CUHK 2023-2024 Fall Semester

THEO1000
Approaches to Christian Studies

L2 Basic Features of Christianiy

04-09-2023
Dr. Ho Siu Pun
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• 宗教（religion）、信仰（faith）、

神學（theology）、宗教研究（religious studies）

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What is the essence or substance of Christianity？
• Christianity has three basic “branches”: Protestantism, Roman Catholicism,
and Orthodoxy
• Orthodox Church

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Orthodox Church
• The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople
• Bartholomew I （巴多羅買一世）
• icons （聖像畫）

by Andrei Rublev 版權所有© 2023何兆斌博士

正教會

• Ecumenical Patriarchate Orthodox Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and South

East Asia （正教會普世宗主教聖統 香港及東南亞都主教教區） Saint
Luke Orthodox Church in Hong Kong （聖路加正教座堂）（established by
Greek in 1996）https://omhksea.org/

• Saint Apostles Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Hong Kong （香港聖彼得
聖保羅教堂，俄羅斯宗主教區）（established by Russian in 1934. Stop
operating from 1970s to 2004） https://orthodoxy.hk/hk/

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 What is the essence or substance of Christianity？
• What are the differences between
Jesus and his followers and other
religious groups in their time?

• Did Jesus plan to establish a

Christian Church?

版權所有© 2023何兆斌博士 Hans Küng Christianity: Essence, History, and Future

What is the essence or substance of Christianity？
• The common ideas between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
• God of Abraham：monotheism and belief in a personal God
• View on history: Forward and towards a goal (vs. cyclic view of time）
• Revelation and Scripture
• Prophetic figure
• Jesus is a concrete person in history (attested by historians, like Flavius
Josephus）
• Ethics: grounded in the will of one God and mediated through human beings

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What is the essence or substance of Christianity？
• Jesus as “Christ” (Messiah, the anointed one)
• Jesus died “miserably” (cf. other great teachers and religious leaders)
• The Cross
• A paradoxical symbol： gallows to symbol of salvation → sign of shame to
sign of victory
• “revaluation of all values” (Hans Küng)
• Rethinking suffering (Jürgen Moltmann)
• Criticizing all ideologies in this world (Paul Tillich)
• The Cross：being a scandal → sign of victory → scandalizing other idols

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What is the essence or substance of Christianity？
• Holy Spirit/Holy Ghost
• Why not “only Jesus” →who leads the community after the ascension?
• Holy Spirit：living force, driving force, power, and freedom
• Where would the Spirit work?
• The tension between identity and plurality：church and society; dialogue with
other religions.
• Discipleship：not only “-ist”
• Radicalizing Jewish ethics: Sermon on the Mount

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Hans Küng（漢斯 ‧ 昆）的歷史範式觀點
• Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

• Four phases: Pre-science, Normal Science, Crisis, and Revolution

• Geocentric model to Heliocentric model； Aristotelian four causes to Newton's laws of motion to；
Newton's laws of motion to Theory of relativity

• “Thomas Kuhn: an entire constellation of beliefs, value, techniques and so forth shared by the
members of a given community.”→Common sense is only “common” to the people within the
same paradigm. ”

• German theologian Hans Küng borrows Thomas Kuhn’s idea of paradigm to explain the
development of Christian thought 。

• Difference：Küng’s model is historical and contextual (Western Christian context) and not
universal natural scientific。

• Difference：Küng’s model does not deny “old” paradigms, and in fact, they have much values to
modern society.
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Hans Küng（漢斯 ‧ 昆）的歷史範式觀點

• The significance of the idea of paradigm is not dividing history into different
periods but telling us events and phenomena can be explained by the paradigm
within which they posited.

• Bearing in mind the paradigm of theologians and their ideas. Look into their
contexts, what they intended to answer, what presuppositions they have, and how
did they think.

• What is the relationship between their paradigm and ours?

• Outdated? Worth understanding it? Still have values to us?

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Christianity’s Essence and Historical Form
• “In reality, there never was nor is there anywhere an essence of Christianity
‘in itself,’ separated, purely distilled from the flow of church figures. The
changeable and the unchangeable cannot be neatly divided-this is important
for praxis! (Hans Küng)

• “Essence without form is formless and thus unreal, just as a form without
essence is inessential and thus equally unreal.”

• Theology: various interpretations of the essence of Christianity in different

paradigms.

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Nicene Creed
• A creed recognized by Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church, and Protestant
Church.

• Many theologians develop theological ideas based on the content of the creed.

• “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God.”(John 1:1) →Jesus is God? Is Jesus the one Judaism was worshipping? What is
the relationship between Jesus and Jewish people’s God?

• The problem of heresies

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 Nicene Creed
• Constantine called the first Ecumenical Council in Nicaea.
• Finalized in 381 in Constantinople → Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed
（《尼西亞—君士坦丁堡信經》） 。

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The Content of Nicene Creed

• Attachments

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Q & A and Comments

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