After returning to Hong Kong from studies in Rome in 1970, I sent a letter to one of my professors there telling him that the first seminary course I had to teach was ecclesiology. In his reply, he encouraged me to not only teach the students to understand the church, but also to love the church. Thus two years ago when the Board of Directors of Holy Spirit Seminary College established the "Committee for Publishing a Chinese Theological Textbook Series," and assigned me the task of writing The Theology of Creation, I recalled those words of my professor. In writing The Theology of Creation I set as my goal not only to help the readers understand our Creator, but also to love Him; not only to understand life, but to love life. In the past two decades a number of books have been translated or written in Chinese which treat the Catholic doctrine of creation. Among these are Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Michael Schmaus' Dogma Vol. II, Luis Gutheinz' Christian Anthropology, etc. These books are good teaching materials, but the authors are all Westerners. Their way of expressing themselves is more in accordance with a Western way of thinking; it does not suit the Chinese taste. Therefore I felt that it was necessary to rewrite the material. In writing the book I tried to stress the following three characteristics:

I. Elements of faith in culture, and cultural elements in faith.

Everyone in the world is called to believe in God. The ancient myths in Chinese culture's long 5,000 year history paved the way for the full revelation of God's creation of the world. The book makes use of Chinese myths, like Pan Gu ( ) dividing heaven and earth and Nuwa ( ) creating human beings through her own efforts, which vividly expressed the beautiful and close relationship between God, human beings and the world. It briefly points out how these myths were later transformed into the worldviews of both Confucianism and Taoism. The Natural Way of Taoism's Laozi is quite mysterious, and is difficult both to understand and to put into practice. In the waning years of the Eastern Han Dynasty Zhang Jiao's( ) underground revolutionary movement used the rallying cry of Laozi being reincarnated as an immortal. Then in 617, during the Sui Dynasty, when The Book of Changes of Laozi appeared, this even more ivinized Laozi, describing him as a saviour who has entered into our world. This reflects a messianic consciousness present in Chinese culture, and therefore we can detect elements of faith in that same culture.

This book, in accordance with the exegesis of Scripture scholars, points out that Genesis 1:1 - 2:2a is a psalm written in the 6th century B.C. by a class of priestly Israelite theologians. They had been taken captive to Babylon, and had returned to Israel upon their release from captivity. While in Babylon they observed the greatness of Persia and the flourishing intellectual life there. They suddenly experienced a clarity of vision and a breadth of mind. So they wrote this hymn of praise to God for believers to sing in the Temple which had as its theme the vastness of the heavens and the expansiveness of the universe. The narration of the Priestly Code gave completeness and order to the song. Looking at the story as a whole it is not difficult to discover that it contains elements of Babylonian myths. For instance, the word "abyss" in Genesis 1:1- 2 is related to "Tiamat" in Babylonian mythology. Moreover, when the Old Testament talks about God, it chooses points in common with Eastern mythology. It frequently describes God like an Eastern king (I Kings 22:19; Isaiah 6: 1ff) and angels as servants in the king's palace (Job 4:18). From these examples we can see that there are cultural elements in the Christian faith.