Wei Zuoming

Wei Zuoming

An advocate of the Fulfillment Approach in the Indigenization Movement. He believed that Christianity was the answer to China, with Jesus being the focus of the Gospel. The Word became flesh not to abolish the Old Testament but to fulfill it. Similarly, Christianity is supposed to fulfill Chinese culture and not to abolish it. Wei Zuoming suggested that on should modify the part of Chinese culture that is not conforming to Christianity, so that it could become a Christian culture. It was believed that the Chinese culture was an end product of God and the Chinese. God must have left certain evidence of Christianity in Chinese culture, among the teachings of various ancient Chinese scholars.

They admit that Christianity was the answer to the need of China, with Jesus as the nucleus of the truth in the Gospel. Unlike Wu Leichuan they place Christianity above Chinese culture. They sought harmony between man and nature, Christianity and Confucianism. Since Confucianism does not believe in overcoming the nature, this approach intended to avoid preaching miraculous events in the Scripture, treating the biblical teaching as pure history or social study. The teaching of Confucianism can be summarized as the teaching of kindness, and piety is the basis of kindness. They claimed that, since Chinese already had a strong understanding of piety, all they needed to do was to add one more dimension to this by respecting God, the Father. Although the Bible does teach piety (Exodus 20:12), it also emphasizes that the love towards God is of a higher standard then that of love towards family members (Luke 14:26-27). Unfortunately, by not teaching the supernatural power of God, one is in a sense limiting God's sovereignty. Miracles in the Bible serve to show God's almighty power and the authenticity of Jesus and of the apostles. Without such miracles, God can easily be reduced to another mortal scholar like Confucius or Lao Zhi. As a matter of fact, the aim of John's gospel is to prove Jesus' deity.

Nevertheless, Zhao Zhicheng (another advocate of the Fulfillment Approach) realized that it is not enough to emphasize moral issues alone, and that man must realize his shortcomings and weaknesses, and asks God for forgiveness.

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