英文摘要 |
Can Christians divorce, and, if yes, under what circumstances? The answers to these issues in Christians’ everyday life are all influenced by their interpretations of the Bible. The paper, basing itself on the influential Chinese Protestant Magazine of Tianfeng in Reform China from 1980s onwards from the perspective of the “reception history of the Bible”, investigates how the Biblical texts influenced Chinese Christians’ discourse and practice of sexual ethics, and how Christian authors of Tianfeng re-interpreted related Biblical texts in different ways. Many Chinese Christians, according to their understanding of the Bible, advocated that: (1) Christians should not marry non-Christians; (2) Christians could not be allowed to have sexual relationship before marriage, and sexual relationship even within marriage could be deemed dirty; (3) Christians was supposed to divorce only in some special cases stated in the Bible, or they were discouraged to divorce in these cases. Accordingly, some Christian authors of Tianfeng, through their re-interpretations of the Bible, argued against these three claims listed above in one way or another. They, also according their understanding of the Bible, attempted to demonstrate that: (1) the Bible, despite its encouraging marriage between Christians, did not entirely prohibit marriage between Christian and non-Christian; (2) sexual relationship before marriage was to be opposed indeed, but it was not dirty within marriage; (3) the Bible did permit the legitimacy of some cases of divorce, unlike what those anti-all-Christian-divorces Christians advocated. In reform China, the Bible, to some extent, became a code of conducts regulating Chinese Christians’ sexual ethics; it can be equal to Chinese Christians’ another “marriage law.” |