Jesus' Death in Acts; Matthew----Jew or Gentile?

I finished Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, volume 1, and I have two:

1. S.G. Wilson states on pages 157-158: "...the soteriological significance of Jesus' death is never made explicit in the missionary speeches and is rarely apparent elsewhere in Luke-Acts. [T]he most that can be said is that 'Luke has taken over certain traditions regarding the meaning of the death of Jesus but he has not in any way developed them or drawn attention to them.' The longer reading in Luke 22:19-20 and the reference to the church as having 'been obtained by his own blood' in Acts 20:28 are not to be overlooked, and a practical theologia crucis, understood as a daily bearing of the cross modelled on the careers of Jesus and his apostles, is clearly a matter of some interest to Luke. Yet the failure of Luke to develop the positive notion of Jesus' death as an atonement, even though he is aware of it, means that there is little to counterbalance the negative emphasis on Jewish culpability. Of course, this is not necessarily a deliberate move on Luke's part, for it may well be that Paul's concentration on this theme makes him, rather than Luke, the exception in early Christianity, or that the atonement was an inner-church theme and not part of the missionary kerygma. The effect, however, whether intended or not, is that our attention is focused without distraction on the accusations against the Jews."

I found this interesting because some have argued that Luke does not believe in blood atonement and that the few passages that do refer to it are interpolations. Wilson sees those few passages as authentic, however, and he maintains that Luke knows of the notion that Jesus' death was for blood atonement but does not develop it. The result is that the Jews in Acts bear a significant amount of onus for Jesus' death, which is not even given much redeeming value in Acts. At the same time, Wilson does note that the Jews in Acts act according to the plan of God when they kill Jesus.

2. On pages 184-187, Benno Przybylski (which I will abbreviate as "BP") argues against G. Strecker's idea that a Gentile Christian was behind the final redaction of the Gospel of Matthew. Some of Strecker's arguments resemble those of John Meier and Michael Cook, who contend that Matthew was not a Jewish-Christian Gospel.

First, Strecker says that Matthew 5:43 reveals ignorance of the Jewish tradition, for it says that Jesus' audience has heard that you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Strecker states that such a concept is not in the older rabbinic tradition. BP responds, however, that it "could easily reflect teaching similar to that of the Qumran sectarians as expressed in 1QS 1.10 or 9.21."

Second, Strecker says that Matthew is unaware of Hebrew parallelism, for Matthew 21:1-9 presents Jesus riding two animals in fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9, when Zechariah 9:9 is not saying that the king will ride on both an ass and also a colt. Rather, Zechariah 9:9 is using Hebrew parallelism (repeating a thought), which means that the ass and the colt both refer to one and the same animal. The argument that Matthew does not understand Hebrew parallelism is used by John Meier and Michael Cook. But I agree with BP: the rabbis themselves took parallelism literally at times, just like Matthew. For example, BP cites Psalm 28:5, which says that "He will break them down and not build them up". This looks like parallelism because a thought is being repeated. But the rabbis believed that God did not repeat himself superfluously, and so the Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael Shirata 6 held that Psalm 28:5 refers to two separate things rather than being a repetition of one idea: "He will break them down" relates to this world, and "and not build them up" pertains to the World to Come. See my post here for more information on Matthew 21 and Zechariah 9:9.

Third, Strecker says that Matthew 12:11 contradicts Jewish law. Matthew 12:11 says that the Pharisees believed that one could pull his sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath. According to BP, "Strecker argues that according to rabbinic law the owner could feed the animal or even help it to help itself but he could not actually lift it out." But BP responds that Matthew may be going with a minority rabbinic opinion, or that popular practice was more liberal than the majority rabbinic view.

David Marshall: "The Teacher and the Tyrant"

In this post, I’ll blog about Chapter 3 of David Marshall’s True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture. This chapter is entitled “The Teacher and the Tyrant”. I have two items:

1. On page 28, Marshall states:

“Kindness towards inferiors was not a common attitude in Confucius’ day. Kings murdered to steal wives or even for target practice. The prevailing sentiment was that the best purpose a subject could serve was to die for his lord. Confucius taught that the first duty of a king was to care for the common folk, though.”

Overall, I enjoyed Marshall’s chapter on Confucius, for I had not read much about this particular religious figure up to that point. The reason why that passage on page 28 stood out to me, however, was that it made me think of an implication that Marshall often makes in the books of his that I have read so far. Marshall often points out areas in which the Bible or Christianity is superior to other religions—-superior in the sense that it is more humanitarian, or meets spiritual needs more effectively—-and his implication seems to be that the Bible or Christianity is divinely-inspired and authoritative on account of this. But does a person arriving at a revolutionary insight that we should treat people well mean that the person is divinely-inspired? Would Marshall say that Confucius’ religion was divinely-inspired and authoritative? (See here for an article that refers to Confucius’ other revolutionary thoughts.)

I seriously doubt that Marshall would say that Confucianism is on the same level as Christianity in terms of divine inspiration. In subsequent chapters, Marshall discusses what he considers to be weaknesses of Confucianism, such as Confucius’ God being overly distant, and Confucius’ tendency to ignore women, when husbands “need a teacher who sets an example [of] how to love and respect women—-who cares for virtue in women” (page 43). For Marshall, Christianity does not have these inadequacies of Confucianism, for Jesus bridged the gap between heaven and earth as well as modeled a respectful treatment of women.

Marshall also maintains that Christianity does not have the inadequacies that have resulted from the abuse of Confucianism (abuse that cannot necessarily be blamed on Confucius himself). Marshall praises Confucianism for its emphasis on honoring parents, but, in China, that concept has been abused, as (for example) some believe that a son should die if his father wants him to do so. (UPDATE: Marshall goes on to say on page 43, however, that Confucius thought people should obey their parents even when the parents are wrong.) For Marshall, Christianity has the sorts of positive concepts that are in Confucianism, such as honor for parents and Jesus’ covenant-faithfulness (which is not to say that Confucianism believes in Jesus, but rather that it emphasizes faithfulness to one’s family and obligations). But Christianity also is revolutionary in that it challenges authority when it is unjust.

Marshall obviously believes that Christianity is superior, but is he also open to the possibility that, on some level, people in other cultures and religions can be divinely-inspired, too? He talks at great length about what he considers to be truth in other religions—-a belief in a Supreme God, a hope for atonement, etc. Could that be due to God’s inspiration, in his opinion?

As an undergraduate, I once talked with a religion professor of mine about Christian exclusivism. He was an Evangelical Free pastor, but he also was learned about other religions and open-minded. Our class had just watched The Message, a movie about Muhammad, and it intrigued me that Muhammad stood up for the worship of one God as well as social justice. I wondered if Islam could have been inspired, in some sense, by God. Some of my evangelical friends said that Islam was from Satan and was a counterfeit (and this was years before 9/11), but I was interested in my professor’s take. He essentially said that we do not know on whom God’s spirit can rest. Who is to say that God is not in other religions, inspiring people to know him a little better and to take a stand for what is morally right?

2. Now I’ll turn to the “fact-checking” part of my post, and I am open to gentle correction, since I know little about Chinese religion. On pages 30-31, Marshall says that Confucius hoped for a sheng ren, a holy man or sage who would benefit others and would even be willing to accept death in order to effect benevolence. While later disciples believed that Confucius was a holy man, Confucius did not consider himself to be such. Marshall quotes Confucian scholar Chen Jingpan, who states that this ideal Sage for whom Confucius hoped “was thought of as being in the same category as the Divine Being of whom the Superior Man should always stand in awe.” According to Marshall, Confucius did not believe that he found such a person in his time. But Marshall, of course, thinks that Jesus fulfills that expectation.

I did some google searches, and I found some interesting things. Professor Nick Gier of the University of Idaho states in his notes here that Confucius thought that anyone had the potential to become a junzi, which is an ideal person. Regarding the sheng ren, Gier has the following notes: “Sheng ren sage[;] god-like—-true mediators between heaven and earth[;] Yao, Shun, Yu and King Yen[;] focus: cosmological”. The part about the sheng-ren being god-like and a mediator stands out to me, since that sounds like the Christian conception of Jesus.

Gier refers to places in Confucius’ Analects in which Confucius denies being a sheng ren (7:26, 34; 9:13), but he does believe that Confucius’ deems himself to be a junzi in 9:13 (which I cannot see, but you can check out Confucius’ Analects for yourself here). Bier quotes Zaiwo, who wrote in Mencius that Confucius was superior to Yao and Shun, and Bier says that these were sage kings, which may mean that they were considered by Zaiwo to be sheng rens. But I do not know if Confucius considered them to be such. Marshall says that Confucius did not think that they deserved such a lofty title!

I found on the wikipedia article about Confucius the following: “Confucius stressed the development of lǐ through the actions of sage leaders in human history”. “In the early Confucian tradition, lǐ was doing the proper thing at the proper time, balancing between maintaining existing norms to perpetuate an ethical social fabric, and violating them in order to accomplish ethical good. Training in the lǐ of past sages cultivates in people virtues that include ethical judgment about when lǐ must be adapted in light of situational contexts.” In wikipedia’s article on li, we read: “Acting with Li and Ren led to what Confucius called the ‘superior human’ or ‘the sage’.”

There was a pro-Islamic cite that quotes Confucius, but, unfortunately, it did not provide a reference:

“The superior man honors / respects / acknowledges ( WEI ) three things ( in his life ). He acknowledges the Decree of Heaven ( wei Ming ). He honors the Saying of Sages ( Sheng Ren ) and he honors the Great Leaders ( Ta ren )’. The small/common (men) ignore (the teachings) of the Sages, despise their teachings or gain no benefit from it.”

If this is an accurate quote, and if the wikipedia article is correct, then Confucius probably believed that there were sages or holy men before his time, for they left a tradition that he thought could help others to become holy men, or good people. He may have even thought that anyone had the potential to become that. But he recognized that the standard was high, and he felt that he fell short.

Linville's Carnival and Babinski on C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell

Jim Linville’s Biblical Studies Carnival is now up! And, while I was looking at Dr. Jim’s site, I noticed that ex-fundementalist Edward Babinski is on his blogroll, and I decided to visit Babinski’s blog. Babinski has an excellent post contrasting C.S. Lewis with John McDowell. Conservative Christians have long told me and others to read C.S. Lewis, hoping that Lewis will somehow convince us to adopt their brand of Christianity. The thing is…Lewis was much more liberal than many of the people who recommend him, not to mention more thoughtful and likeable.

What Costly Act?

I read a handful of daily devotionals, and, this year, one of them will be Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest. I didn’t care much for what Chambers said yesterday, but maybe I’ll be able to eat the meat and spit out the bones as I read him this year, or to see how even the bones can have some profound, redemptive point.

Here’s the reading for January 1. The topic is surrender to Jesus. Chambers says the following:

“It is absolute and irrevocable surrender of the will at that point. An undue amount of thought and consideration for ourselves is what keeps us from making that decision, although we cover it up with the pretense that it is others we are considering. When we think seriously about what it will cost others if we obey the call of Jesus, we tell God He doesn’t know what our obedience will mean. Keep to the point— He does know. Shut out every other thought and keep yourself before God in this one thing only— my utmost for His highest. I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and Him alone.”

I guess my question is: What would God want me to do that is so costly to me and to others? And how would I even know that it’s God who wants me to do that, and not my own obsessive-compulsiveness or guilt-tripping of myself, sometimes in response to what some Christian dogmatically proclaims is the “will of God”?

Sanders on Paul's Stripes and Mission

I started Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity. I thought that E.P. Sanders' essay, "Paul on the Law, His Opponents, and the Jewish People", raised some interesting points. Here are two items:

1. In II Corinthians 11:24, Paul says that he received thirty-nine stripes from the Jews five times. Sanders notes that, from a Jewish perspective, stripes were administered as punishment for certain crimes against the Torah. So which crime did some Jews believe that Paul was committing? Sanders wrestles some with this question by considering what ancient Jewish sources have to say:

"It is fruitless here to search the list of things in Mishnah Makkoth for which the rabbis decreed corporal punishment. For one thing, the rabbis themselves extended the list of those to be punished by the thirty-nine stripes to include those for whom the Bible decreed 'cutting off' (Mak. 3:15). More to the point, it is intrinsically probable that the Diaspora synagogues had at their disposal only two punishments, ostracism and thirty-nine stripes. We know from 1QS 7:1, for example, that in Qumran even blasphemy (according to the Bible a capital offense) was punished by separation from the community. One may reason qal-va-homer that the Diaspora synagogues could not and did not execute people guilty of capital offenses. The administration of the thirty-nine stripes was probably the only punishment available in the Diaspora to be applied to transgressors who kept showing up to the synagogue. The penalty, in other words, probably covered so many transgressions that the crime cannot be precisely specified just by learning the punishment."

But what was Paul's transgression, in the eyes of certain Jews? Was it blasphemy, since the Gospels present the Jews considering claims that Jesus made (i.e., to have authority to forgive sins, to be the son of God, etc.) to be blasphemous? Sanders maintains that Paul bringing Gentiles into the people of God without requiring them to be circumcised was his transgression. According to Sanders, the Jews considered the Christian movement to be Jewish, and so they thought that Paul was bringing Gentiles into Israel without circumcision. Circumcision was serious, according to Judaism, for God told Abraham in Genesis 17 that those in Abraham's community who were not circumcised would be cut off from their people.

Sanders also notes that the fact that Paul was even beaten indicates that the Jews considered Paul to be part of their community and thus under their authority. This, even though Paul relates in I Corinthians 9 and Galatians 2 that he did not consistently live like a Jew under the Torah.

2. On pages 88-89, Sanders states: "It is true that Paul says that 'to the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews' (1 Cor. 9:19), just as it also says that he preached from Jerusalem to Illyricum (Rom. 9:15). Yet his own description of his career (Gal. 1-2) seems to exclude any possibility of his having preached in Jerusalem, just as the Antioch incident (Gal. 2:11-13) shows that in a mixed church he did not live like a Jew. In short, it is hard to know when Paul could have preached in Jerusalem, and it is hard to know when he actually lived like a Jew in order to win Jews, since he clearly did not do so even in Antioch. I do not have at hand a precise literary category for Rom. 15:19 and 1 Cor. 9:19, although a student of rhetoric may. Perhaps the term 'hyperbole' will be adequate...In any case, the statements that he preached in Jerusalem and sought to win Jews do not accord with the rest of his descriptions of his career."

I do not understand all of Sanders' argument, but I can somewhat see his point: Paul in Galatians says that he was entrusted with the mission to the Gentiles, whereas Peter was the apostle to the Jews, and Paul does not live like a Jew when he is in a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles. For Sanders, that does not mesh with Paul's statement in I Corinthians 9 that he also had a mission to the Jews and behaved as a Jew in order to win Jews.

I have doubts that we should speak in absolutes when it comes to Paul's career, for perhaps he preached to Jews before he was entrusted with his mission to the Gentiles, or he sometimes expanded his mission a bit. Sanders' skepticism about Paul's statement here is interesting, though, because Daniel Fraikin in the very next essay, "The Rhetorical Function of the Jews in Romans", states on page 95 that "We should remember in this respect that the audience, from a rhetorical point of view, is not the actual congregation of people hearing the speech but a construction of the speaker." Fraikin here reminds me of Andrew Das, who argued that Paul wrote Romans primarily to Gentiles, and that his address to Jews is purely rhetorical and is not addressed to actual Jews in the Roman congregation. Paul is making a point to Gentiles when he addresses Jews: that Gentile Christians are part of the community of God because everyone has sinned and Christ is thus how people (Jews and Gentiles both) enter God's community. (But Fraikin also says that Paul addresses Jews, so I'm not sure that he's making the exact same point as Das.)

Sacrifice?

For my write-up on church today, I’ll use as my starting-point the prayer of confession:

“Eternal God, we celebrate the courage of kings who left their homelands and their own people to follow a star; we marvel at their quest to honor a child whose power was announced in the heavens above; we would do anything to be a part of their story—-as long as it requires little effort or sacrifice on our part. Forgive our feet of clay, O God. Open our shut-up hearts to the mystery made known in Christ, that others may behold in us, the blessings to be found in journeys worth taking. Amen.”

Part of this prayer rubs me the wrong way. What’s wrong with doing a good deed that does not require much effort or sacrifice? Why does there always need to be a sacrifice? I remember reading a book of sermons by John Henry Newman, and I did not finish the book because Newman seemed to be implying that I’ll go to heaven if I do good works that are inconvenient to me—-and he actually used the word inconvenient. I once read a comment by a Christian that was criticizing those who simply donate money to their local food pantry, without actively involving themselves in ministering to the poor. But isn’t it good when people give something, even when they’re not particularly sacrificing?

I led the liturgy today. One lady there has taught in the public school system, yet she is terrified of getting in front of the church to do the liturgy! I was curious as to why, and she responded that kids are not as judgmental as adults. She also said that she liked to feel a sense of peace when she was at church, and so she avoided getting up front to lead the liturgy. But she told me that she helps the church in other ways. And she does. Whenever our church has a rummage sale, or something like that, she is out there all day—-monitoring the tables and keeping the books. In my opinion, it’s best when we can serve by doing what we’re good at, rather than trying to do things with which we’re not all that comfortable. As Paul said, Christians have different spiritual gifts. Not everyone is a healer, an evangelist, etc.

But I do think that there’s a place to be stretched, to come a little bit out of our shells or comfort zones. But how does one distinguish between avoiding something that one is perhaps not good at—-something that can disrupt one’s peace of mind—-and a deed that one probably should do in order to grow a bit?

David Marshall: "The Sun Rise from Mount Tai"

In this post, I’ll blog about Chapter 2 of David Marshall’s True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture. This chapter is entitled “The Sun Rise from Mount Tai”. I’ll use as my starting-point something that Marshall says on page 19:

“Throughout history, China has felt the Presence of One whose nature images carved in wood or even words carved in stone seemed inadequate to express. He wasn’t like ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ of popular legend. I doubt China took most of its myths much more seriously than we take soap operas. As Frena Bloomfield said, the Chinese gods ‘Are there to be fooled, and the Chinese are there to fool them.’”

In a similar vein, Marshall on page 17 refers to a monument on Mount Tai that is blank because an emperor was dissatisfied with all of the inscriptions that his scholars proposed. On page 19, Marshall states that the emperor was left without words when it came to the Supreme God, and that there are no idols for Tian (heaven), as exist for other gods.

On pages 19-20, Marshall elaborates on the Supreme God of China. He quotes passages from Chinese literature warning against trifling with heaven and affirming that heaven hears all that is secret and cannot be deceived. Contra those who believe that Tian is an impersonal force or “An abstract concept of universal harmony”, Marshall quotes passages in Chinese writings that present Tian as intelligent, loving, and actively interested in humanity. He also refers to Chinese creation stories.

The passage with which I opened this item, the one on page 19, appeared to downplay the importance of gods and goddesses in China, as if the Chinese people have not taken them seriously. Elsewhere in this book, however, Marshall seems to grant that they are quite important to many Chinese people. On page 45, he states:

“In regard to the occult, the example China’s First Teacher [Confucius] set was incomplete. He steered clear of both gods and human demagogues—-both sensible policies. But China as a whole has seldom been able to avoid either entirely. Mt. Tai became cluttered with idols, and the minds of the people with demeaning superstitions. Why? Because China knew her ‘Heavenly Parent’ only from a far distance. Her wisest teacher, who felt an ideal father was distant from his son, also sensed no special closeness to God. He did not know how to bridge the gap between Heaven and earth, or fully understand why it needed to be bridged.”

Here, Marshall is saying that idolatry exists in China as an attempt to bridge the gap that many Chinese people feel between humans and the Supreme God, who is considered to be distant.

On page 53, Marshall says:

“But in the grain of Jewish Scripture were hidden germs of revolution, too. ‘Do not make for yourselves any carved image, of animals below, of stars above…’ Some may think the idea of a Jealous God to be outdated or provincial. But the hostility of the Jewish prophets to ‘idolatry’ was the most subversive concept in the ancient world. It sounded radical to Israel’s neighbors, and when these teachings reached a China that had accustomed itself to lesser gods than Huang Dian Shuang Di, it sounded just as radical. ‘Pluck the tablets of the family altar and throw them in the fire. Take a sledge hammer to all the gods on Mount Tai but one. Leave your idols of stick and stone and worship the One True God who made Heaven and Earth.”

Here, Marshall appears to be saying that idolatry is so endemic to China that the anti-idolatry message of the Hebrew Bible is revolutionary to the nation. That differs somewhat from what I take to be Marshall’s usual argument in this book: that Christianity fits Chinese culture because Chinese culture has prominent elements that are similar to Christianity.

Now I’ll do a little “fact check” on what I read in Marshall, though, as I’ve said before, I am open to correction, and I do not consider anything I write here to be the final word. I also can’t vouch for how good my sources are, but I’m consulting them to see if there is an alternative to the picture that Marshall presents.

Marshall’s presentation to Tian as personal appears to check out. The wikipedia article on Tian quotes primary sources (i.e., Confucius) that acknowledge a personal dimension to Tian, as Tian is one who makes decrees, has a will, can reject, etc. And yet, there is also a sense in which the Supreme Being, Shangdi, is regarded to be transcendent rather than imminent, and so he rules through lesser beings (see here). But there may be diversity or nuance in how the Chinese conceptualize Tian, for some members on the China History Forum maintain that prominent Chinese philosophers regarded Tian as impersonal rather than personal (see here).

A while back, I wrote a post that discussed an essay in Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson by A.C.C. Lee, entitled “Genesis 1 from the Perspective of a Chinese Creation Myth”. I’ll quote something that I say there, since Marshall talks about Chinese creation stories:

“The myth of P’an-ku states that P’an-ku came from primordial chaos, and that he separated the yin (earth, female, darkness, coolness) and the yang (heaven, maleness, brightness, warmth), which entailed the separation of the heaven from the earth. When P’an-ku died, his body became the things on the earth—mountains, rivers, etc. People were transformed from the parasites on his body—from ‘the finest essence of breath which becomes the human spirit’ (page 194). Notwithstanding their lowly origin, however, humans are still ‘invited to unite with heaven and earth’ (page 195). Lee sees similar themes in Genesis 1: separation, humans having a lowly origin while containing a noble sort of breath within them, etc. But Lee also acknowledges differences: the Chinese myth does not have a god who is from outside of nature, plus it lacks creation ex-nihilo. (Lee may believe that creation ex-nihilo is the teaching of Genesis 1, but I am not certain if that is Lee’s stance. But there are many scholars who argue otherwise, maintaining that, in Genesis 1, God is organizing chaos into cosmos, rather than creating material out of nothing.)”

There appear to be strong differences between the creator P’an-ku and the God of Genesis 1, for P’an-ku comes from primordial chaos and dies, and his body becomes things on the earth, such as rivers and mountains. But there are some Chinese stories about Shangdi and Taiyi preceding P’an-ku (see here). The story of P’an-ku reminds me of Purusha in the Indian Rig Veda (see here). I’d like to use that point as a launch-pad to ask a question. There are different kinds of creation stories throughout the world: creation ex-nihilo, creation from chaos, creation from a cosmic egg, creation from the body parts of a primordial being, etc. See here and here for details. Marshall has often implied that the appearance of Christian-like themes in different cultures supports the truth of Christianity. My question is this: Why can’t the cross-cultural appearance of un-Christian-like themes support the truth of non-Christian-like accounts of creation? Perhaps commonalities across cultures have a sociological or an anthropological explanation, rather than being evidence that the truth of Christianity is written on people’s hearts.

Regarding Mount Tai, perhaps Chinese people do revere Shangdi or Tian when ascending it. I do not know. But the wikipedia article on Mount Tai says that the supreme god on that mountain is the Emperor Lord of Mount Tai, and that some traditions say he is a descendant of Pangu (whether he was from one of the parasites on Pangu, like other human beings, I do not know). On the blank monument, all the wikipedia article says is this: “The Wordless Stela stands in front of the Jade Emperor Temple. Legend has it that the emperor who commissioned the stela was dissatisfied with the planned inscription and decided to leave it blank instead.” It does not say why the stela was left blank, but there could very well be more to the issue than wikipedia tells us.

Overall, Chinese religion appears to be complex. Marshall probably acknowledges that, but he believes that there are salient elements of it that prepare the Chinese people for Christianity. Sure, there are elements that overlap with Christianity, and I’m sure that those elements prepare certain Chinese people to embrace the Christian religion. But Marshall acknowledges that there are also elements that repulse people from Christianity, and that there are many Chinese people who do not believe that Chinese religion is consistent or compatible with the Christian belief system. Can we truly say that the Chinese religion is a tutor to Christ, when the Chinese religion is so complex and far from monolithic?