RN: Christian Ethics(2)¶

本篇文章是上篇文章的延续，继续研读基督教及其伦理道德的相关概念。值得一提的是，最近宗教的阅读让我收获颇发，我想大概是由于我了解到了 很多全新的，精神方面的概念，思考与结论。本章从第二章 "The history of Christian ethics"开始。

基督教的伦理道德从犹太人和基督徒共享的终极目标中产生，这个终极目标是通过建造城市，让上帝的名神圣。

Christian ethics emerges out of the shared Jewish and Christian mission to make God’s name holy throughout creation by ‘building’ a ‘city’ or ‘house’.

这种使命可以通过上帝对亚伯拉罕的召唤分为两种，而这两种使命分别产生了不同的影响。 - do not be like the other nations - for the sake of the nations.

第一种，‘do not be like the other nations’, 引入了embody的概念，细化为 habituation 和 infusion。habituation即我们可以做一些事让我们融入耶稣的生命中，而infusion则阐述了 无论我们做什么，基督徒的成就也无法与grace分离(通过耶稣和圣灵沟通的结果)。

Habituation assumes that there are things we can do in order to ‘put on’ the life of Christ. Yet habituation alone is insufficient; Christian ethics also requires ‘infusion’. It affirms that no matter how much we do or act rightly, the Christian life is never an achievement of our own apart from grace, which is a communication of the Holy Spirit.

第二种，"for the sake of the nations", 则阐述了自愿承担上帝这种使命（make the God name holy)和不愿意承担人的关系，这里的问题核心在于教堂和国家的关系。

‘…for the sake of the nations’, negotiates the diverse relations between those who voluntarily enter into the mission and those who do not. It asks the question of the relation between the Church and the ‘nations’. This too is crucial to Christian ethics;

The first section: do not be like the other nations¶

The purpose of the liturgy: the Church's four marks¶

基本的信仰仪式有丰富的历史，同样也被基督教大公会议所承认。仪式有五个关键的元素： - biblical readings interspresed with prayers and psalms - Exposition of the text as a sermon or homily - Common prayers - Greeting with a kiss of peace - Bread, wine and water are then brought forward and thanksgiving offered

第一个行为是聚集，基督徒通过洗礼(baptism)加入基督教这个社区。洗礼是一个mini-exudos, 罪和奴役被留在身后，信仰者加入到耶稣的生命中去，通过洗礼的水参与了耶稣的死与复活。 这时往往会通过三位一体上帝的名来提醒人们为什么聚集：“In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen"（Amen用来表示同意和赞赏，有点像中国文代文学中的“善”， 例如王曰：善“）。

Baptism initiates people into this new community. Every baptism is a mini-exodus where sin and slavery are left behind and the believer takes on the life of Christ, participating in his death and resurrection symbolized by the water of baptism.

第二部就是朗读经典，提醒经典中的话对于任务和自身标识是必须的。朗诵和阅读需要得到回应，那么也就是第三部通过忏悔祈祷,祭坛的召唤以及圣餐来回应。最后两步那些聚集的，被圣灵所标记的信仰者回归现实。 那么这一系列的礼拜仪式的目的就是让人神圣，所以他们同样的让上帝的名神圣，这里这个句子写的特别不错：

The purpose of the liturgy is to make people holy so that they in turn make God’s Name holy

同样的，为了让上帝的名神圣，需要圣灵的帮助，相似的圣灵也让教堂成为它名所指的机构，通过实现如下四个标志："unity", "holiness", "catholicity" and "apostolicity".

To make God’s Name holy is the work of the Holy Spirit, who helps the Church become what it is called to be, which is characterized by four marks: unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity.

正如 G.L.Chesterton说，基督教是亡灵的民主，这可能指的是基督教在形成教义和实践时重视历史上所有信徒的声音， 包括早期教会的圣徒和殉道者。这意味着，当前的信仰和实践受到历史上教会成员影响，无论是活着的还是已经去世的。这与民主的概念相似，民主强调每个人的声音都有权被听到。

‘Christianity is a democracy of the dead’. Apostolicity is a ‘task’ by which the Church always seeks to keep faith, with its origin in the ‘apostolic witness’, primarily attested in Scripture.

教堂的建筑通常也有额外的意义，通常教堂是一个长方形，朝向东方，标志着基督徒信仰的方向，朝着基督耶稣有一天会再次返回的故乡。 这里作者提了个问题，对于敏锐的人来说，教会的标志常常不在人的日常生活中，那么既然人民信仰圣灵，那为什么人们继续做邪恶的事？

Repance or repentance¶

Nevertheless, any observant person would readily recognize that those so formed do not always embody the marks of the Church in their common life. This puzzled many in the early Church. If the Spirit is the actor in these events and people consent to the Spirit’s work, why do they continue to do evil?

这里可以看到基督教神学也需要去解释现实问题，也就是既然教义宣传的如此神圣高远宏大，那么它如何去解释现实的丑陋和邪恶？那么随即就有了忏悔的概念（Penance or repentance)。 教会被描述为一艘在邪恶混乱大海航行上的船，洗礼让基督徒登上这艘船，而罪则是从这艘船掉下去，失去了洗礼所带来的救赎。

The Church was depicted as a ‘ship’ sailing through virulent waters of chaotic evil. Baptism gave you entrance into the ship; to sin was to jump out of that ship back into the waters, which for some would forfeit the redemption baptism brought about.

这里需要注意，洗礼是一件不可重复的事情，通过洗礼，人们变成了耶稣身体的一部分（由此可以和上帝进行沟通，在耶稣死后教会被认为是耶稣的身体， 是人们与上帝沟通的渠道，所谓新约即人们和上帝以教会为纽带，定的约）。通过洗礼，基督徒获得了接受圣餐的权限。洗礼标志了一次彻底的从奴役中的解脱，圣餐表示了来自天堂的馈赠。

As baptism symbolizes the once and for all exodus from slavery, so the Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper, symbolizes the manna from heaven, which nourishes the ‘wayfarers’ moving towards God’s ‘New Jerusalem’.

由此，在洗礼之后圣餐之前，人们需要进行忏悔。而忏悔需要以明辨是非和神圣，这些东西都是洗礼所带来的，也被称为 "infused virtues", 也是基督教伦理道德的基石。

Penance requires discerning what constitutes the good, or the holy, that baptism brings, which is why we first discussed the sources of Christian ethics in the gifts, beatitudes, the natural or acquired and the infused virtues.

当通过洗礼接受了这些美德与礼物，那么这些罪和恶也可以被承认（因为人们可以分辨）。另一方面，罪和恶本身是缺乏某种东西的表现，这比罪和恶本身更重要的。他们本身不代表他们本身， 而代表善和美的的缺失。

Deadly vices¶

恶习如此糟糕，以至于容易让人以为避免这些内容就是基督教伦理道德的所有了。恶习似乎比美得更令人震惊，这也是众多的电影和文学作品在阐述七宗罪：傲慢、嫉妒、愤怒、怠惰、贪婪、暴食、色欲。

They are pride, covetousness, lust, gluttony, sloth, anger, and envy.

• Pride is ‘the inordinate appetite for one’s excellence’. Pride despises the good that comes to one’s neighbours, friends, and enemies because the prideful person fears that the good given to them will detract from his or her own excellence.
• Covetousness is ‘the inordinate love of temporal things’. Like the prideful person, the covetous person fears loss, not loss of status but loss of temporal goods. He is so led by this fear that he lives a life of deceit, doing all in his power to insure his own security against that of his neighbours.
• Lust is ‘the inordinate appetite for sexual pleasure’. It should not be equated with sexual desire itself. Lust is a vice that leads one to dominate, consume, and destroy the other for one’s own gratification.
• Gluttony (and drunkenness) is ‘the inordinate indulgence in food or drink’. It is the desire to consume all the time and never know satisfaction.
• Sloth is the lack of sufficient desire to fulfil one’s obligations. If lust and gluttony are an overabundance of disordered desires, sloth is the lack of appropriate desire. Anger is ‘the inordinate inclination to take revenge’.
• Envy is the ‘willful sadness on account of the good of another, whether temporal or spiritual, regarded as diminishing one’s own good’.

恶习和美德对于个人来说可能是一种伦理道德层面（而不是基督教伦理道德）的内容，但是这可能是一种误解。正如Anglican priest John Wesley所说:

I shall endeavor to show that Christianity is essentially a social religion, and that to turn it into a solitary religion ais isndeed to destory it.

Anglican翻译为英国圣公会，是马丁路德宗教改革后产生与英国的新教教派。同样在宗教改革之前，文艺复兴已经在意大利地区发展，赞美和宣扬人间之美和幸福，开始关注此生的幸福而不是来世。那么自然的， 这里John Wesley说的意思也是基督教也需要开始关注现实，而非关注飘渺的未来世界。

From penitentials to canon law¶

第四次大公会议，the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, 标志了忏悔penance的改变：

The Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, marked the end of medieval penance and the beginning of modern penance. It made possible a ‘tariff system’ of penance whereby penance became an end in itself. Individual auricular confession and the priest’s absolution represented a growing cost-benefit analysis of sin and reward, whereby the Christian moral life is reduced to an accountant’s ledger with sins on one side and penances as payment for those sins on the other.

Luther and the Lutherans' protest¶

在中世纪的后期，马丁路德进行了宗教改革，他认为在中世纪后期基督教的伦理道德导致了"gallows sorrow"，基于对上帝的恐惧而不是对上帝的爱。人们恐惧死后到地狱，多余爱上帝以期望上天堂。 他不赞成对忏悔的滥用，也拒接接受传统中关于penance是“second plank”，帮助人们在苦海中求解脱的这样一种思想，因为他担心这种思想会导致人们不完全相信第一块板子，也就是洗礼的作用。 这种对于忏悔的强调会导致人们宁愿相信自己，而不相信神圣。

Luther rejected the long-standing tradition via Tertullian, Jerome, Augustine, and Aquinas that spoke of penance as a ‘second plank’, which he thought diminished the efficacy of baptism. He feared the practice of penance would prevent fully trusting in ‘the first plank, or the ship’, which was baptism. He feared any account of ‘habituation’ would lead Christians to trust in themselves rather than in grace alone.

所以马丁路德认为，洗礼之后上帝选择不去责备你的罪，而不是洗礼带走了在人本身自然中的这些罪。这个思想对于传统基督教的观念来说是非常新颖的。

So Luther stated that God ‘pledges himself not to impute to you the sins which remain in your nature after baptism, neither to take them into account nor to condemn you because of them’. Sin is so overruled by our baptism that it does not condem us and is not harmful to us.

对于马丁路德的新观点，Gerhard Forde阐述, 马丁路德的思想可能不包含任何的伦理道德内容。当然不包含伦理道德并不意味着他的观点是“坏的”，只是意味着他的观点是一个更加神学的观点，他更加不关注现实世界。

the ‘radical Lutheran’ Gerhard Forde stated, ‘Put audaciously, perhaps even irresponsibly, one might announce that the problem is that Luther does not have any ethics!’

马丁路德反对亚里士多德的伦理道德观，这里应该和13世纪以亚里士多德代表的经验主义在天主教内部的兴起有关，当然经验主义的兴起也与东罗马帝国被伊斯兰世界攻占紧密相关。他反对亚里士多德的伦理道德是因为他对于救赎方式的认知，他不赞同亚里士多德思想对救赎的另一种解释, 特别是通过基本的经院格言，即恩典不会破坏而是完美的自然。

Luther opposed the ethics of Aristotle, which he thought had become a way of salvation, especially through the basic scholastic dictum that grace did not destroy but perfect nature. For Luther, the scholastics were insufficiently radical in that they were preoccupied with an ‘exodus from vice to virtue’ when what was needed was one from ‘virtue to grace’.

当然，这并证明Luther反对伦理道德，只是他认为伦理道德不是救赎的方式。基督教的神学家对于救赎这一个核心要素是非常在意的。

Catholic and Lutheran convergence¶

宗教改革则产生了新教，在伦理道德上与天主教Chans了较多的差异。这里不做详细的介绍和记录（太多了，而且对于非基督徒来说很多观念是非常细微的，难以察觉的）。

总结¶

基本上所有的基督教传统认同人类是需要伦理道德的。这里有一个16-17th世纪来自西班牙对美洲原住民态度的讨论，一些人比如sepulveda认为这些美洲的原住民天生就是努力，因为他们不知道上帝的善和社会的美。但是大部分反对这个观点，认为上帝创建了这个世界，所以善和美可以在世界的任何地方找到，即便他们不知道上帝。

Most Christian traditions agree that all humans are capable of ethical action.

A similar argument was debated among the Spanish scholastics of the 16^th and 17^th centuries with the ‘discovery’ of the Native Americans. While some, such as Sepúlveda, argued that they were natural slaves and could not be trusted to form good societies, the majority opinion was the opposite. God had so created the world that good could be found among its various nations, even those who did not know God.

但是同时基督教也有反对伦理道德的地方，因为他认为有些超自然的存在对于人类是必然的。

But Christian ethics is also against ethics because something more than our own nature is necessary. For the good to be truly attained, nature is presupposed and perfected but may also need to be disrupted and corrected.

The second section: '... for the sake of nations'¶

第一部分'do not like the other nations' 说的更多是基督徒社群的行为，如何让基督徒的社群与其他的nations不同。

The first context for Christian ethics is the community of faith as it seeks to embody the life to which God calls. But it is also called to do this for the sake of the nations.

第二部分侧重于教会内部，关注教会如何满足这个召唤的。如何成功和失败满足这个召唤对于理解这个任务很重要。

We have no king but Caesar¶

In his trial, Jesus is brought before the Roman prefect Pilate, who asks the Jewish elders, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ To which the chief priests answer, ‘We have no king but Caesar’ (John 19:15). In order to deliver Jesus to death, the chief priests betray him and their own history by calling on the security of Rome.

对于教会来说，他面临着一个长久且不断的，以不同形式出现的诱惑，例如Caesaropapism, 皇帝作为教会的领袖，或者chaplain, 即教会领袖表现的更像国王而不是宗教领袖。这个问题我们可以在中世纪漫长的教属之争中找到体现。

This is a constant temptation not only for Israel but also for the Church. The temptation takes diverse forms. At times, the king or governing authority gets treated as divine or as head of the Church. This is called ‘Caesaropapism’. At other times, bishops or leaders of the Church act more like kings than Christ’s ministers. Still another version of this temptation is to turn the Church into a ‘chaplain’ to the state, whereby it seeks only to do its bidding.

对于宗教领袖来说，一个长久的诱惑即是将上帝的子民分裂为国家，正如John 19:15所说的那样，'We have no king but Caesar'.

From popes to Protestants, traditionalists to Reformers to revisionists, a perennial temptation is to dissolve the form of God’s people into ‘the nations’. The temptation is to say, ‘we have no king but Caesar’.

当然需要指出的是，这并不意味着除去教会，国家和其他社会组织都是内生邪恶的，是基督教的伦理道德需要丢弃的。相反，所有的这些都会在上帝的王国有所体现，基督教伦理道德的目的也是'to fashion the people of God in order to serve the nations'.

This is not to argue that the nations, the ‘state’, or social institutions other than the Church are somehow intrinsically evil, from which Christian ethics demands withdrawal. Quite the contrary! All their goodness has a place in God’s kingdom (Revelation 21:26). The purpose of Christian ethics is to fashion the people of God in order to serve the ‘nations’.

这里的目标通过一些列基督教的传统达成，下面会继续介绍一些。

Relating to the nations¶

第一个明确讲出基督教应该如何对待其他人/国家可以在成书与2世纪晚期的epistle/diognetus中找到。它描述了基督徒不以国家，语言或者习俗而区分（会想起巴别塔，人们追求他们的名，而非上帝的名，所以上帝改变了他们的语言）：

It tells us that Christians are not distinguished from others ‘by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe’. In other words, the Christian vocation is not to create its own country, language, or custom apart from others.

但是另一方面，我们可以找到关于土地的论述：任意一片外国土地可以作为一个他们和别人分享的地方“, 同时共享他们对善的追求和理解。相反的，对于他们自己的土地，他们也认为对他们来说都是“陌生人的土地”，在那里他们“像外国人一样忍受一切”。

On the one hand, Christians find ‘every foreign land’ amenable as a place in which they can live and’share in all things with others’, including their understanding and pursuit of the good. On the other, every land, even their native one, is to be to them a ‘land of strangers’ where they ‘endure all things as if foreigners’.

这种不协调产生了许多关于基督徒与国家关系的结果，比如说基督徒应该拒绝参与战争，因为耶稣在被逮捕的那晚从彼得哪里带走了剑，相应的也从所有的基督徒中带走了剑;

for in other statements he made clear that Christians could not participate in warfare, for when Christ took away the sword from Peter on the night of his arrest, he took it away from all Christians

到Augustine这里，他同样保持了这种不协调，但是他认为基督是美的唯一的来源，这些美德将我们从社会众多的问题中解脱。

By the time we get to St Augustine (354–430), things have shifted somewhat. He too preserves the tension we find in the Epistle to Diognetus, and argues that Christ is the only source of virtue for a truly just society because he rescues us from the deep problem in every political society, which is the fact that ‘the lie’ primarily constitutes our social relations.

当然这种态度很快由于皇帝作为宗教领袖的身份来通知而改变。皇帝开始推行基督教的信条和伦理道德。那么当这种情况开始时，教会任务就是提醒当权者他有限的角色。正如这句古老的谚语所说：“f you want a Theodosius, you need an Ambros”。

The tension certainly collapses when emperors adopt Christianity and begin to act like bishops, thinking their task is to create and enforce Christian doctrine and ethics. When this happens, the task of the Church is to remind the ruling authority of his limited role. An ancient saying of the Church captured this - ‘if you want a Theodosius, you need an Ambrose’.

Theodosius是378-392年的皇帝，而Ambrose是米兰的主教。Theodosius屠杀了7k余名Thessalonika地区的叛乱者，Amborse告诉他你未来不会进入到Eucharist因为他的手上沾满了先献鲜血。Theodosius认可了这种说法并进行了忏悔。正如David Bentley Hart的观点，这是一个混合的事件，一方面它让国家变得不再神圣，他不能再不受挑战的情况下宣称他的神圣。另一方面，这引入了教会和国家不健康的联姻。

The result was that Theodosius agreed and did penance. As David Bentley Hart argues, this was a mixed incident. On the one hand, it desacralized the state. It could never again claim divinity without challenge. On the other, it produced the ‘unhappy marriage of church and state’ that has haunted Western politics since.

尽管如此，基督教还是有很长的历史提示当权者他们的局限性，纵然基督教的领袖开始作为执政的人。

Despite its legendary accretions, and ambiguous morality, this incident between Theodosius and Ambrose nonetheless sets forth an important theme in Christian tradition as to how it serves the nations.

也正是如此，这帮助我们理解耶稣奇怪的话语：“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s’ (Matthew 22:21)“。

另一方面，基督教也对社会的发展做出了很大的贡献。