Justification by Faith and Protestant Christianity in China: With Special Reference to the Finnish Interpretation of Luther

The doctrine of justification by faith is believed to be a core belief in Protestantism as well as the leitmotif of the Pauline Letters. However, this assumption has been queried in various ways in the western theological circle recently. In contemporary China, the doctrine has also been challenged but in quite different ways. This study attempts to address the challenges derived from the cultural and socio-political contexts of China through references to recent studies of the Reformation,including, particularly, the Finnish interpretation of Luther. It aims to argue that the doctrine, if properly interpreted, can be a stepping-stone rather than a stumbling-block to the future development of Protestant Christianity in China.