Competing Chinese Names for God: The Chinese Term Question

and Its Influence upon Korea

Sung-Deuk Oak

Journal of Korean Religions, Volume 3, Number 2, October, 2012,

pp. 89-115 (Article)

Published by University of Hawai'i Press

DOI: 10.1353/jkr.2012.0017

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jkr/summary/v003/3.2.oak.html

Access provided by UCLA Library (17 Jun 2013 11:13 GMT)

 Competing Chinese Names for God: The Chinese Term
Question and Its Influence upon Korea

Sung-Deuk Oak

Abstract

This paper discusses the theological discourses of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism on
the Chinese terms for God and their influence upon the term question in Korea. The term
question in China is important to Korea, not only because the former became the linguistic
and theological background of the latter in Sino-centric East Asian culture, and because all
Chinese terms were imported to Korea and had competed with Korean Protestant terms, but
also because theologies and discourses developed in China were used in the controversy in
Korea. The paper discusses four groups: Roman Catholics in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries (the Shangdi-Tianzhu Camp and the Tianzhu Camp), British and American Protes-
tants (the Shangdi Camp and the Shen Camp), British Anglicans (the Tianzhu Camp), and
Scottish Presbyterians (the Shangdi-Hananim Camp) in the nineteenth century.

Keywords: Term Question, Rites Controversy, Tianzhu, Shangdi, Shen, Hananim, primitive
monotheism, Matteo Ricci, Claude de Visdelou, Walter H. Medhurst, William J. Boone,
James Legge, Samuel I. J. Schereschewsky, Henry Blodget, John Ross, Horace G.
Underwood

Sung-Deuk Oak was born in Korea and educated at Seoul National University (English
Literature, Korean History), Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological
Seminary, and Boston University (History of Christianity). He is presently Dongsoon Im
and Mija Im Chair and Associate Professor of Korean Christianity at the University of
California, Los Angeles and a visiting fellow at the KHK of Ruhr University, Bochum,
Germany. His interests include Anglo-American Protestantism’s encounters with Korean
religions, Christian printing culture and vernacular translation, and Christian medical works
in Korea. He is the administrator of the Online Archive of Korean Christianity (http://
koreanchristianity.humnet.ucla.edu).
Correspondence: oak@humnet.ucla.edu

Journal of Korean Religions Vol. 3, No. 2 (October 2012): 89–115

6 2012 Institute for the Study of Religion, Sogang University, Korea
90 Journal of Korean Religions 3/2 . 2012

This paper deals with the discourses of the term question in China, which
searched for the proper vernacular term or name for the Christian God, in
both Roman Catholic and Protestant missions. The history of the interminable
term controversy in China is important to Korea, not only because the former
became the linguistic and theological background of the latter in Sino-centric
East Asian culture, and because all Chinese terms were imported to Korea
and had competed with Korean Protestant terms for several decades at the
turn of the twentieth century, but also because theologies and discourses devel-
oped during the controversies in China were studied and used by the Protestant
missionaries and Korean leaders in Korea before reaching a consensus around
1905.
This paper discusses four groups and their theological understanding of
Chinese names and terms for God. The first group is Roman Catholics (Matteo
Ricci and the Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans) in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The other three are British and American Protestants (the
Shangdi Camp and the Shen Camp), British Anglicans (the Tianzhu Camp),
and Scottish Presbyterians (the Shangdi-Hananim Camp) in the nineteenth
century. It analyzes their theological discourses on the Chinese terms and their
influence upon the term question in Korea. As this paper focuses on the
Chinese term question, it does not go deeply into the Korean term question.

Roman Catholics: From Jesuit Shangdi to Mendicant Tianzhu

In China, the first camp of missionaries invented new names for God in
order to counteract polytheism. The most widely used method was to combine
an adjective prefix with the main word zhu (主 Lord). The use of the word
‘‘Lord’’ came from the traditions of the Jewish Adonai reading of the Tetra-
grammaton and its Greek translation κύριος (Lord, master of supreme author-
ity) in the Septuagint Old Testament and the New Testament. As a result,
Nestorians created a new Chinese name, Zhenzhu (眞主 True Lord), in the
seventh century; Roman Catholics used Tianzhu (天主 Heavenly Lord) from
the seventeenth century on; and Anglicans used both Tianzhu and Shangzhu
(上主 Supreme Lord) in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
 Oak . Competing Chinese Names for God 91

The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), who arrived in China in

1583 and in 1601 was granted permission to reside in Beijing, accommodated
Christianity to classical Confucianism. Initially he employed two existing
Chinese names for the Christian God, Shangdi (上帝, Sovereign on High) and
Tian (天, Heaven), maintaining that under these names the Chinese had wor-
shipped the true Heavenly God. Ricci understood original Confucianism as an
imperfect ethical theism or a viable natural philosophy that was open to God
and compatible with Christianity. He strongly criticized the atheistic elements
of Neo-Confucian cosmology and claimed that theism was present in ancient
Confucianism. At the same time, he severely criticized polytheistic Daoism
and atheistic Buddhism. Ricci adopted Shangdi from the Confucian classics
and argued that they connoted Him as a personal deity who watched over
both human affairs and the universe. Ricci’s second term was Tian, the tran-
scendental Heaven, which was similar to the Western notion of Providence.
Since the term Tian was introduced to Chinese religious culture later than
Shangdi, around the beginning of the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1120 BCE), Tian and
Shangdi were used interchangeably in the canonical Confucian classics. How-
ever, under the influence of Daoism and Buddhism, by the sixteenth century
Tian had long taken on the connotation of an impersonal and natural force
(Lancashire and Hu 1985, 33–34). Hence, Ricci used the coined term Tianzhu
as well as Shangdi in his Tianzhushiyi (天主實義 1603). 1
Ricci identified the Christian Tianzhu with the Chinese Shangdi of the
Confucian classics and Shen (神) with the Spirit (Ricci 1953, 99–100, 125). 2
However, Ricci emphasized that the impersonal taiji (太極 supreme ultimate)
or li (理 ultimate principle) of Neo-Confucian cosmology could not be the
origin of all things and that Tianzhu had nothing to do with the Buddhist
sunyata (空 emptiness) or the Daoist wu (無 nothingness) (ibid. 98–99, 106–
107). 3 By understanding the character tian (heaven) as a compound letter of
yi (一 one) and da (大 great), Ricci added a new monotheistic meaning of
‘‘Great One’’ (unicum magnum) to the Heavenly Lord Tianzhu (ibid. 125). 4
The Jesuit adoption of the original Confucian terms represented their accom-
modation to the syncretic spirit of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and created
a Confucian-Christian synthesis (Mungello 1999, 22).
92 Journal of Korean Religions 3/2 . 2012

When the Manchus established the Qing dynasty in 1644, they became less
open to foreign influences, though they hired some Jesuits at the court for their
scientific knowledge. Manchu ethnocentrism, chauvinism, and xenophobia,
combined with Confucian Orthodoxy, made the Jesuit method of blending
Christianity with Confucianism less tenable among the Chinese literati. In this
milieu, the mendicant orders—Dominicans and Franciscans—adopted a con-
frontational method and gained their constituency among the lower social
classes, who were anti-literati and anti-Confucian, in rural areas like Shandong
where secret societies like the White Lotus Society were burgeoning. Franciscans
prohibited ancestor worship, which they saw as pagan idol worship, promoted
the development of confraternities, and organized secret meetings of their
followers who were persecuted by the local government (ibid. 24–26). The
difference in target audience and constituency led the missionary societies to
take different theological approaches to Chinese culture and religions.
During the Rites Controversy over the terms for God and the ancestral
rite from the middle of the seventeenth century to the early eighteenth century,
Dominicans and Franciscans criticized the Jesuit method of syncretic assimila-
tion to Confucian terms and rituals. When Pope Clement XI banned ancestor
worship in 1715, his papal bull Ex Illa Dei prohibited the use of Shangdi
and Tian, religiously and socio-politically charged words, replacing them with
Tianzhu. 5 The bull prohibited Shangdi because Vatican theologians thought
that the Christian God Deus should not be confused with the Chinese Emperor
di. In response, Emperor Yongzheng proscribed Roman Catholicism as a
heterodox cult in his imperial edict of 1724. Pope Benedict VII’s bull Ex Quo
Singulari (1742) more completely denounced the Jesuit accommodation to
pagan culture. In reaction, the Chinese court banned Christianity. Thus, the
first chapter of European Christianity’s encounter with Chinese religions came
to a close. European cultural pride over East Asian civilization, particularly
over the barbarian Manchus, closed the controversy and defeated the Riccian
method. The issue of ancestor worship was closely related to that of the term
question and Protestants reopened both issues in the nineteenth century.
As the Rites Controversy ended with the victory of the Tianzhu (天主) of
the mendicants, the Roman Catholics in Korea used its Korean equivalent
T’yŏnjyu (텬쥬) universally in vernacular literature, though they occasionally
 Oak . Competing Chinese Names for God 93

used Shyangdye (샹뎨) and Shyangjyu (샹쥬). Conservative French missionaries

emphasized heroic martyrdom and spirituality under the governmental perse-
cutions, and did not pay attention to the traditional Korean names for God.
They did not use Hanănim (하님), for they regarded it as a sky god of supersti-
tious spirit worship. The Dictionnaire Français-Coréen compiled in 1869 used
only T’yŏnjyu and for the entry ‘‘Ciel,’’ the author added that ‘‘les payens
par respect superstitieuxdissent 하님’’ (the pagans say 하님 with superstitious
respect) (Férron 2004 (1869), 54). The Dictionnaire Coréen-Français 韓佛字典
(1880) does not mention 하님 under the entry of ‘‘하’’ (Ridel 1880, 77). Tianzhu
(天主, T’yŏnjyu 텬쥬 or Ch’ŏnju 천주) remained the official term for God for
Roman Catholicism (天主敎) in Korea throughout the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Nevertheless, after the Vatican II Council, the Korean Roman
Catholic Church moved toward indigenization in the term question. When in
1971 and 1977 they made the Union Version of the Korean Bible in coopera-
tion with Protestants, Anglicans, and Orthodox Christians, they adopted
Tianzhu’s Korean equivalent, Hanŭnim (하느님). The Roman Catholic Church
continued to use Hanŭnim in their own new version of the Bible, Sŏnggyong
성경, published in 2005.

Protestants: Dominance and Shangdi over Shen

Many Protestant missionaries belonged to the second camp that preferred

using the existing names of the divine as a medium to convey a new idea of
God. Protestantism, as a religion of the Bible, produced vernacular translations
of the Scriptures. Different groups in China had varying ideas, linguistic and
theological, on the terms for God. One dominant argument was that Theos
(God) should not be translated into Zhu (Lord) because the Lord (kurios) of
the Greek NT was equivalent to the tetragrammaton (YHWH). 6 According
to this argument, Zhenzhu, Tianzhu, and Shangzhu were Chinese equivalents
to the Lord, not God. They searched for an alternative and their solution was
to adopt the best vernacular name for God—just as the Greeks had done with
Theos and the English with God. Another reason for the Protestant missionaries’
movement toward assimilation was their need to differentiate Protestantism
from Roman Catholicism, a stigmatized foreign religion in China. One of the
94 Journal of Korean Religions 3/2 . 2012

new developments made by (American) Protestant missionaries was their use

of Shen as the term for God, which the Roman Catholics had used universally
to designate the Spirit.

1) Shangdi Camp and Shen Camp

Since Robert Morrison (1782–1834) adopted Shen in his Chinese NT in 1813,

Protestant missionaries had used more than twenty Chinese names for God,
some borrowed from the Confucian classics and others coined by combining
Shen, Tian, Shangdi, or Zhu with other letters. 7 But it was not just British
and American missionaries who disagreed; Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians,
and Anglicans were also unable to find common ground. Protestant missionaries
were divided into two major groups—the Shangdi camp (Shangdists) and the
Shen camp (Shenites)—at the time the Board of Translators of the Delegates’
Version of the New Testament was organized in 1843, and then a third group—
the Tianzhu camp—appeared in the 1870s and 1880s. 8
In 1847 and 1848 missionaries produced many dissertations and tracts on
the terms. The Board could not reach a consensus and consequently published
the union version in two different editions in 1850. The liberal camp interpreted
Shangdi (Supreme Ruler) of the Confucian classics as a historical and spiritual
equivalent to the God Most High of the Bible, and the Chinese Shen as equiva-
lent to the Greek daimon and the Latin numen. The conservative camp insisted
that Shen was a much more generic term, meaning gods, God, spirit, or soul,
and that they could destroy Chinese gods by using the Christian Shen. The issue
remained controversial for decades. Most British and European missionaries,
William H. Medhurst, William C. Milne, Karl Gützlaff, John Stronach, George
Staunton, James Legge, and others, including Elihu Doty (1809–1864), a
graduate of New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey, supported
Shangdi, while most American missionaries, represented by William J. Boone
and Elijah C. Bridgman, supported Shen.
Accordingly, the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) and the Na-
tional Bible Society of Scotland (NBSS) printed the Shangdi editions, and the
American Bible Society (ABS) the Shen editions. Although the BFBS had a
 Oak . Competing Chinese Names for God 95

policy of literal translation, they tolerated the literary and dynamic translation
of the Old Testament by the missionaries of the London Missionary Society in
1854. This Delegates’ Version (the so-called Wenli Version) of the BFBS and
NBSS became much more popular by 1910 than the Bridgman-Culbertson
Version of the ABS that was faithful to the literal translation. Because American
missionaries occupied most of Japan, the Chinese term Shen and its Japanese
equivalent Kami were used in Japan. In contrast, since American missionaries
worked mainly with the BFBS in Korea, the Shangdi edition of the Chinese
Scriptures was distributed in Korea, and Shangdi and its Korean equivalent
Hanănim were eventually used in Korean Protestantism.
The Shangdi camp in China signaled a new phase through the notion of
‘‘original monotheism.’’ The Jesuits had thought that Christianity and ancient
Confucianism were complementary and the latter was open to theism. Yet the
Protestant Shangdists went a step further and argued that the Shangdi of the
Confucian classics was synonymous with the Greek Theos and the Chinese
were originally monotheistic, like the Greeks (Legge 1852, 58–59; Doty 1850,
12–3). They believed that Shangdi referred to the monotheistic God, although
the ancient Chinese worshipped many lower deities. Their use of Shen for the
Spirit had continuity with the Jesuits.
In the 1840s, Walter H. Medhurst (1796–1857) of the London Missionary
Society argued that Shangdi was the one great Supreme Ruler of Heaven whose
dominion, divinity, and virtue could be found in the Chinese classics. In 1847
he wrote a book on the terms Shen and Shangdi as expressed in the Confucian
classics, Daoist scriptures, and Buddhist sutras. After the examination of about
800 usages of Shen, he concluded that the word Shen had never referred to the
Supreme God in Confucianism; Shen were the expanders and contractors of
nature, and they were not gods, but subordinate spirits under Shangdi; and
that Shen was usually used as a compound word, guishen (malicious spirits). 9
In contrast he insisted that Shangdi in the Confucian and Daoist classics and
the Kangxi Dictionary (1716) was the Supreme Ruler of heaven, earth, and sea
(Medhurst 1847, 186–191, 246–249, 257–260). Medhurst argued that ancient
Chinese attached ruling power to the Heavens, or the Ruler of Heaven and the
Sovereign of Earth, ‘‘but whenunity and personality are intended to be conveyed,
they use the term Supreme Ruler’’ (ibid. 207). His conclusion was that Shangdi
96 Journal of Korean Religions 3/2 . 2012

was the substance (體 ti) of Shen, and Shen was the spiritual function (用 yong)
of Shangdi (ibid. 266, 278). He confirmed his view on Shangdi in another
long dissertation in 1848, which started with the Confucian ti-yong theory
(Medhurst 1848, 15). For Medhurst, Shangdi was synonymous with Tian
(Heaven), Tiandi (Ruler of Heaven), and Tianzhu (Lord of Heaven). 10
By contrast, Bishop William J. Boone (1811–1874) of the American Protes-
tant Episcopal Church denied the existence of original monotheism and primi-
tive revelation in ancient China just as Franciscans and Dominicans had done
in the seventeenth century. In 1848, Boone argued that the Chinese were poly-
theists, they did not know the true God, and therefore the highest being known
to them, Shangdi, should be regarded as the chief god of a pantheon. Under
these circumstances, he contended that they should not choose the specific
proper name Shangdi, but the generic and relative name Shen, just like the
Greek NT had not adopted the name of the chief god Zeus but the generic
and relative term Theos (Boone 1848, 2–4). Boone, a conservative evangelist,
hinted that those who exhorted the Chinese to worship Shangdi were violating
the first Commandment. He stated that Christianity could destroy the Chinese
polytheistic god shen by using the Christian Shen. In order to support his view,
Boone appealed to the interpretation of a French Jesuit Claude de Visdelou
(1656–1737), who had insisted that Confucius never affirmed Shangdi as a
creator (Boone 1850, 22). Like Visdelou, Boone referred to Zhu Xi’s commen-
taries, which understood creation as an impersonal process beginning with the
Great Ultimate (taiji), Principle (li), and Vital Energy (qi). In Korea, H. G.
Underwood and his colleagues followed Boone’s line and opposed the use of
Hanănim in the 1890s because they regarded it as the name of the highest god
of the Korean pantheon.
Boone’s arguments were so forceful that in January 1850 Medhurst and his
five colleagues in Shanghai proposed to temporarily use Aloha (Jehovah) when
the opinion of missionaries was divided between Shangdi and Shen. This
compromise, however, met with no favor from anyone (Boone 1850, 3, 17;
Williams 1878, 746–747). But the Shenites began to lose their voice owing to
the rising academic influence of James Legge of the London Missionary Society,
who began the monumental task of translating volumes of Chinese classics in
1841 (more focused work began from 1857) and completed them a few years
 Oak . Competing Chinese Names for God 97

before his death in 1897 (Girardot 2002, 40, 49). By 1851, more than one-third
of all Protestant missionaries in China had ceased to use Shen and gradually
one mission after another abandoned the term never to return to it.

2) James Legge and Shangdi

The Victorian missionary James Legge (1815–1897) played a pivotal role in the
Chinese term question by advocating two new concepts, Shangdi as a relative
term and its original monotheism. He used Shen initially, triumphantly believ-
ing that the Protestant missionary enterprise was very close to the rapid conver-
sion of darkest Sinim China (ibid. 44). However, after spending a successful
furlough in England with three young Chinese Christian students, from 1848
he redoubled his efforts to master Chinese classical literature. He accepted
Medhurst’s scholarship on Confucian classics and in 1848 changed his term
from Shen to Shangdi, insisting that God was not a generic, but a relative
term (Legge 1850, 75). He argued that both God and Shangdi referred not
only to the highest God in himself, but to the relationship between himself
and all other beings (Legge 1852, 2, 86; Keong 2007, 472). In other words,
Shangdi was not only the self-existent and independent Being, but the personal
God who created heaven and earth, ruled the world, endowed human beings
with good nature, revealed himself to the ancient Chinese, heard their prayers,
and was worshipped by the Chinese people.
Legge supported Medhurst’s idea of Shangdi of the Confucian classics as
the Supreme Ruler and Shen as Spirit. However, in 1852, Legge took this
a step further by insisting that monotheism, though not a pure monotheism,
existed in ancient China, stating that it ‘‘is now what it was four thousand years
ago,’’ and that the God whom the Chinese worshipped was the same whom
Western Christians adored because God had revealed Himself to the Chinese
(Legge 1852, 38). He discovered documentary evidence for a form of Shangdi
monotheism from Ming imperial worship recorded by the restorationists in the
Ta Ming hui-tien (The Collected Statutes of the Great Ming Dynasty, 1511)
(ibid. 24–31, 40–42; Pfister 1999, 215). Based on the idea of primitive revelation,
Legge believed that monotheism preceded polytheism in China; that Shangdi
98 Journal of Korean Religions 3/2 . 2012

in the Five Confucian classics was a different name of the monotheistic Chris-
tian God; and that Chinese had never debased the name in history, though they
worshipped many other inferior gods and spirits (Legge 1852, 58–59, 113). 11
Legge, like Matteo Ricci, depended on the metaphysical interpretation of
classical Confucianism and the ritual of the imperial court.
In his defense of Shangdi and criticism of the Shenites, Legge naturally re-
searched the Jesuit-Franciscan debate, especially the writings of Matteo Ricci
and Claude de Visdelou, for Boone depended on the interpretation of Visdelou.
Most of the first part of James Legge’s dissertation, The Notions of the Chinese
Concerning God and Spirits (1852), was devoted to the criticism of Visdelou
who ‘‘was in the habit of writing extravagantly about the Chinese and carica-
turing their sentiments’’ (Legge 1852, 64). Legge respected two other Jesuit
missionaries—Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare (1666–1736) and Jean-Baptiste
Régis (1663–1738)—and used their interpretations of the Confucian classics to
refute those of Visdelou (ibid. 69). In 1859, Legge defended Ricci’s liberal
method of accommodation by saying that, ‘‘About the terms I entirely agree
with his opinion, nor do I altogether differ from him about the ritual practices’’
(Legge 1859, 58). Legge supported the Jesuits’ use of Tianzhu for God and
Shen for the Spirit, for he thought Shangdi and Tianzhu were synonymous for
the Chinese; both were relative terms, and both were compound terms (Legge
1852, 129–130). But Legge preferred Shangdi to Tianzhu because Tian localized
the Lord: when God and Lord came together in the biblical verses, Tianzhu
(Heavenly Lord) referred to both; Shangdi (Highest Ruler) corresponded to
the general idea of God of the Bible; Shangdi was an indigenous vernacular
term; Tianzhu was sealed by Pope Clement XI; and finally the Protestants
needed to differentiate themselves from the Roman Catholic Church (ibid.
130–131). Legge rejected Tianzhu as ‘‘a Popery invention’’ from his Protestant
freedom. He regarded ‘‘Romism’’ as an exceedingly corrupted form of Chris-
tianity, which worshipped both the true God and multiple other beings, and
insisted that ancient Chinese monotheism, like Roman Catholicism, had
corrupted into polytheism, and that it worshipped both monotheistic Shangdi
and other spirits (ibid. 32).
In his essay entitled ‘‘Confucianism in Relation to Christianity’’ for the
General Conference held in Shanghai in 1877, Legge, coming from Oxford,
 Oak . Competing Chinese Names for God 99

insisted that the Shangdi of the Confucian classics was the true monotheistic
God, that Confucius was a man sent of God, and that Confucianism could be
used as a school master to teach the Chinese the knowledge of Christianity
(Legge 1877, 11). However, Legge acknowledged that as the Confucian books
did not represent the time when the religion of China was purely monotheistic,
there had been ‘‘from time immemorial, along with the worship of God, a
corrupt and depraving admixture of the worship of other beings’’ (ibid. 4).
Legge reiterated his view on the original monotheism of the ancient Chinese
in his book The Religions of China, published in 1880. He stated, ‘‘Five thou-
sand years ago the Chinese were monotheists—not henotheists, but monotheists,’’
though he adds that even then there was a constant struggle with nature-worship
and divination (Legge 1880, 16). Although the worship of a monotheistic God
in Confucianism ‘‘is vitiated by an inferior worship paid to a multitude of
spirits,’’ he maintained that this did not ‘‘amount to polytheism, for those
spirits do not receive the divine name’’ (ibid. 254). Many Korean Christians
and missionaries in Korea accepted Legge’s arguments of the primitive mono-
theistic Shangdi and understood Hanănim as its equivalent. His book, The
Religion of China, exerted a great influence in Korea. When H. G. Underwood
published his book on East Asian religions in 1910, he used Legge’s book
extensively and advocated the primitive monotheism of Korean Hanănim based
on Legge’s understanding of Shangdi.

Anglican Proposal for Tianzhu

There was a third camp, the Anglicans, who advocated Tianzhu and had a
strong impact on the missions in Korea in the 1890s. The first bishop of the
Church of England in China, George Smith, wrote in 1851 that he preferred
Tianzhu because numerous Chinese converts had been made by its century
and a half usage and Protestants had adopted most other religious nomencla-
ture of Roman Catholicism (Blodget 1893, 6). In 1864, Robert Samuel Maclay
(1824–1907) of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Fuzhou proposed using
Tianzhu for God and either Shengshen or Shengling for the Holy Spirit. 12 In
1865, Alexander Williamson (1829–1890), agent of the NBSS in Chefoo, wrote
100 Journal of Korean Religions 3/2 . 2012

a paper urging missionaries to adopt Tianzhu as ‘‘the only practicable basis of

union’’ for a new Mandarin version. The paper was signed by many veteran
missionaries, including Joseph Edkins of the London Missionary Society and
W. A. P. Martin of the Presbyterian Church, USA. In 1876, Maclay, who had
been transferred to Tokyo in 1873, made the same suggestion, saying that ‘‘the
Romish missionaries had fought the battle on the term question and settled it
with Tianzhu. Why not accept their terms?’’ (Blodget 1893, 7)
Bishop Samuel I. J. Schereschewsky (1831–1906) was its representative
translator. He argued that Shangdi was not satisfactory because of its identifi-
cation with the Jade Emperor or Heaven, and as Shen could be used in the
singular or plural, masculine or feminine, it could denote female deities, and
so Shen could not be used for a monotheistic religion. His own solution, which
he employed in his 1875 OT translation, was to use Tianzhu for Elohim (God),
Zhu (Lord) for YHWH, and Shen for (other) gods (Schereschewsky 1888, 34–
35). Personally, he advocated the use of Shangzhu (Supreme Lord), for the
Buddhists refer to Indra as Tianzhu, the lord of the thirty-two deva (gods).
Moreover, by using Tianzhu, Protestants were liable to be confounded with
Roman Catholics.
Henry Blodget (1825–1903) of the American Board in Beijing, however,
convinced Schereschewsky that Tianzhu was the best term. In 1893, Blodget
argued that the entire Christian Church in China—Protestant, Roman Catholics,
and Orthodox—should use a uniform term for God. The experience of eighty-
five years proved that Shen could not distinguish between polytheistic gods and
the One God. Shangdi had been associated with the national cult and thus
many Catholic and Protestant missionaries regarded Shangdi as just a chief
god. Blodget insisted that Christian charity required concessions on the part
of the Shangdists to the other larger groups (Blodget 1893, 3–4). He stated
that Tianzhu was proper on two counts. Sima Qian’s Ershiwushi (Twenty-five
Histories) mentioned that the first emperor of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE)
worshipped eight gods (shen) at the feng and shan sacrifice and one of the gods
was Tianzhu. No word in Chinese had more of religious reverence attached to
it than the word Tian (Heaven), and Zhu added the personal element (Eber
1999, 227).
 Oak . Competing Chinese Names for God 101

The Anglican proposal for the union was well accepted by younger mis-
sionaries in Korea as well as by senior missionaries in China. 13 Unlike the
Chinese Protestant missions, the Korean traditional vernacular name Hanănim
(하님 Heavenly Being) and the Chinese new name T’yŏnjyu (텬쥬 C. Tianzhu)
competed in the Korean Protestant missions in the 1890s. 14 Why did many
Protestant missionaries in Korea accept Tianzhu? It was because they were
influenced by the discourse of the Anglicans in China. H. G. Underwood was
a strong supporter of Tianzhu. Like the Shenite Henry Boone in China, he
insisted that the Christian God was not a specific name but a generic term.
Underwood claimed that because the use of an existing name for the native
gods entailed a connection with these gods, a generic term should be selected
in order to exclude them; in cases where it was not possible to find such a
term, Jehovah should be used (Underwood 1904, 103–104). Then in 1897,
Underwood moved toward the use of T’yŏnjyu (텬쥬) and Syangjyu (샹쥬),
influenced by Henry Blodget’s 1893 arguments for the uniform use of Tianzhu
in China. Around 1900, Underwood became the only Presbyterian missionary
in Korea opposed to the use of Hanănim. Underwood used T’yŏnjyu in his
translation of the Scriptures and tracts, and between 1897 and 1901 he consis-
tently used Syangjyu in his weekly Kŭrisŭdosinmun (The Christian News). He
remained in the eye of the storm during the term controversy from 1894 to
1903, and then yielded to the Hanănim camp, just as many missionaries in
China yielded to the Shangdi camp.

Scottish Presbyterians’ Shangdi and Hanănim

In the interconnection between the Chinese terms and the Korean terms for
God, John Ross (1842–1915) and other Scottish missionaries in Shandong
and Manchuria provided the missionaries in Seoul with important theological
and linguistic discourses. They used Shangdi in Chinese Christian literature
and Hanŭnim or Hananim (Heavenly One) in Korean Christian literature that
they produced from 1877 to 1893. By using both terms and by referring to the
contemporary Manchurian and Korean religiosity, they determined the adop-
tion of Hananim in Korean Scriptures. Here John Ross developed unique
102 Journal of Korean Religions 3/2 . 2012

discourses on the original monotheism of Confucianism in ancient China,

Daoism in Manchuria, and shamanism in northern Korea.
John Ross was sent to Newchwang (Yingkou) in 1872 as the first missionary
of the Manchurian Mission of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland,
and he worked among Koreans as well as Chinese in Manchuria until his
retirement in 1910. 15 Ross’s Korean work is well known now. 16 After some
contacts with Koreans in Manchuria, Ross began to translate the Scriptures
into Korean han’gŭl in 1877, and chose a vernacular name Hanŭnim (Hananim)
as the term for God from his first Korean Gospels of Luke and John in 1882 to
the New Testament in 1887 (Ok and Yi 1993, 31–89; 1994, 105–106). 17 Ross
regarded Manchuria and Korea as parts of the larger cultural sphere of North-
east Asia, and studied the distinctive Korean language, culture, history, and
religions, hoping to evangelize in Korea someday in the future. 18
This vision was transferred from Alexander Williamson, a senior Scottish
missionary in China since 1855 and agent of the National Bible Society of
Scotland in Chefoo, Shandong. Williamson persuaded Robert J. Thomas (1839–
1866) to visit Korea in 1865 and board the General Sherman as a colporteur
of NBSS for the fateful voyage of 1866 to P’yŏngyang. In 1867, Williamson
visited the Korean Gate in Manchuria, the gateway village and the official
market place between Qing China and Chosŏn Korea. He distributed Scrip-
tures and tracts among Korean merchants there, gathered some information
about Korea, yet failed to hear about the late Thomas. Williamson yearned
for Great Britain and America to open Korea for mission work (Williamson
1870, 179–184, 311). Influenced by Thomas and Williamson, Ross visited the
Korean Gate in 1874 and 1876 and found a Korean language teacher, Yi
Ŭngch’an. After publishing the Corean Primer for future missionaries to Korea
in 1877, Ross and Yi began to translate the Scriptures into Korean and the first
drafts of three Gospels were completed by 1878 before Ross left for England on
furlough.
From 1878 Ross adopted Hanŭnim as an equivalent of Shangdi. Before
going to Scotland, he completed the drafts of History of Corea: Ancient and
Modern, and published it in 1879. In the book he argued,
 Oak . Competing Chinese Names for God 103

The Coreans have one native name, and one borrowed from the Chinese,
for the Supreme Being. The former is Hannonim, from hanul, heaven; the
latter Shangde. The name Hannonim is so distinguished and so universally
used, that there will be no fear, in future translations and preaching, of the
unseemly squabbles which occurred long ago among Chinese missionaries
on this subject;—even though the Romanists have introduced the name
which they employ in China. The idea conveyed by the term Hannonim is
much like that of Tienlaoye, the popular Chinese name for the Almighty,
the all-present, but invisible One. (Ross 1881a, 355)

Ross understood that the etymology of Hanŭnim (Hannonim) was hanŭl

(heaven). Hanŭnim meant the Heavenly Ruler and thus it was equivalent to
the Chinese Shangdi. Ross contended that this term included the meaning of
omnipotent, omnipresent, and invisible.
On the other hand, John MacIntyre (1837–1905), who joined Ross in 1875
and became his brother-in-law in 1876, continued the translation work with
some Koreans in 1879 (Christie 1934, 78; Grayson 1984, 350–352). He used
Hananim, as Ross and his Korean helpers had adopted. MacIntyre baptized
four Koreans, including Paek Hongjun and Yi Ŭngch’an, at the Chinese Church
in Newchwang in 1879 (McIntyre 1880, 14–15; 1880a, 278–279; Ross 1880,
333–334). These were the first Protestant baptisms for Koreans.
When Ross retuned to Manchuria from Scotland in 1881 he moved to
Shenyang, established a press, and began to publish Korean Christian litera-
ture. Ross adopted Hanŭnim in his first two Korean tracts, Yesusŏnggyomundap
(Bible Catechism) and Yesusŏnggyoyoryŏng (Introduction to the New Testa-
ment) in October 1881, 19 and the first two Korean Gospels of Luke and John
in the spring of 1882. 20 From 1883 he then consistently used Hananim in
the Korean scriptures. However, there was no change in the meaning in his
shift from Hanŭnim to Hananim. It was just a spelling change. Its meaning
remained as ‘‘Heavenly One,’’ the Korean equivalent of Shangdi.
Like other Scottish missionaries, Ross adopted Shangdi under the influence
of Alexander Williamson of the NBSS and possibly James Legge (An 2009,
230–236). 21 In adopting Shangdi, however, Ross had a different approach
from that of James Legge. Legge depended on documentary evidence, such as
104 Journal of Korean Religions 3/2 . 2012

Confucian classics and old court records. Although Ross studied Confucian
classics, quoted them in his sermons, and included Confucian classics in the
curricula of the mission schools, he had different sources for Shangdi as a
term for God and the contemporary Chinese people’s understanding of Shangdi.
Ross gathered information from his target audience in Manchuria, which
consisted of urban merchants and rural farmers, and tried to find the remnants
of monotheistic belief in Shangdi. This fieldwork approach was applied to the
search for the Korean term for God. As Ross could not enter Korea, his con-
tact with Koreans was limited to itinerating Korean merchants and the Korean
embassies to Beijing via Manchuria. Ross depended on their religiosity and
colloquial usage of Hanŭnim, partly because of the scarcity of available docu-
ments on Korean religions. On the other hand, his liberal missiology and tolerant
attitude toward East Asian religions led him to find and appreciate the Korean
people’s monotheistic spirituality in practice.
In his anthropological approach, Ross found a third source. This was
Manchurian Daoism and a Daoist priest in Shenyang who worshipped
Shangdi or the Jade Shangdi (玉皇上帝). Through written dialogues on the
Gospel of John with Ross, the priest argued that the Christian concepts of
Dao, Shangdi, light, darkness, and life were similar with those of Daoism,
that Daoist Shangdi was also a creator who had no beginning and end, was
omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent, and thus supported the concepts of
Shangdi and the Heaven of primitive Confucianism, which he thought differed
from the li-qi theory of Neo-Confucianism (Ross 1883, 494; 1894, 123–129).
Ross thought that the Shangdi of contemporary Manchurian Daoism, the
Shangdi of original Confucianism, and the Hanŭnim (Hananim) of contem-
porary Korean shamanism were very similar to the Christian God.
Ross was determined to use as many vernacular Korean terms in his trans-
lation as possible, so it was natural for him to adopt the Korean Hanŭnim
instead of the Chinese Shangdi. Ross obtained information about Hanŭnim
from Yi Ŭngch’an and other Korean merchants. Ross believed that the em-
ployment of Hanŭnim in Korea would not bring along the term controversy
as in China, for that term was ‘‘so distinguished’’ from other Korean gods
and ‘‘so universally used’’ among contemporary Koreans. He was well aware
of the term question in China. Yet his choice of Hanŭnim was based on many
 Oak . Competing Chinese Names for God 105

interviews and tests with ordinary Koreans. In adopting this term for God,
Ross took a different approach from that of James Legge, who had depended
on the literary Confucian classics and court records.
When William E. Griffis (1843–1928) published Corea, the Hermit Nation
in New York in 1882, he mentioned the Korean highest God referring to
Ross’s History of Corea (1879) and James Legge’s The Religions of China
(1880). Griffis paraphrased Ross’s Hanŭnim as ‘‘the King or Emperor of
Heaven’’ and identified him with the Chinese Shangdi, based on Legge’s idea
of primitive monotheism (Griffis 1882, 327–328). Thus, it was Griffis who
linked Ross’s Hanŭnim with Legge’s primitive monotheistic Shangdi for the
first time. 22 As Griffis’ Corea, the Hermit Nation became required reading for
missionaries going to Korea, and went through nine revised editions in thirty
years with the help of missionaries in Korea (Hunt 1980, 54), early Protestant
missionaries in Korea must have been aware of the connections between the
Korean Hanănim and the Chinese Shangdi. And through this conjunction,
they might have studied the Chinese term question, James Legge’s arguments,
and Ross’s reason for using Hananim.
But Ross did not need to use the idea of primitive monotheism in his
adoption of Hanŭnim (Hananim) from 1881 to 1887. He knew that Koreans
worshipped multiple gods and spirits of folk religions. But he found the mono-
theistic Hananim among many gods in Korea. The Shangdists argued that
the monotheistic god Shangdi had coexisted with many lower gods in ancient
China. By contrast, Ross found that the contemporary Korean monotheistic
god Hananim was coexisting with many other gods. After the completion of
the first Korean NT in 1887, he reaffirmed that the contemporary Korean
Hananim was equivalent to the Chinese Shangdi of the classical texts. He
wrote: ‘‘The Corean for ‘heaven’ is hanal, for ‘lord’ or ‘prince’ nim, originally
Chinese; and Hananim is the term by which Coreans everywhere acknowledge
the Ruler above and supreme on earth’’ (Ross 1887a, 497).

One other remarkable form of worship demands notice. In time of great

drought mandarins go, not to the temple of Heaven and Earth, but outside,
and standing under the great temple of the blue heaven, they look upwards
and pray to Hananim for rain. By this term—‘‘Lord of Heaven’’—they
106 Journal of Korean Religions 3/2 . 2012

always translate the Chinese Shangdi, the Chinese shen being by them
always translate Kueishen [sic], the two being invariably combined. From
all I have ever heard of the name Hananim I have felt thankful that the
Koreans had a term which should prevent the shade of any difficulty regard-
ing the question which in older times so sadly, and may I add so unseemingly,
divided the counsels of good men in China. (Ross 1880, 370)

Ross tested Hananim in every way with Koreans and became convinced
that the introduction of a foreign term was a serious mistake. At the same
time, he rejected the Chinese Shen as the term for God, for it was understood
as kwishin (‘‘evil spirits’’) in Korea. He used sin for gods in John 10:30 (‘‘You
are gods.’’). And in 1883 he changed the term for the Holy Spirit from Syŏngsin
to Syŏngnyŏng. 23 His refusal to use T’yŏnjyu served the purpose of differentiat-
ing Protestantism from Roman Catholicism, which had been persecuted as a
vicious religion by the Korean government (Ross 1888, 370).
Ross’s adoption of the vernacular name for God, Hanŭnim or Hananim,
was closely connected with his translation principle of using the ordinary people’s
colloquial language, and of his mission policy of indigenization and the Nevius
method. His introduction of Hanŭnim, a term that is still in use, was a signifi-
cant theological foundation for the development of the indigenous Korean
Protestant Church. He identified the Korean people’s contemporary Hanŭnim
with the biblical Elohim. He did not introduce a foreign god to the Koreans,
but taught them that the Christian God had already been working among
them.

Conclusion

The term question was not solved in China. The Shanghai Conferences in 1877,
1890, and 1907 could not resolve the issue. The three terms, Shen, Tianzhu,
and Shangdi, coexisted in the 1890s and 1900s. The Chinese Christians pre-
ferred the Shangdi edition published by the British and Foreign Bible Society.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, nearly all Chinese Protestants used
the Shangdi edition and the Union Bible in 1919 used Shangdi. 24 The Chinese
 Oak . Competing Chinese Names for God 107

liked the vernacular name and the idea that their ancient ancestors were
monotheists, which was strongly defended by James Legge and other liberal
evangelical missionaries and translators. The principle of vernacularism and
the idea of primitive monotheism of the liberal Protestant missionaries in
China influenced the Protestant missions in Korea.
Unlike the Chinese Protestant missions, the Korean traditional vernacular
name Hanănim (하님 Heavenly Being) and the Chinese neologism T’yŏnjyu
(텬쥬 C. Tianzhu) competed in the Korean Protestant missions of the 1890s.
The former was an indigenous name of Korean folk religions and was adopted
by John Ross, who began to translate the Scriptures into Korean in 1878,
whereas the latter was a Chinese term, which had the advantage of ecumenical
cooperation between evangelical Protestants (Presbyterians and Methodists)
with Anglicans. 25 After debates over several names between 1893 and 1903,
the evangelical Protestant missions decided to adopt Hanănim in the vernacular
Korean texts and to use Shangdi in the Chinese texts.26 The Protestant missions
in China had engaged in prolonged controversies over the term for God. By
contrast, within two decades of their work those missions in Korea came to a
consensus for Hanănim, partly because the missionaries in Korea could utilize
the studies and controversies of China.
An interesting case in Korea is that of Horace G. Underwood. Like Henry
Boone in China, Underwood insisted that the Christian God was not a specific
name but a generic term, and strongly opposed Hanănim. Instead of a tradi-
tional Korean name, Underwood used a coined Chinese term, T’yŏnjyu, until
1901. But his arguments borrowed from the Shenites were, like Boone’s term
Shen in China, doomed to failure. His next theological discourse was borrowed
from the Anglicans in the name of ecumenism. But as there were only a small
number of Anglican Koreans in Korea, their demand for the T’yŏnjyu edition
was too small for Underwood to urge the Bible Societies to publish such
editions. Underwood’s position was also undermined by his Korean tracts
translated from the Chinese tracts, mostly authored by Griffith John of the
London Missionary Society, who used Shangdi as the term for God. In Korea,
the vernacular name Hanănim coexisted with its Chinese equivalent Shangdi,
for both were adopted based on the invented idea of the original monotheism.
108 Journal of Korean Religions 3/2 . 2012

The Protestant term question in China clearly shows that the first genera-
tion Korea missions were under the strong influence of the China missions. So
far, most research on the history of early Korean Protestantism has paid much
attention to the trans-Pacific transmission of North American Christianity to
Korea. By examining a case of the term question, this paper emphasized the
trans-Yellow Sea and Manchurian-Northern Korean interactions between
naturalized Chinese Protestant missions and emerging Korean Protestantism.
Of course, our main concern should be the third integration, the synthesis of
Anglo-American-Sino Christianity with congenial elements of Korean religions,
and the Korean agency in this synthesis. But first we need a more in-depth study
of the Chinese-Korean synthesis in mission theories, methods, policies, and
literature to understand the early Korean Protestant Church as we do the first
century of the Roman Catholic Church in Korea.

Notes

1 A Chinese Christian, Tin Nico, made an altar without any idols but a panel of two
letters, Tianzhu, in the service of God. Ricci accepted the term partly because its
pronunciation was similar to that of Latin Deus and Italian Dio. See Ricci (1953),
II–3.
2 Initially, Roman Catholics in China used Shen as the term for God.
3 Originally, Buddhists referred to Indra as Tianzhu, the lord of the thirty–two deva
(gods).
4 According to Xǔ Shèn’s Shuowen Jiezi (Etymological Dictionary of Chinese Char-
acters) of the Han dynasty in the second century CE, the etymology of ‘‘Tian’’ was
‘‘something most high over a person’’ (Chu 1958, 32). The oracle script of the Zhou
dynasty depicted a person with a large cranium. Anthropomorphic Heaven was said
to see, hear and watch over all men (Shih). Ricci’s erroneous understanding of
‘‘Tian’’ as a compound of ‘‘one’’ and ‘‘great’’ was accepted by James Legge in 1880
(Legge 1880, 9) and G. Heber Jones in Korea in 1892 (Jones 1892, 332–333).
5 The papal bull ordered the designation of the Spirit ( pneuma) as Shen. See Williams
(1878), 735.
 Oak . Competing Chinese Names for God 109

6 For example, when one used Tianzhu, the Chinese translation of ‘‘my Lord and my
God’’ (John 20:28) became ‘‘my true Lord and my heavenly Lord.’’ See Legge
(1852), 130.
7 They were 1) the Shen group: 神, 眞神, 眞活神; 2) the Di group: 上帝, 神天上帝, 天上
上帝, 眞神上帝, 神天大帝, 天帝, 天皇, 主宰, 眞宰; 3) the Tian group: 天, 上天, 神天,
天父, 老天爺; and 4) the Zhu group: 天主, 神主, 眞主, 上主, 天帝神主. Three favorite
names of Protestant missionaries were Shen, Shangdi, and Tian. See Medhurst
(1848), 157–159 and Rawlinson (1928), 14.
8 For good summaries of the term question in China, refer to Spelman (1969), Legge
(1880), and Eber (1999). The first party used Shangdi for God and Shen for spirit;
the second party used Shen for God and ling for spirit; and the third party
used Shangdi or Tian for God, shen for gods (false gods), and ling for spirit (S. W.
Williams, op. cit, 788).
9 Chang Tsai’s dictum, ‘‘The negative spirit (kuei) and positive spirit (shen) are the
spontaneous activity of the two material forces ( yin and yang),’’ has become the
generally accepted definition in China. See Chan (1963), 790.
10 To the Chinese (and Koreans), the concept of a supreme god had not been prob-
lematic because ‘‘the pervasive bureaucratic metaphor of Chinese religion’’ easily
acknowledged a top figure. See Jordan (1993), 290.
11 The idea of a pre-Christian supernatural primitive monotheism argued that God
had revealed monotheistic religion to humankind, since which time humankind
had degenerated into polytheism, totemism, and fetishism, though Christianity was
exempt from this degeneration.
12 Maclay was a pioneer Methodist missionary in China from 1847, and then Japan
from 1873. Dr. and Mrs. Maclay visited Seoul in June 1884 and obtained royal
permission to establish a mission school and hospital.
13 The Board of the translators of the Korean Scriptures decided to use T’yŏnjyu in
1894.
14 For a history of the term question in the Protestant Church in Korea, see Oak
(2002).
15 The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland was formed in 1847 and in 1900
merged with the Free Church of Scotland to form the United Free Church of
Scotland. It was the third largest Presbyterian Church in Scotland and stood on its
liberal wing.
16 See Grayson (1982) and Oak and Yi, eds. (2004).
110 Journal of Korean Religions 3/2 . 2012

17 In 1883 Ross changed the spelling of Hanŭnim to Hananim. This was the result of
his effort to simplify the phonetic value of ‘‘•’’, which had been pronounced as (a) or
(ŭ), into (a). There was no change in his understanding of the meaning of the name.
18 See Ross (1880, 1881a) and Grayson (1984).
19 Ross’s Bible Catechism was revised by Mrs. Mary F. Scranton and published in
Seoul in 1892. It was widely used by Methodists and Presbyterians in Seoul. See
Hall (1893).
20 Ross’s first principle of translation was ‘‘an absolute literal translation compatible
with the meaning of the passages and the idiom of the Corean language.’’ But his
actual translation had to accept many Korean idioms (See J. Ross to William
Wright, January 24, 1883, in Oak 2004, 63–65). This moderately dynamic equiva-
lent translation might have been another factor in Ross accepting the indigenous
term Hananim.
21 An does not mention the influence of senior Scottish missionaries on Ross. He
assumes Ross was influenced by Legge when they met in London in 1879, but Ross
had already adopted Hananim as the Korean term for God before meeting Legge.
22 Like James Legge at Oxford, Ross regarded Confucianism as a schoolmaster or
handmaid to drive the Chinese to Christ (Ross 1877, 409–411; 1906, 250). Like
Legge, Ross thought highly of the Jesuit mission’s methods and great success in
China and their good influence in Korea. Ross evaluated the Jesuits as ‘‘in a sense
Protestants’’ because they acted independently of Rome. Yet he criticized French
missionaries in China and Korea who were connected with French military power
(Ross 1881a, 291–294). When Ross’s book, History of Corea: Ancient and Modern,
was published in 1879, Legge quoted its comment on Daoism—‘‘which divides
Chinese attention with Buddhism, is almost unknown in Corea’’ (p. 355)—in his
book, The Religions in China (Legge 1880, 230). Legge sent Ross a copy of the
Oxford edition of Palmer’s The Greek New Testament (1881) and its English edition
(RV) as soon as they were published. Ross used them as the basis for his translation
of the Korean NT from 1881 to 1887. So the Ross Version became the first trans-
lation based upon the critical texts of the Revised Version copies of the Greek and
English NT (See Ross to William Wright, March 24, 1882 & March 28, 1889, in
Oak 2004, 35, 133). Hence, Ross omitted the story of the woman caught in adultery
of John 8:1–11 in his Korean Gospel of John of 1882 (See Ross to William Wright,
January 24 & July 22 1883 in Oak 2004, 63–65, 82–83). But from 1883, Ross
inserted these verses at the request of the BFBS, which financially supported Ross’s
translation and publication. Ross believed that the original religion of the Chinese,
 Oak . Competing Chinese Names for God 111

though not henotheism, was monotheism like that of the ancient Jews (Ross 1909,
20–21). Later, Ross stated that ‘‘there has been no greater Chinese scholar’’ than
Legge (Ross 1916, 59). Thus, we can assume that Ross, influenced by Legge, used
Shangdi of the Confucian classics as the Christian monotheistic God (Ross 1906,
247–248; 1916, 91, 97), and that Ross’s adoption of Hanŭnim might have been
partly influenced by Legge’s idea of primitive monotheism.
23 Thus the Korean Scriptures used Syŏngnyŏng for the Holy Spirit from 1883 to 1893,
yet they used Syŏngsin from 1895 to 1936.
24 The sales of the Shangdi edition increased rapidly in the 1900s: 38,500 copies
(11.6%) in 1894, 299,000 copies (78.9%) in 1908, and 1,708,000 copies (99.7%) in
1913 (Zetzsche 1999a, 88).
25 The following were used as the Korean names for God at this time: 하느님 Hanŭnim,
하 님 Hanănim, 하나님 Hananim, 텬쥬 (天主) T’yŏnjyu, 샹뎨 (上帝) Syangdye, 신 (神)
Sin, 진신 (眞神) Chinsin, 신 (眞神) Ch’amsin, 쥬 (主) Chyu, and 샹쥬 (上主) Syangjyu.
26 In the controversy, Syangdye (C. Shangdi) had been dropped earlier, for it was used
in the Chinese Scriptures and literature. The coexistence of the Korean Hanănim,
which came from Korean shamanism and was favored by American missionaries,
and the Chinese Shangdi, which came from original Confucianism and was favored
by British missionaries, revealed that Korean religions and Christianity had distinc-
tive identities.

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