Listening for the Spirit where China and Christendom first met — and where they meet again, in the age of artificial intelligence.
Affiliate Assistant Professor of Theology and Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary. Adjunct at Pepperdine and UC Irvine. Theology Interest Group Leader, Society for Pentecostal Studies.
Jacob Chengwei Feng is a systematic and constructive theologian working at the intersection of Chinese intellectual history, Pentecostal pneumatology, and the dialogue between theology and science. His research traces a line that begins with Jingjiao — the Luminous Religion of the seventh-century Tang dynasty, the first Christianity ever to take root in Chinese soil — and reaches forward to the questions our own century puts to the Spirit: artificial intelligence, post-humanism, the cosmos described by a Chinese imagination of qi.
He holds a PhD in Theological Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary and an undergraduate degree from Tsinghua University. He is the author of two open-access volumes — Spirit(s) and Chinese Religiosity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) and Science, Religion(s), and Spirit(s) in China (Brill, 2025) — and the editor and translator of the entire Tang Jingjiao corpus.
His articles have appeared in Scottish Journal of Theology, Zygon, Pneuma, Religions, International Bulletin of Mission Research, Theology and Science, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, and the Journal of Chinese Theology, among others. He is currently building out a constructive program he calls qi-tological theology — a Chinese theology of creation that reads the cosmos as breath, person, and Spirit at once.
Read them online for free. The Brill volume includes a new English translation of the entire Tang Jingjiao corpus.
A constructive Chinese theology of creation that begins from the Luminous Religion of the Tang dynasty — the earliest Christianity in China — and stages a trialogue between theology, the natural sciences, and the religious worlds of qi. Part of the Theology and Mission in World Christianity series.
Rewrites the standard history of Christianity in China by reading it from the vantage of Pentecost — attending to the spirits, ancestors, and deities of the Chinese religious imagination as theological interlocutors rather than as obstacles to be cleared away.
Six interlocking conversations, one underlying question: where is the Spirit moving in the Chinese imagination?
A constructive Chinese theology of creation that reads the cosmos through the ancient Chinese category of qi — air, breath, pneuma, person, spirit — and stages it as a third interlocutor between the Christian doctrine of the Spirit and the natural sciences. Developed across the Brill volume, several journal articles, and a growing slate of conference presentations.
A working selection — scroll through, or open the full list of twenty-seven peer-reviewed articles and six book chapters.
A selection of recorded lectures and interviews — Fuller, Oxford, ANZATS, COSAC, the Hong Kong Institute of Jingjiao Studies.
A scroll through recent and upcoming papers — Cambridge, the Society for Pentecostal Studies, the Society for the Study of Theology, ETS, SBL, Yale-Edinburgh, Tübingen, Hong Kong Baptist, Tsinghua.
A three-institution teaching slate — Fuller, Pepperdine, UC Irvine — anchored by a multi-year DMin cohort on pastoral ministry in the age of rapid technological change.
Three-year cohort, Fuller Theological Seminary Doctor of Ministry program · Fall 2026 – Summer 2029. Program details at Fuller →
For lecture invitations, collaboration on projects in Chinese theology, Jingjiao studies, or the theology-science-religion trialogue, and inquiries about the DMin cohort.