Author: YANG Jing, Lecturer, Foreign Languages College, Jiangxi Normal University.
Abstract:
Timothy Richard (1845-1919), a British Baptist missionary, came to China in 1870 and spent 40 years engaged in missionary activities. During that time, he not only translated many western works but also participated in the 1898 Reform Movement (Hundred Days of Reform), which had a significant political impact in China. Academic papers to date have mainly focused on Richard’s influence on late Qing politics or his Christian thought, and few have discussed in detail why Timothy studied Chinese Mahayana Buddhism and how he interpreted and reconstructed it in the light of his own theology. Using primary resources, this paper first analyzes the reasons for Timothy Richard’s study of Buddhism and then proceeds to discuss how he inserted the theological concept of the “Trinity” into Buddhism. The paper explores how Richard reconstructed Buddhist thought in line with his own theology in order to realize his ambition of establishing the Kingdom of God and outline the vision of Great harmony among world religions.
Keywords:
Christianity, Buddhism, Trinity, Religious Union
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