按：以下英文部份是一份講義，對於人文主義的歷史演變有深入的介紹。

人文主義是西方思潮近五百年的主流。
是文藝復興導致了它的發展，還是宗教改革賜予其生命，此文有深入的看法。
了解歷史的演變，有助於對信仰的認識。
譯文有不妥處請予指正﹐謝謝。

文章一開始就吸引住我的地方是提出了聖經作者寫作的態度。
不是從哲學或科學的角度，他們對數字也不敏感。
這些都是現代人習以為常的觀念，卻是聖經作者最不看重的。
然而卻成為教外人士批評聖經的着力點。
了解這點，對聖經的批評就應該從另一個角度着手。

私以為無神論者批評的聖經只是他們自己心目中的聖經；他們反對的信仰，也只是他們自己塑造的信仰。

其實真正的基督徒也是反對這樣作的，在這點上，可以說是立場一致。

對於不是自己身體力行的信仰還是抱持一個尊重的態度來得好。
適切而堅定地說明自己的立場，互相交流，並且保持開放的態度更有助於在網路上討論信仰的問題。

The Road to Modernity
JAMES HITCHCOCK
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0011.html

ABSTRACT: The Catholic Church, which was virtually synonymous with Western Christianity until after 1500, had little trouble adapting all kinds of pagan creations to the uses of the faith—buildings, literary forms, legal and political structures, even much of the calendar. But intellectually there were serious problems (outlined in this chapter). While countless textbooks describe the Renaissance as marking a turning away from the God-centered universe of the Middle Ages toward a man-centered universe, the historical reality was a great deal more complex. For one thing, there were practically no atheists in the Renaissance and hardly any people who were even skeptical of religion. An observer of the Western scene as late as 1550 might reasonably have concluded that all trends towards secularization had been permanently ended. The West was so deeply and passionately religious that its entire future would be shaped by the competing faiths. Yet this religious passion which burned so brightly could be viewed like the flaring up of a fire just before it starts to go out. The roots of secularization in the West had been spreading for some time, and certain developments of the Reformation period were, unrecognized at the time, helping them to push shoots above the ground. This resource would be suitable for junior or senior students. – CERC

WESTERN CIVILIZATION is chiefly the product of a dynamic mixture of two elements—the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition and the tradition of rational investigation and artistic creativity coming down from the Greeks. Most developments of the past 2500 years can be seen as offshoots of one or the other.
西方文明可以說是兩大思潮角力的產品，過去2500年的進步是彼此互相崢嶸的結果：
1. 猶太-基督教傳統。
2. 希臘文化的理性探索與藝術創作。
The two are, obviously, not mutually exclusive. Although the Jews, out of principle, did not produce religious art, they did build a splendid temple, and the Old Testament contains writing that is recognized as artistically powerful even by nonbelievers.
這兩者當然不是水火不容的。雖然猶太人原則上沒有發展宗教藝術，但是他們也建造了燦爛的神殿，舊約在文學藝術上也有一定的地位。
But the Hebrews were not very interested in art as such and probably did not care whether the ????ure was artistically powerful. Their intellectual inquiry was in the ????ure itself. They had little that could be called philosophy or science, and, unlike the Babylonians and the Egyptians, did not deeply pursue the study of mathematics.
不過﹐猶太人對純粹的藝術沒有太大的興趣﹐對聖經是否有藝術感染力也不關心，他們對知識的探究全在聖經經文的本身。他們沒有什麼可以被稱為“哲學”或“科學” 的，而且，他們也和巴比倫人、埃及人不同，沒有深入地研究數學。
The Greeks believed in the supernatural. If anything, their problem was too many gods. Their polytheism, in conjunction with a strong sense that an inexorable fate ruled the universe, produced a rather weak concept of divinity. Greek mythology presented a picture of the gods which was not very edifying (they often acted churlishly and even immorally) and ultimately not very convincing.
希臘人相信超自然力。他們最大的問題（如果這是問題的話）是有太多神了。他們的多神論和一個信念──一個冷酷的命運掌管着宇宙──結合的結果是對神聖沒有很強的概念。希臘神話的諸神並沒有給人太多教訓的意味（他們常常舉止粗野，甚至沒有什幺道德），因此也沒有什幺說服力。
The Old Testament is the story of a people who lived continually in the presence of an all—powerful, all-wise, all-just, all-loving God. There are certain humanist themes in the Jewish ????ures (“What is man that Thou art mindful of him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and hast clothed him with glory and honor” [Ps 8:4-5]), but on the whole the Israelites were exhorted to depend utterly on God. When they relied on themselves they went astray. Among the Greeks, by contrast, the religious sense got weaker and weaker. Of necessity, unable ultimately to rely on their gods, the Greeks pursued wisdom through their own resources. They virtually invented philosophy and science and perfected mathematics, medicine, drama, poetry, sculpture, architecture, and the study of history.
舊約則是一個民族生活在一個全能、全知、全善、全愛的上帝之下的故事。希伯來聖經中不乏人文主義的主題（詩篇8:4-5：人算﹔什幺，你竟顧念他﹖世人算什幺，你竟眷顧他﹖），但整體而言，以色列民族是告誡人必須全然依賴上帝的。當他們只相信自己時，他們就會走錯路。對照之下，希臘人的宗教觀念則越來越淡薄。在無法依賴他們的諸神，又出於需要的情形下，希臘人從自己身上尋找智慧。在實質上，他們發明了哲學、科學、使數學完美化、醫學、戲劇、詩歌、雕刻、建築，以及歷史的研究。
The Greeks were preeminently a humanistic people in that they took immense pride in humanity and its achievements. They enjoyed the interplay of philosophical dialogue, pondered the conundrums of human existence as portrayed on the stage, delved into the secrets of nature, and celebrated all glories of humanity. (The famous Greek nude statues were intended to display the perfection both of the human form as well as the artist's skill.)
希臘人很明顯的是個具有濃厚人文氣息的民族，在人文傳統上有着偉大的成就與自豪。他們從哲學對話的角力中獲得樂趣、思考呈現在舞台上關於人類存在的難題、查考自然界的奧秘，並且歌頌所有人性的光輝。（希臘有名的裸體雕塑是為同時呈現人體的完美以及藝術家個人的完美技巧）
Few Greeks ever got to the point of denying the existence of the supernatural completely. Indeed the great philosophers— Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—tried to deepen religious under standing and make it commensurate with their growing intellectual sophistication. However, Plato's god—an infinite being called the One—was not identifiable with any traditional Greek deity, and Aristotle's Prime Mover was even less so. However satisfying these concepts may have been philosophically, their acceptance did away with Greek religion on the practical level. Plato and Aristotle were secularists in that they did not recognize a distinctively religious dimension to existence. Whatever religious obligations there might be were discharged simply by living in accord with philosophical truths, that is, by living in an enlightened, secular way.
很少希臘人曾經完全否認超自然的存在。事實上，蘇格拉底、柏拉圖、亞里斯多德，這三位偉大的希臘哲學家，試圖借着知性的詭辯來深化對宗教的理解。然而，柏拉圖的上帝─那個稱為the One的終極存有，與希臘傳統的神並不相同﹐亞里斯多德的「主要推動者」（Prime Mover）也更不類似。不管在哲學上這些概念如何令人滿意，他們的理解實際上是偏離了希臘的宗教。柏拉圖、亞里斯多德所以是世俗論者的原因在於，他們不承認有一個宗教的層面。宗教的任何義務，都可以藉由生活在哲學真理下取代，也就是說，可以過着一種有智慧的世俗之路。
Greek humanism, a trust in human capability and a celebration of human achievement, was a unique and powerful contribution to Western civilization. Few, if any, other cultures of the world developed quite the same perspective. To this day, for example, some of the great Eastern civilizations, notably India's, officially espouse a view of reality in which human existence counts for very little in the great expanse of eternity and man's life is ruled by inexorable forces over which he has no control.
希臘的人文主義，對人類能力的信任及對人類成就的歌頌，對西方文明的貢獻是獨特與巨大的，世上少有其它文化發展出類似的觀點。例如，在今天，一些偉大的西方文明，例如印度，仍然擁護一個觀點，認為人類的存在只是永恆中渺小的一部份，人類的生活也被一個冷酷的力量所支配，他自己無能掌理。
Until nearly the time of Christ, the culture of the Hebrews and the culture of the Greeks had almost no contact with one other. It would have been reasonable to assume that they were basically incompatible, two widely divergent and ultimately contradictory approaches to life. They were, however, integrated by an entirely new movement—Christianity.
在基督時代之前，希伯來文化和希臘文化幾乎沒有什幺接觸。合理的假設是，這兩者在本質上是無法兼容的，畢竟兩者的分歧太大，對人生的態度最終是矛盾的。然而，他們卻被一個全新的時代潮流──基督教所融合了。
At first, the early Christians were wholly children of the Hebrew tradition. There was even debate in the early church over whether gentile converts had to be circumcised and observe the Jewish dietary laws. Before long, however, it became apparent not only that Christianity had to evangelize the gentiles (“Go forth and make disciples of all nations” [Mt 28:19]), but that non-Jews would be a more fertile ground for conversion than the Hebrews themselves.
一開始，早期的基督徒全然是希伯來傳統的子女。他們甚至在早期教會裡辯論，外邦人如果要改信猶太教，需不需要行割禮、遵守猶太人的飲食律法。過不了多久，情勢變得十分明朗，不僅基督徒要向外邦人傳福音（所以，你們要去，使萬民作我的門徒，太28:19），非猶太人甚至比起猶太人自己更是一塊信教的沃土。
The earliest Christian attempts to reach out to the Greek world (Greek was the common language of the Roman Empire) were probably motivated by the desire to make the gospel intelligible to the gentile mind. Thus already in John's Gospel the Son of God is called “the Word,” the Greek philosophical concept “Logos.” Before the end of the second century, Christianity had begun to produce teachers, like Justin the Martyr, who were at home in Greek philosophy.
最早期的基督徒在希臘語世界（當時羅馬帝國的通用語言）傳教時，是想讓福音更容易讓外邦人理解。因此在約翰福音中神的兒子被稱為“道”（the Word），亦即希臘哲概念的“Logos”。在第二世紀末結束前，基督教已經開始有教師，像游斯丁（Justin the Martyr），原先就精通希臘哲學。
However, one of the greatest of the early theologians, Tertullian, asked the famous rhetorical question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” The implied answer was “Nothing.” Tertullian urged the position, revived periodically, that since Christian revelation contains all truth necessary to salvation, there is no need to dabble in pagan wisdom.
不過，早期神學家中最偉大的一位，特土良，曾經問過一個修辭學上很有名的問題：“雅典與耶路撒冷有什麼關係”，隱含的答案是“沒有”。特土良曾極力堅持這個立場，不斷更新，強調基督的啟示已經包含拯救所需的全部真理，沒有必要再拖異教徒的智慧下水。
But Tertullian eventually left the church to join a rather obscure heretical sect. In time his position became a minority one. There have been, in every age, a majority of simple, believing Christians who have looked to divine revelation for authoritative guidance and have felt no need to pursue philosophical inquiries. The tradition of the scholarly believer, the man of faith who is also steeped in secular learning, became established quite early, though, and has persisted in most denominations until the present day. The greatest intellect of the period around 400 A.D. was Augustine of Hippo. He was equally learned in Christian doctrine and the writings of the pagan sages and was able to use the latter to deepen understanding of the former.
然而特土良最終還是離開了教會，加入了一個比較曖昧的異端教派，他的立場馬上變成少數者。過去的每個時代，絕大多數的單純、信仰的基督徒，只仰望神聖天啟的權威帶領，覺得追求哲學研究是多餘的。不過，愛好學問的信徒──即有信仰，又埋首於世俗學問者──的傳統，很早就建立了，而且在許多宗派里存留着，直到現代。
More was involved than rational inquiry alone, however. As it became clear that the second coming of Christ was not imminent and as Christians ceased to be persecuted but were given official recognition by the Roman Empire, they had to consider how to live in the world. Gradually they decided to take upon themselves worldly responsibilities as civil magistrates, merchants, lords of the land, craftsmen, teachers, etc. While never losing sight of their heavenly goal, they were not to neglect the earth. They were to strive to realize the teachings of Christ as far as possible in their daily lives. Hence the paradox of monasteries, supposedly peopled by men who had fled the world, being the centers of civilization during the Dark Ages. These were the places where secular as well as religious learning was taught and techniques of improved agriculture were developed.
但是，理性探究所需的還不止這些。當清楚地知道耶穌的再臨非迫在睫毛，而且當他們不再被迫害、反而被羅馬帝國官方認可後，基督徒必須考慮如何生存在這個世界。慢慢地，他們決定讓自己成為市民的長官、商人、地主、工匠、教師等，好擔負起世界的責任，在不失去屬天的目標下，他們也不願忽視這個地球，他們也在日常生活中拼命地嘗試了解基督的教導。因此出現了「修道院的矛盾」：本為已逃離這個世界的人所設，可是卻成為黑暗時代文明的中心；那裡成為傳授世俗的、宗教的知識的地方，也是發展農業改良技術的場所。
Although the term was not often used, this amounted to a Christian humanism, the best of the Greek world (filtered through the Romans) placed in the service of religious faith. Augustine held that men were simultaneously citizens of two cities, that of God and that of man.
這就成就了“基督徒人文主義”（Christian humanism），雖然這個詞並不常用，但它是希臘世界（經過羅馬人的洗禮）服侍宗教信仰最佳的語詞。奧古斯丁認為，人同時是兩個城市──上帝的和人的──市民。
In the later centuries, Rome had become more overtly secular, more skeptical, and sometimes more mocking of religion than the Greeks had been. Although probably a majority of the inhabitants of the Empire continued to believe in the supernatural (new cults from the East were popular even in Rome), the first through the fifth centuries A.D. were a time of considerable cynicism, confusion, anxiety, and agnosticism. Christianity was responsible for a major spiritual rebirth, and virtually the entire Western world became monotheistic, mostly Christian, with a small minority of Jews and eventually Moslems. For over a thousand years after A.D. 500 there was almost no atheism or serious religious skepticism in the West.
在此後的幾個世紀，羅馬顯得更加的世俗化，更是懷疑論者，有時也比埃及人更會嘲弄宗教。雖然大多數羅馬帝國的居民仍然相信超自然（來自東方的祭拜儀式即使在羅馬也仍然非常受人歡迎），但第一世紀到第五世紀是犬儒主義、困惑、焦慮、以及不可知論當道的時候，基督教成為主要、甚至是唯一的心靈重生之道。西方成為一神論的世界──主要是基督教，以及少數的猶太教以及此後的伊斯蘭教。公元五百年之後的壹仟年間，西方幾乎沒有無神論或宗教的懷疑論。
This is not to say that all problems ceased. It proved easier in theory than in practice to state the proper relationship between the things of God and the things of the world in politics, in economics, in family matters, etc. There are no finally definitive answers in any of those areas. Christians in each period of history have had to wrestle with living in the world without being of it.
這並不是說問題不再。從理論上、而不從實際上解決神的事務與世界政治、經濟與家庭等事務的關係比較容易。在這些領域上，都沒有最終的確定答案。每個世代的基督徒都要奮鬥於活在此世界而不被它同化。
The Catholic Church, which was virtually synonomous with Western Christianity until after 1500, had little trouble adapting all kinds of pagan creations to the uses of the faith—buildings, literary forms, legal and political structures, even much of the calendar (the celebration of the birth of Christ coincides with the traditional celebration of the Winter solstice, for example). But, intellectually there were serious problems. After 1100, the philosophy of Aristotle was gradually rediscovered, after having been lost to Europe during the Dark Ages. Aristotle seemed to present a fully developed, self-contained, invulnerable system which rationally explained the whole universe. There seemed to be no need for faith.
在公元1500年之前幾乎等於西方基督教同義詞的天主教會，在融合異教徒的創作──建築、文學形式、法律與政治──於信仰中並沒有遭遇很多困難，融合的層面甚至包括基督教行事曆的大部份（例如慶祝基督降生的日子與西方冬至的日子竟不謀而合）。但在知性層面卻有嚴重的問題。公元1100年後，亞里斯多德的哲學在歐洲經歷黑暗時期後被重新發現，他似乎提供了一個完全開展、圓滿自足、無可反駁的系統理論，能理性地解釋整個宇宙，信仰似乎成為多餘。
In the twelfth century, the enigmatic monk-philosopher Peter Abelard seemed to make logic into an absolute, so that whatever could not be proved or explained logically was deemed false. A few at least nominally Christian philosophers were willing to swallow Aristotle whole, either implicitly denying faith or sealing it in a watertight compartment.
公元十二世紀，傳奇的僧侶哲學家亞伯拉德（Peter Abelard）似乎把邏輯絕對化了，即凡不能被邏輯證實或解釋的，都將被視為偽。一些（至少名義上的）基督徒哲學家願意全盤接受亞里斯多德哲學，不是暗中否定信仰，就是把它鎖在密不透水的隔間中。
However, the theologian Thomas Aquinas attempted a synthesis of Aristotle and Christian revelation. This synthesis was widely accepted in his own day and influential even to the present. Whatever might be thought of particular aspects of it, the attempt itself can be regarded as perhaps the most comprehensive effort ever made to forge a Christian humanism. Aquinas taught that, since God created the universe, what the universe reveals to human inquiry must be in harmony with divine revelation. Furthermore, since the human mind is made in the image of God, it is a reliable guide to truth. The ultimate truths of God are above human understanding, but there can be no real conflict between reason and revelation. A Christian can simultaneously be a man of faith and develop his human powers to the fullest. Ultimately the two will harmonize with and complement one another.
然而，神學家阿奎那（Thomas Aquinas）嘗試將亞里斯多德與基督啟示揉合在一起。這個揉合在他的時代便廣被接納，影響甚至直到今日。不論從什麼特殊的角度來看，這個嘗試本身可以被視為打造基督徒人文主義最完備的努力。阿奎那說，既然上帝創造了宇宙，宇宙對人類探索的回應必定與神聖的啟示相一致。此外，人的心智既然是按照上帝的形象所造，必值得信賴，成為指向真理的嚮導。上帝的終極真理超乎人類的理解，但理性與啟示必定沒有真正的衝突。一個基督徒既可以擁有信心，又可發展人類對全然知識的能力。
Aquinas' synthesis did not satisfy everyone. It began to come apart in the fourteenth century, mainly under the criticisms of philosophers like William of Ockham, who thought Aquinas had conceded too much to reason. In their view the human intellect is at best a rather feeble lantern. Most of them regarded the truths of faith as far more reliable than anything man can discover on his own. Ostensibly, therefore, these philosophers (generally grouped under the category of Nominalists) were protecting faith. Unwittingly they revealed a dilemma which has always con fronted Christian humanists. If the believer denigrates human achievement and human wisdom, he runs the risk of making faith seem irrelevant to life. Human powers are then allowed to develop independently of religion and will finally be in opposition to it. But, if the possibilities of human nature are accepted too easily, the radical nature of faith is in danger of being overlooked and the believer can slip into an easy worldliness. In a sense, and largely unintentionally, the Nominalists issued a declaration of the independence of philosophy from faith. Although the full implications of this would take several centuries to become apparent, they prepared the way for a purely secular intellectual life.
阿奎那的努力並未獲得所有的人滿意，到了十四世紀就開始崩解了。主要因素是受到一些哲學家的批評，如俄坎的威廉（William of Ockham），他認為阿奎那對理性作了太多的讓步。在他們的眼中，人類的智識僅如微渺的燈籠﹐信心的真理遠比人類用自己的眼睛所能發現的還要值得信賴。從表面上來看，這些哲學家（大致被歸類為唯名主義者一派）是在維護信心，可是他們無意間揭露了基督徒人文主義者經常面對的困境。即如果一個信仰者貶損了人類成就與人類智慧，他會冒認為信心與生活無關的險﹔人的能力便與宗教無關，可以自行發展，最後終將與宗教為敵。但如果太容易就接受人類天性的可能，信仰者便會滑入簡單的世俗中。就某方面來說，而且大致上不具意圖而言，唯名主義者將哲學從宗教中獨立出來作出了宣告，雖然全部的意義要等數個世紀後才顯得清晰，他們為純粹世俗知性生活開闢了一條道路。
If Nominalism represented a denial of Christian humanism, in the same centuries (roughly 1350-1550) a new kind of humanism was emerging, intimately connected with the phase of Western cultural history called the Renaissance. Renaissance Humanism has often been misunderstood. Countless textbooks describe it as marking a turning away from the God-centered universe of the Middle Ages toward a man-centered universe. Supposedly, people in the previous thousand years had lived for eternity but now began living for this world. Thus, so the popular argument runs, the Renaissance marked the beginning of modern secularism.
如果唯名主義代表基督徒人文主義的否認，在相同的世紀（大約是1350-1550），一個新的人文主義正在開始萌芽，與西方文化歷史中稱為文藝復興的時期緊密地連接在一起。文藝復興時代的人文主義一直遭到誤解，無數的教科書把它描述成從中世紀以神為中心的宇宙觀轉向以人為中心的宇宙觀一個轉折點。依此可假設，過去幾世紀的人是為永生而活，現代人則為這個世界而活。因此，流行的論證是說，文藝復興時期是現代世俗主義的開端。
The historical reality was a great deal more complex. For one thing, there were practically no atheists in the Renaissance and hardly any people who were even skeptical of religion. The great majority of known Renaissance Humanists were believing Christians, mainly Catholics. Some of them were extremely devout. For example, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, in some ways a very worldly individual and author of a famous manifesto of Humanism, Oration on the Dignity of Man, seriously considered becoming a monk just prior to his untimely death. Authors like Francesco Petrarch made strenuous efforts to synthesize their Christianity and their Humanism. Even Giovanni Boccaccio, who wrote the racy and quite profane Decameron, retracted those of his writings which had been a source of scandal.
歷史的真相則遠比此複雜。一個例子，文藝復興時期實際上並沒有出現無神論者，甚至幾乎沒有人是宗教的懷疑論者。絕大多數著名的文藝復興期人文主義者是有信仰的基督教徒，主要信奉天主教，其中有些人還十分虔誠。例如喬凡尼．畢柯．德拉．米朗杜拉（Giovanni Pico della Mirandola），在某方面是十分屬世的人，也是人文主義的代表作《論人的高貴的演說》（Oration on the Dignity of Man）的作者，在他死前曾嚴肅地考慮要成為一個修士。作者如佩脫拉克（Francesco Petrarch）曾全力以赴地想整合基督教信仰和他們的人文主義。即使如薄伽丘（Giovanni Boccaccio），寫出了生氣勃勃且相當瀆神的《十日譚》（Dcameron），也曾把他那些成為醜聞的作品收回。
Already during the Renaissance confusion over the meaning of the word “humanist” had set in. The only wholly satisfactory way of defining a Renaissance Humanist is in the narrowest sense of the word. He was somebody with a professional interest in the humanities—poetry, oratory, history, painting, sculpture, architecture, music—as distinct from philosophy, which Humanists regarded as too abstract and scientific to do justice to the complexities of human existence. They did not exclude theology from their interests. Instead they sought to develop a theology independent of Aristotelian philosophy.
人文主義者（humanist）這個詞的意義在文藝復興時期，已然混亂。能令「文藝復興期人文主義者」（Renaissance Humanist）這個詞全然滿意的定義是其最嚴格的字面意義。他是個對人性──詩歌、修辭、歷史、繪畫、雕刻、建築、音樂──有着專業興趣的人，以與哲學區分開來。人文主義者認為哲學太抽象、太科學，以致於無法對人類存在的複雜性作出公正的裁判。他們並沒有把神學排除在他們的興趣之外，不同的是，他們試着發展一種獨立於亞里斯多德哲學之外的神學。
But there were barely submerged snags in the Humanist program. Their love of literature and the arts carried them back to the Greeks and the Romans, whose achievements in those areas seemed more impressive and profound than anything that had been produced since. There was a strange contradiction here. The Humanists were professed and believing Christians who were forced into the position of saying that civilization, from a human standpoint, had started going downhill at the time of the triumph of Christianity.
不過，在人文主義者的節目表里並沒有太多暗藏的阻礙，他們對文學與藝術的熱愛把他們帶回到希臘羅馬時代──那個在這些領域十分傑出，且達到無人能及的深度的時代。在這裡有一個奇怪的矛盾，人文主義者是專業、有信仰的基督徒，但是被推到那個境地，必須說文明──以人類的觀點來看──在基督教的極致時期卻開始走下坡。
They admired the architecture of Greek temples extravagantly, and applied the term “Gothic” to medi???? Christian cathedrals to express their belief that such structures were primitive and barbaric. Some Humanists confessed that they found the Greek of the New Testament inferior to that of Homer, the Latin of Augustine less delightful than that of Cicero. Nor was it style alone that drew them back to the pagan past. They also found in Cicero a noble, balanced, ripely wise view of ethics. Some of them found it easier to identify with the teachings of the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius than with the monk Thomas a' Kempis, whose Imitation of Christ eschewed classical values both in style and content. For perhaps the majority of Humanists, especially in Italy where the Renaissance reached its fullest flowering, a sincere, conscious, explicit Christian faith was never successfully reconciled with an admiration for the ancient pagans. In a sense, they were Christians intellectually, pagans emotionally and imaginatively.
他們過度欽佩希臘神廟的建築，並且用“歌德式”一詞稱呼中世紀的基督教堂，以表達他們相信這些建築是原始與野蠻的。有些人文主義者承認，他們發現新約中的希臘語不如荷馬，奧古斯丁的拉丁文沒有西塞羅的來得討好，也與他們回溯到異教徒傳統的樣式合不來。他們也在西塞羅的作品中發現一個高貴、平衡的、有成熟智慧的道德觀念。其中一些人發現，比起和僧侶在一起，他們比較容易認同斯多亞學派的羅馬皇帝歐雷理烏斯（Marcus Aurelius）的教導（注﹕着有《沉思集》Meditationes）。坎貝斯的多馬（Thomas a’Kempis）寫的《默想基督》 Of Imitation of Christ無論在形式與內容上都規避了傳統的價值。因為絕大多數的人文主義者，特別是在文藝復興花朵盛開的意大利，一個誠懇的、有良知的、直言不諱的基督徒信仰從來不曾成功地和讚嘆古代異教徒的觀點妥協。從某個角度看，他們是知性的基督徒，異教徒是感性的、出於想象的。
Today the Renaissance is celebrated more for its art than its thought. There is no doubt that through its art an even more frankly humanistic approach to life was expressed. From the days of the Roman Empire until the fourteenth century, lifelike portraits of people were almost unknown. Suddenly they became common. The great artistic and architectural skills of the Middle Ages had mostly gone into the construction and decoration of churches. While religious art still flourished in the Renaissance, the same skills were increasingly used in honoring great families or important cities. Some of the most outstanding Renaissance architecture was in palaces and town halls. For the first time since antiquity the nude human body was once again celebrated in all its perfection, as a kind of metaphor about human nature itself.
在今日，文藝復興多半以其藝術而聞名，而非其思想。無可置疑的是，透過藝術更能直率地表達其對生命的人文主義傾向。從羅馬帝國時代到十四世紀以前，人們栩栩如生的畫像渺不可聞，到了文藝復興時期突然間變得普遍。中世紀偉大的藝術與建築技巧幾乎全用在教堂的建築與裝飾上。當宗教藝術仍然活耀在文藝復興之時，同樣的技巧正逐漸地被用來榮耀一些偉大的家族或重要的城市。從遠古至今，人的裸體，作為人性的一個暗喻，再一次被用來標榜其完美。
The Italian city of Florence was the birthplace and chief nursery of the Renaissance. The Florentines came to manifest quite secular attitudes towards life. They approved moneymaking as essential to leading the good life, took unabashed delight in creature comforts, encouraged the development of every kind of human talent for its own sake, and held up honor, fame, power, and prestige as worthy goals. The most extreme statement of this was Niccolo Machiavelli's amoral political treatise, The Prince, which shocked many people but was only an extension of attitudes already widespread in Renaissance Italy.
意大利的佛羅倫斯是文藝復興的誕生地與主要的搖籃。佛羅倫斯人對人生的態度採取一個相當世俗的表現。他們同意賺錢是為過美好的生活所必須的，對於肉體享樂的歡愉並不覺羞愧，鼓勵為着人類自己而發展人類的各種天賦，並且高舉榮譽、聲名、權力、以及威望作為價值標的。其中最極端的是馬基維利（Niccolo Machiavelli）的《君王論》（The Prince）提到的，政治非關道德的論述，令許多人震驚，其實只是廣布於文藝復興時期意大利一種態度的延伸而已。
Yet the Florentines, as other Italians of the time, were also pious. Near the end of their Renaissance, the friar Girolamo Savanarola preached what amounted to a fire-and-brimstone revival in the city and persuaded sophisticated Florentines to throw their worldly “vanities,” including valuable paintings and books, into a huge bonfire. The same apparent contradictions were found at the papal court in Rome. The highly sophisticated popes of the Renaissance were great patrons of the arts and of learning. Although they might have been expected to suppress pagan tendencies among the Humanists, by the late fifteenth century the popes themselves were being drawn in the same direction. Savanarola was burnt at the stake on orders of the notorious Pope Alexander VI. Alexander's openly immoral life reflected the easy worldliness in high church circles. This had developed to some extent from an attitude which worshipped beauty divorced from morality and was more under the imaginative sway of the ancient pagans than of ????ure. Yet Alexander too was a believer and even, in his way, somewhat devout.
然而，佛羅倫斯人也和當時的意大利人一樣虔誠。在文藝復興時期行將結束之際，修士薩伏那洛拉（Girolamo Savanarola）在城中的宣道造成了相當於火與硫黃的復興，並且說服飽經世故的佛羅倫斯人拋棄他們世俗的“虛榮”，包括價值不菲的畫作和書籍，丟入火堆中。同樣明顯的矛盾也可以在羅馬教庭發現。世故的佛羅倫斯人是藝術與知識的偉大讚助者，雖然他們被人期望能壓制人文主義者的異教傾向，但是到了十五世紀末，教宗們也同樣的方向所牽引。在惡命昭彰的教宗亞歷山大第四世命令下，薩伏那洛拉被燒死在火柱上。亞歷山大第四世公開的、不道德的生活反映了教會高層舒適的俗心。在某種程度上，這是從歌詠美──德行的分支──的態度造成的，而此種態度多源自古代異教徒極富想象力的搖擺，而非聖經的偏離。然而，亞歷山大同樣也是信仰者，甚至，以他的方式而言，相當虔誠。
It cannot, therefore, be argued that the Renaissance ushered in the modern age of secularism in the West. Certainly, that was far from the Humanists' intentions. They would have been shocked if it had been suggested that they were weakening religious faith. In a sense, the Renaissance raised premature questions which it could not itself answer. The most important of these was how believing and practicing Christians could allow full sway to their natural human impulses. Up until then, with an almost unanimous voice, Christianity had taught an ethic of self-control, self-denial, and deliberate efforts to transcend the merely human. The Humanists did not deny this ethic openly, but they lived as though it were not always true. They did not think much about the consequences of their way of life.
因此，我們不可論證，文藝復興導入了西方的現代世俗主義。當然，這遠非人文主義的意圖。他們如果知道他們被影射要削弱宗教信仰，必定會十分震驚。從某方面而言，文藝復興提出了許多它自己無法回答的不成熟的問題，其中最重要的是在信仰與實踐中的基督徒，如何容讓天然的人性衝動充份地發揮其威力。直到當日，基督教在一個毫無二致的聲音下，教導自我控制、自我否認與刻意努力的道德，以超越全然的人性。人文主義者並未公開地否認這個道德，但他們以一種認為那並非總是正確的態度來生活，他們對他們的生活方式所導致的結果並沒有作太多的考慮。
Young men from Northern Europe repaired to Italy with great frequency during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Some of these Northerners were shocked at the rather profane lives and opinions of the Italian Humanists. Some of them were also troubled by the Italians' apparent failure to reconcile their Christianity and their Humanism. They went home determined to remedy that failure.
十五世紀和十六世紀早期，從歐洲北方到意大利的青年人，往來十分頻繁。這些北方來的人對意大利人相當褻瀆的生活與看法十分震驚，其中有些人也為意大利人無法調和基督教信仰與人文精神感到困惑，他們返家後決定對這些失敗進行補救。
The greatest of the Northern Humanists was Erasmus of Rotterdam. He was a humanist in the strict sense of the word, a scholar of languages and literature. He also shared the Italian Humanists' distaste for abstract philosophy, and hence found himself alienated from the prevailing theology of the Catholic Church, which made use of Aristotle as filtered through Aquinas.
最偉大的北方人文主義者是路特單的伊拉斯姆（Erasmus of Rotterdam）。他是嚴格字面意義上的人文主義者，一個語言學與文學的學者。他也和意大利人文主義者一樣，討厭抽象的哲學，因此他發現自己偏離了天主教會以亞里斯多德過濾阿奎那的主流神學。
Erasmus was practically the inventor of what came to be called Christian Humanism, which at a minimum meant the application of scholarly tools to the study not of pagan but of Christian texts, especially the Bible. Erasmus' aim was to kindle a stronger piety by leading Christians to a deeper and more authentic understanding of their faith.
伊拉斯姆實際上是將來要被稱為基督教人文主義的鼻祖。基督教人文主義最低限度是指應用學術的工具研究基督教經文，尤其是聖經，而不是研究異教徒信仰。伊拉斯姆的目標是藉由引導基督徒進入對信心更確切的認識，以點燃他們更深的敬虔。
Paradoxically, this Christian Humanism probably led to the weakening of a specifically Catholic faith, since Erasmus' emphasis on the study of the Bible tended to produce a personal, somewhat individualistic faith that was not always in harmony with church teaching. Overall, Erasmus found in the ????ure a simple, basically ethical kind of Christianity. While he did not deny the major teachings and practices of the Catholic Church, he called many of them into question and seemed to suggest that the great and elaborate structure of the church was really unnecessary. Later he ruefully noted that people were saying that “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched.”
矛盾的是，這個基督教人文主義很可能導致了天主教特定信心的減弱，因為他強調聖經的研究容易產生私人的、甚至與天主教教導不相協調的個別的信心。總體而言，伊拉斯姆在聖經經文中發現了一個簡單、本質上道德的基督教精神。雖然他並未否定天主教會的主要教導與常規，但對這些發出許多置疑，並且似乎暗示教堂偉大精巧的結構是沒有必要的。之後他曾記下﹕人們說是伊拉斯姆下了蛋，而路德孵出了它。
Yet Erasmus remained a Catholic, albeit a rather marginal one, until his death. He opposed the Protestant Reformation on several grounds, especially because it shattered the unity of the church. The other great Northern Humanist, Erasmus' good friend Thomas More, became a vigorous apologist for Catholic orthodoxy and died rather than deny the Pope's authority in England. More has always had great appeal, in part because he seemed to exemplify humanist attitudes. He was a married layman, active in politics, a social critic, a great wit, an accomplished stylist, a man who seems to have enjoyed life. Yet he had seriously thought of becoming a monk, became completely disillusioned with politics, and had a strong and lively sense of the transiency of all worldly things and the need to live for eternity.
但是伊拉斯姆始終仍是個天主教徒，雖然直到他死只是個邊緣人。他在一些基礎上反對新教的改革，尤其是因它撼動了教會的團結。另一個北方的人文主義者，伊拉斯姆的好友湯瑪士．摩爾（Thomas More），則成為一個激進的東正教（Catholic orthodoxy）的護教者，否定且死於英國教宗（英國國教）的權威。摩爾極富吸引力的原因是他似乎代表了人文主義的態度。他是個結了婚的俗人，熱衷於政治，一個社會評論家，富於機智、成就不凡的設計師，一個似乎是會享受生活的人。但是他一度慎重地考慮要當修士，不再對政治抱任何幻想，並且對所有世俗之物的短暫性有一個強烈生動的自覺，想要追求永生。
The Renaissance, at least in the South, had largely passed its peak by the time of the Protestant Reformation. In any case, it can be said with accuracy that the Reformation effectively pushed the Renaissance off the stage of history, and postponed indefinitely the consideration of the questions which the Renaissance had raised.
至少於男方，文藝復興在新教改革時已過了它的巔峰期。無論如何，我們可以正確地說，宗教改革成功地把文藝復興推出了歷史的舞台，並且把研究文藝復興時期提出的問題無限期地推遲了。

Martin Luther had little acquaintance with Renaissance Humanism and even less sympathy for it. Ulrich Zwingli, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin had been Humanists, but Humanism did not appreciably influence their development of theology or piety. In a sense it could be argued that the Reformation was anti-humanistic, in that the doctrines of the sinfulness of man and salvation through faith alone effectively prevented any reliance on human powers Erasmus had an acrimonious debate with Luther over human free will, Erasmus defending and Luther vigorously denying it. The more radical Reformers were also anti-humanistic in that they excluded the arts from worship almost entirely, although Luther made a major exception for music. Whereas Catholic theology had generally developed some kind of synthesis with pagan philosophy, the Reformers eschewed all such connections, in favor of the “pure” Word of God.
馬丁路德對文藝復興時期的人文主義沒有什麼認識，更談不上同情。蘇黎世的慈運理（Ulrich Zwingli）、路德的助手墨蘭頓（Philip Melanchthon）以及喀爾文（John Calvin）都曾是人文主義者，但是對他們的神學或信仰並沒有造成顯著的影響。從某方面可以論證說宗教改革是反對人文主義的，因為人類罪性與因信稱義的教義實際上杜絕了依賴任何的人類力量。伊拉斯姆曾與路德有一次有關人類自由意志的激烈辯論。伊拉斯姆捍衛自由意志，而路德極力地否定之。越激進的宗教改革者也越是反人文主義的，因為他們幾乎全然反對藝術用在崇拜上，雖然路德對音樂特別網開一面。其實一般而言，天主教神學是與異教哲學的部份摻和，但宗教改革者避開這個聯繫，而擁護“純粹”是上帝的話的說法。
In another sense, however, Protestantism can be said to have encouraged Humanism by its denial of monasticism. Henceforth, the only Christian vocation would be the vocation to live in the world. Marriage and family came to be both normative and ideal. Worldly occupations took on a new, religious significance. It has even been argued that, by a rather complex route, Calvinism justified modern capitalism and the pursuit of wealth. If the typical Catholic figure of the Middle Ages had been the robed monk in his cell, the typical Protestant figure of early modern times was the black-suited businessman in a Rembrandt painting, sitting on the board of some civic organization.
但是，從另一方面可以說，新教因為否定了修道院制度而鼓勵了人文主義，從此以往基督徒的唯一召喚就是活在這個世界，婚姻與家庭成為既是常態也是典範。世間的職業有了新的、宗教上的重要意義。曾有一個繁複的論證說喀爾文主義合理化了現代資本主義和對財富的追求。如果說一個典型的中世紀教會人物是在他的斗室中罩着長外袍的僧侶，那麼一個典型的早期現代新教人物就會是出現在林布蘭特的畫作、坐在某個市民組織的委員會上，身着黑服的商人。

In the sixteenth century almost all passion—intellectual, moral, personal, even political—was drawn into religious conflict. Whether one was Catholic or Protestant mattered crucially, because eternal salvation and fidelity to Christ were at stake. Even as they contended sometimes violently, Catholics and Protestants still agreed on the fundamentals of faith—the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the authority of ????ure (however interpreted), miracles, the Ten Commandments, etc. Whatever cautious secular voices had been raised during the Renaissance were all but drowned out during the Reformation. Unbelief seemed almost unthinkable. What mattered was the kind of belief one espoused. An observer of the Western scene in 1550 might reasonably have concluded that all trends towards secularization had been permanently ended. The West was so deeply and passionately religious that its entire future would be shaped by the competing faiths.
十六世紀時幾乎所有的激情──知性的、道德的、個人的、甚至政治的──都被捲入宗教的衝突中。你是天主教或是抗議宗對你的影響甚巨，因為永生的拯救與對基督的忠誠是在賭註上的。雖然他們有時有暴力式的鬥爭，但是天主教與抗議宗在信心的基本教義上仍然互相一致──三位一體，基督的神性，聖經的權威（無論怎樣詮釋），神跡，以及十誡等。無論世俗的聲音在文藝復興期如何慎重地被提出來，它們都在宗教改革時期被淹沒了。不信神幾乎無法想象，唯一的差別只是你信奉什麼。一個在公元1550年西方歷史布景的觀察者很容易作出如下合理的結論：任何世俗化的趨勢已經永遠地結束了，西方世界是如此深刻而熱情的宗教化了，它的整個未來將被互相競爭的信仰所塑造。
Yet this religious passion which burned so brightly could be viewed like the flaring up of a fire just before it starts to go out. The roots of secularization in the West had been spreading for some time, and certain developments of the Reformation period were, unrecognized at the time, helping them to push shoots above the ground.
然而這個燃燒對如此燦爛的宗教熱情可以被視為火焰將熄前的最後一閃。西方世俗化的根已經散布了一段時間，當時未被發現的部份宗教改革的進展，幫助這些根苗竄出了地面。
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Hitchcock, James. “The Road to Modernity.” In What is Secular Humanism. (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books, 1982), 19-31.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE AUTHOR
James Hitchcock is a widely published author on many topics and Professor of History at St. Louis University. James Hitchcock is a member of the Advisory Board of The Catholic Educator's Resource Center.
Copyright © 1982 James Hitchcock