clear that the picture is much more diverse and depends on strategies of reacting, but also contexts of speaking and speakers. In some cases we find a high affinity to Western-influenced and modern semantics, especially when groups reacted to external official or public discourses (Starr, Krämer, partly Travagnin), while some results show significant resilience to new semantic influences (Broy, Chau). The latter seems to be more the case in inner-group discourses or practitionersâ use in the field. Within single religious traditions, discourses on reform or preservation of tradition could shape very different discursive patterns. They also depended on the speakerâs positions, as Huang and Lüdde show with their field work among Taiwanese and Chinese Buddhists (laypeople and clerics, respectively).
This volume makes clear that the picture is much more complicated and global genealogies have to be analyzed in much more detail to understand the intermingling of the global and the local on the level of semantics. In relation to this I suggest here four summarizing theses that should be further tested, but that I regard as evidenced by the contributions in this volume:
-
1) Modern Western vocabulary has deeply added to and transformed the Chinese modern lexicon of religion; however, it did not completely replace it.
-
2) Different sets of vocabulary do not only exist side by side, but have in many ways been used to interpret, and thereby mutually permeate, each other.
-
3) While the modern vocabulary on religion has become dominant in public secular contexts (such as political, juridical, and societal debates, though traditional structures also survive here), traditional religious language has proven to be quite persistent within religious discursive milieus, while even there it had to adapt to modern language when positioning itself to the outside world.
-
4) Finally, Chinese academia has played (and still plays) a crucial role of translating and mediating between public and internal religious milieus and languages as well as between local traditional and Western, or global, contexts.
Bibliography
Davis, Walter W. 1983. âChina, the Confucian Ideal, and the European Age of Enlightenment.â Journal of the History of Ideas 44, no. 4: 523â548.
Fällman, Fredrik. 2010a. Salvation and Modernity: Intellectuals and Faith in Contemporary China. Lanham: University Press of America.
He Guanghu. 2003. âSome Features of the âChristian Upsurgeâ.â In Christian Theology and Intellectuals in China, edited by Jørgen Skov Sørensen. Aarhus: Aarhus University, 41â47.
Lamine, Anne-Sophie. 2014. ââI Doubt. Therefore, I Believeâ: Facing Uncertainty and Belief in the Making.â In Religion in Times of Crisis, edited by Gladys Ganiel, Heidemarie Winkel, and Christophe Monnot. Leiden: Brill, 72â90.
Lechner, Clemens, and Rainer K. Silbereisen. 2017. âSocial ChangeâUncertaintyâReligiosity: Psychological Perspectives on the Role of Religiosity in Changing Societies.â In: Pathways to Adulthood: Educational Opportunities, Motivation and Attainment in Times of Social Change, edited by Ingrid Schoon and Rainer K. Silbereisen. London: UCL Institute of Education Press, 240â258.
Parker, John. 1978. Windows into China: The Jesuits and Their Books, 1580â1730. Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston.
Wu Zhihui å³ç¨æ. 1998 [1923]. âYi ge xin xinyang de yuzhou guan ji rensheng guan ä¸åæ°ä¿¡ä»°çå®å®è§å人çè§â (A New Faithâs View on the Universe and on Philosophy of Life ). In Kexue yu renshengguan ç§å¸è人çè§ (Science and View on Life), edited by Zhang Junmai. Reprint of Shanghai: Yadong tushuguan, 1923. Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 1998, 306â396.
Zwingmann, Christian, and Sebastian Murken. 2000. âCoping with an Uncertain Future: Religiosity and Millenarianism.â Archive for the Psychology of Religion / Archiv für Religionspychologie 23, no. 1: 11â28.
For a quasi-legal use in religious contracts see here Assandriâs chapter.
For the role of religion in coping strategies see for example Lamine 2014, Lechner and Silbereisen 2017, or Zwingmann and Murken 2000.
Hebrews 11.1: âNow faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.â
See Travagninâs quote of Cihang
For example, the famous âfides quaerens intellectusâ in Anselm of Canterburyâs Proslogion, 11cent AD, see also Jiangâs chapter. For the relevance in Jesuit debates in China, see Standaertâs chapter.
See the chapters dealing with the confrontation of Chinese traditions with Western modernity and scientism (Fröhlich, Meyer, Travagnin).
See for this the chapter by Jiang.
See the chapters by Tam, Deeg, and Kleine.
See Meyerâs chapter in this volume.
Cf. the use of xin xinyang by Wu Zhihui 1998 [1923]. See also Meyerâs chapter in this volume.
Cf. the chapter by Klein on the Guomindang in the Republican period and Wielander on recent rhetorics of Xi Jinpingâs speeches.
See above (Introduction), cf. He Guanghu 2003, 43; Fällman 2010a, 21.
Their perceptions of China as a land of reason conversely even influenced European enlightenment thinkers (see for example Davis 1983 or Parker 1978, 25).