When Christian Devotion Meets Confucian Piety: The Teaching of the “Three Fatherhoods” in Premodern Vietnam

“Inculturation,” or the dynamic relationship between faith and culture governing Christian missionary outreach, has gained currency in theological discussion for the past forty years. The term is more commonly known as the “principle of catholicity, or accommodation, or adaptation, or indigenization, or contextualization, more radically, the principle of incarnation,” according to a recent definition.² The concept itself is not entirely new. One of its earliest articulations was in the debate of St. Paul with the Jewish Christians (Judaizers) on whether a strict adherence to Hebrew religious customs must be required of the Gentile converts to Christianity. The matter was finally