ABSTRACT
In 1985, Jaroslav Pelikan, Professor of History at Yale University, wrote his classic volume Jesus Through the Centuries. His Place in the History of Culture. An examination of the writings of nineteenth century Protestant missionaries in China indicates that many presented Jesus to the Chinese by using the traditional Biblical images of first-century Christianity. The content of the Gospel message concerning Jesus as preached in China differed little from what pastors were preaching in New England or on American frontiers. Most missionaries before the middle of the nineteenth century had attended both college and seminary and had received thorough doctrinal instruction. Very few of the Protestant missionaries were willing to accommodate their message to the Chinese context in the manner of Matteo Ricci and his early Catholic colleagues who found traces of Christian truth – natural theology, they called it – in the Chinese classics.
