The Role of The Book of Changes (Yijing) in Relation to Calculations on the Parousia of Christ in the Figurist Work of the French Jesuit, Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730)

PD Dr. Claudia von Collani
Universität Münster, Institut für Missionswissenschaften
Research stay: October 2011 – March 2012

Reading Sessions:

  • together with Chu Pingyi: Fate, Physiognomy, and Almanac in Seventeen-century China: The Christian Criticism, May 25 and June 15, 2011.

The Role of The Book of Changes (Yijing) in Relation to Calculations on the Parousia of Christ in the Figurist Work of the French Jesuit, Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730)

The French Jesuit, Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730), was sent as a missionary to China in 1688, where he developed a special theological system: so-called Figurism. It can be considered not only an extension of the classical method of accommodation but also as the beginning of a Chinese theology.

  • Figurism was based on several Western theological and philosophical ideas, such as the old allegorical exegesis, the Christian Cabbala, Hermetism, Neo-Platonism, and the Prisca Theologia of the Renaissance, which were applied to ancient Chinese texts, in particular to the Yijing.
  • Bouvet's development of Figurism was in reaction to the challenge of the Chinese Rites Controversy and of the worsening situation at the Court of the Kangxi emperor.
  • In Bouvet’s system, the Yijing (The Book of Changes), played an important role. Bouvet considered it to be the lost book of the patriarch Enoch, including many traces of the primitive revelation concerning a future Messiah given to Adam and his descendents. A special aspect of the Yijing in Figurist theology, however, was the vast millenarian computations made by Bouvet concerning Christ‘s second coming. In my project, special emphasis is placed on Bouvet’s manuscripts with regard to his ideas of the end of time.

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