按：以下英文部份是一份讲义，对于人文主义的歷史演變有深入的介绍。

人文主义是西方思潮近五百年的主流。
是文艺复兴导致了它的发展，还是宗教改革赐予其生命，此文有深入的看法。
了解历史的演变，有助于对信仰的认识。
译文有不妥处请予指正﹐谢谢。

文章一开始就吸引住我的地方是提出了圣经作者写作的态度。
不是从哲学或科学的角度，他们对数字也不敏感。
这些都是现代人习以为常的观念，却是圣经作者最不看重的。
然而却成为教外人士批评圣经的着力点。
了解这点，对圣经的批评就应该从另一个角度着手。

私以为无神论者批评的圣经只是他们自己心目中的圣经；他们反对的信仰，也只是他们自己塑造的信仰。

其实真正的基督徒也是反对这样作的，在这点上，可以说是立场一致。

对于不是自己身体力行的信仰还是抱持一个尊重的态度来得好。
适切而坚定地说明自己的立场，互相交流，并且保持开放的态度更有助于在网路上讨论信仰的问题。

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.
西方文明可以说是两大思潮角力的产品，过去2500年的进步是彼此互相峥嵘的结果：
1. 犹太-基督教传统。
2. 希腊文化的理性探索与艺术创作。
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.
这两者当然不是水火不容的。虽然犹太人原则上没有发展宗教艺术，但是他们也建造了灿烂的神殿，旧约在文学艺术上也有一定的地位。
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.
不过﹐犹太人对纯粹的艺术没有太大的兴趣﹐对圣经是否有艺术感染力也不关心，他们对知识的探究全在圣经经文的本身。他们没有什么可以被称为“哲学”或“科学” 的，而且，他们也和巴比伦人、埃及人不同，没有深入地研究数学。
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.
希腊人相信超自然力。他们最大的问题（如果这是问题的话）是有太多神了。他们的多神论和一个信念──一个冷酷的命运掌管着宇宙──结合的结果是对神圣没有很强的概念。希腊神话的诸神并没有给人太多教训的意味（他们常常举止粗野，甚至没有什幺道德），因此也没有什幺说服力。
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.
旧约则是一个民族生活在一个全能、全知、全善、全爱的上帝之下的故事。希伯来圣经中不乏人文主义的主题（诗篇8:4-5：人算﹔什幺，你竟顾念他﹖世人算什幺，你竟眷顾他﹖），但整体而言，以色列民族是告诫人必须全然依赖上帝的。当他们只相信自己时，他们就会走错路。对照之下，希腊人的宗教观念则越来越淡薄。在无法依赖他们的诸神，又出于需要的情形下，希腊人从自己身上寻找智慧。在实质上，他们发明了哲学、科学、使数学完美化、医学、戏剧、诗歌、雕刻、建筑，以及历史的研究。
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.)
希腊人很明显的是个具有浓厚人文气息的民族，在人文传统上有着伟大的成就与自豪。他们从哲学对话的角力中获得乐趣、思考呈现在舞台上关于人类存在的难题、查考自然界的奥秘，并且歌颂所有人性的光辉。（希腊有名的裸体雕塑是为同时呈现人体的完美以及艺术家个人的完美技巧）
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.
很少希腊人曾经完全否认超自然的存在。事实上，苏格拉底、柏拉图、亚里斯多德，这三位伟大的希腊哲学家，试图借着知性的诡辩来深化对宗教的理解。然而，柏拉图的上帝─那个称为the One的终极存有，与希腊传统的神并不相同﹐亚里斯多德的「主要推动者」（Prime Mover）也更不类似。不管在哲学上这些概念如何令人满意，他们的理解实际上是偏离了希腊的宗教。柏拉图、亚里斯多德所以是世俗论者的原因在于，他们不承认有一个宗教的层面。宗教的任何义务，都可以藉由生活在哲学真理下取代，也就是说，可以过着一种有智慧的世俗之路。
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.
希腊的人文主义，对人类能力的信任及对人类成就的歌颂，对西方文明的贡献是独特与巨大的，世上少有其它文化发展出类似的观点。例如，在今天，一些伟大的西方文明，例如印度，仍然拥护一个观点，认为人类的存在只是永恒中渺小的一部份，人类的生活也被一个冷酷的力量所支配，他自己无能掌理。
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.
在基督时代之前，希伯来文化和希腊文化几乎没有什幺接触。合理的假设是，这两者在本质上是无法兼容的，毕竟两者的分歧太大，对人生的态度最终是矛盾的。然而，他们却被一个全新的时代潮流──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.
一开始，早期的基督徒全然是希伯来传统的子女。他们甚至在早期教会里辩论，外邦人如果要改信犹太教，需不需要行割礼、遵守犹太人的饮食律法。过不了多久，情势变得十分明朗，不仅基督徒要向外邦人传福音（所以，你们要去，使万民作我的门徒，太28:19），非犹太人甚至比起犹太人自己更是一块信教的沃土。
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腊语世界（当时罗马帝国的通用语言）传教时，是想让福音更容易让外邦人理解。因此在约翰福音中神的儿子被称为“道”（the Word），亦即希腊哲概念的“Logos”。在第二世纪末结束前，基督教已经开始有教师，像游斯丁（Justin the Martyr），原先就精通希腊哲学。
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.
不过，早期神学家中最伟大的一位，特土良，曾经问过一个修辞学上很有名的问题：“雅典与耶路撒冷有什么关系”，隐含的答案是“没有”。特土良曾极力坚持这个立场，不断更新，强调基督的启示已经包含拯救所需的全部真理，没有必要再拖异教徒的智慧下水。
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.
然而特土良最终还是离开了教会，加入了一个比较暧昧的异端教派，他的立场马上变成少数者。过去的每个时代，绝大多数的单纯、信仰的基督徒，只仰望神圣天启的权威带领，觉得追求哲学研究是多余的。不过，爱好学问的信徒──即有信仰，又埋首于世俗学问者──的传统，很早就建立了，而且在许多宗派里存留着，直到现代。
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，理性探究所需的还不止这些。当清楚地知道耶稣的再临非迫在睫毛，而且当他们不再被迫害、反而被罗马帝国官方认可后，基督徒必须考虑如何生存在这个世界。慢慢地，他们决定让自己成为市民的长官、商人、地主、工匠、教师等，好担负起世界的责任，在不失去属天的目标下，他们也不愿忽视这个地球，他们也在日常生活中拼命地尝试了解基督的教导。因此出现了「修道院的矛盾」：本为已逃离这个世界的人所设，可是却成为黑暗时代文明的中心；那里成为传授世俗的、宗教的知识的地方，也是发展农业改良技术的场所。
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.
这就成就了“基督徒人文主义”（Christian humanism），虽然这个词并不常用，但它是希腊世界（经过罗马人的洗礼）服侍宗教信仰最佳的语词。奥古斯丁认为，人同时是两个城市──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.
在此后的几个世纪，罗马显得更加的世俗化，更是怀疑论者，有时也比埃及人更会嘲弄宗教。虽然大多数罗马帝国的居民仍然相信超自然（来自东方的祭拜仪式即使在罗马也仍然非常受人欢迎），但第一世纪到第五世纪是犬儒主义、困惑、焦虑、以及不可知论当道的时候，基督教成为主要、甚至是唯一的心灵重生之道。西方成为一神论的世界──主要是基督教，以及少数的犹太教以及此后的伊斯兰教。公元五百年之后的壹仟年间，西方几乎没有无神论或宗教的怀疑论。
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.
这并不是说问题不再。从理论上、而不从实际上解决神的事务与世界政治、经济与家庭等事务的关系比较容易。在这些领域上，都没有最终的确定答案。每个世代的基督徒都要奋斗于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年之前几乎等于西方基督教同义词的天主教会，在融合异教徒的创作──建筑、文学形式、法律与政治──于信仰中并没有遭遇很多困难，融合的层面甚至包括基督教行事历的大部份（例如庆祝基督降生的日子与西方冬至的日子竟不谋而合）。但在知性层面却有严重的问题。公元1100年后，亚里斯多德的哲学在欧洲经历黑暗时期后被重新发现，他似乎提供了一个完全开展、圆满自足、无可反驳的系统理论，能理性地解释整个宇宙，信仰似乎成为多余。
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.
公元十二世纪，传奇的僧侣哲学家亚伯拉德（Peter Abelard）似乎把逻辑绝对化了，即凡不能被逻辑证实或解释的，都将被视为伪。一些（至少名义上的）基督徒哲学家愿意全盘接受亚里斯多德哲学，不是暗中否定信仰，就是把它锁在密不透水的隔间中。
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，神学家阿奎那（Thomas Aquinas）尝试将亚里斯多德与基督启示揉合在一起。这个揉合在他的时代便广被接纳，影响甚至直到今日。不论从什么特殊的角度来看，这个尝试本身可以被视为打造基督徒人文主义最完备的努力。阿奎那说，既然上帝创造了宇宙，宇宙对人类探索的回应必定与神圣的启示相一致。此外，人的心智既然是按照上帝的形象所造，必值得信赖，成为指向真理的向导。上帝的终极真理超乎人类的理解，但理性与启示必定没有真正的冲突。一个基督徒既可以拥有信心，又可发展人类对全然知识的能力。
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.
阿奎那的努力并未获得所有的人满意，到了十四世纪就开始崩解了。主要因素是受到一些哲学家的批评，如俄坎的威廉（William of Ockham），他认为阿奎那对理性作了太多的让步。在他们的眼中，人类的智识仅如微渺的灯笼﹐信心的真理远比人类用自己的眼睛所能发现的还要值得信赖。从表面上来看，这些哲学家（大致被归类为唯名主义者一派）是在维护信心，可是他们无意间揭露了基督徒人文主义者经常面对的困境。即如果一个信仰者贬损了人类成就与人类智慧，他会冒认为信心与生活无关的险﹔人的能力便与宗教无关，可以自行发展，最后终将与宗教为敌。但如果太容易就接受人类天性的可能，信仰者便会滑入简单的世俗中。就某方面来说，而且大致上不具意图而言，唯名主义者将哲学从宗教中独立出来作出了宣告，虽然全部的意义要等数个世纪后才显得清晰，他们为纯粹世俗知性生活开辟了一条道路。
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.
如果唯名主义代表基督徒人文主义的否认，在相同的世纪（大约是1350-1550），一个新的人文主义正在开始萌芽，与西方文化历史中称为文艺复兴的时期紧密地连接在一起。文艺复兴时代的人文主义一直遭到误解，无数的教科书把它描述成从中世纪以神为中心的宇宙观转向以人为中心的宇宙观一个转折点。依此可假设，过去几世纪的人是为永生而活，现代人则为这个世界而活。因此，流行的论证是说，文艺复兴时期是现代世俗主义的开端。
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.
历史的真相则远比此复杂。一个例子，文艺复兴时期实际上并没有出现无神论者，甚至几乎没有人是宗教的怀疑论者。绝大多数著名的文艺复兴期人文主义者是有信仰的基督教徒，主要信奉天主教，其中有些人还十分虔诚。例如乔凡尼．毕柯．德拉．米朗杜拉（Giovanni Pico della Mirandola），在某方面是十分属世的人，也是人文主义的代表作《论人的高贵的演说》（Oration on the Dignity of Man）的作者，在他死前曾严肃地考虑要成为一个修士。作者如佩脱拉克（Francesco Petrarch）曾全力以赴地想整合基督教信仰和他们的人文主义。即使如薄伽丘（Giovanni Boccaccio），写出了生气勃勃且相当渎神的《十日谭》（Dcameron），也曾把他那些成为丑闻的作品收回。
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.
人文主义者（humanist）这个词的意义在文艺复兴时期，已然混乱。能令「文艺复兴期人文主义者」（Renaissance Humanist）这个词全然满意的定义是其最严格的字面意义。他是个对人性──诗歌、修辞、历史、绘画、雕刻、建筑、音乐──有着专业兴趣的人，以与哲学区分开来。人文主义者认为哲学太抽象、太科学，以致于无法对人类存在的复杂性作出公正的裁判。他们并没有把神学排除在他们的兴趣之外，不同的是，他们试着发展一种独立于亚里斯多德哲学之外的神学。
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.
不过，在人文主义者的节目表里并没有太多暗藏的阻碍，他们对文学与艺术的热爱把他们带回到希腊罗马时代──那个在这些领域十分杰出，且达到无人能及的深度的时代。在这里有一个奇怪的矛盾，人文主义者是专业、有信仰的基督徒，但是被推到那个境地，必须说文明──以人类的观点来看──在基督教的极致时期却开始走下坡。
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.
他们过度钦佩希腊神庙的建筑，并且用“歌德式”一词称呼中世纪的基督教堂，以表达他们相信这些建筑是原始与野蛮的。有些人文主义者承认，他们发现新约中的希腊语不如荷马，奥古斯丁的拉丁文没有西塞罗的来得讨好，也与他们回溯到异教徒传统的样式合不来。他们也在西塞罗的作品中发现一个高贵、平衡的、有成熟智慧的道德观念。其中一些人发现，比起和僧侣在一起，他们比较容易认同斯多亚学派的罗马皇帝欧雷理乌斯（Marcus Aurelius）的教导（注﹕着有《沉思集》Meditationes）。坎贝斯的多马（Thomas a’Kempis）写的《默想基督》 Of Imitation of Christ无论在形式与内容上都规避了传统的价值。因为绝大多数的人文主义者，特别是在文艺复兴花朵盛开的意大利，一个诚恳的、有良知的、直言不讳的基督徒信仰从来不曾成功地和赞叹古代异教徒的观点妥协。从某个角度看，他们是知性的基督徒，异教徒是感性的、出于想象的。
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，文艺复兴多半以其艺术而闻名，而非其思想。无可置疑的是，透过艺术更能直率地表达其对生命的人文主义倾向。从罗马帝国时代到十四世纪以前，人们栩栩如生的画像渺不可闻，到了文艺复兴时期突然间变得普遍。中世纪伟大的艺术与建筑技巧几乎全用在教堂的建筑与装饰上。当宗教艺术仍然活耀在文艺复兴之时，同样的技巧正逐渐地被用来荣耀一些伟大的家族或重要的城市。从远古至今，人的裸体，作为人性的一个暗喻，再一次被用来标榜其完美。
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.
意大利的佛罗伦斯是文艺复兴的诞生地与主要的摇篮。佛罗伦斯人对人生的态度采取一个相当世俗的表现。他们同意赚钱是为过美好的生活所必须的，对于肉体享乐的欢愉并不觉羞愧，鼓励为着人类自己而发展人类的各种天赋，并且高举荣誉、声名、权力、以及威望作为价值标的。其中最极端的是马基维利（Niccolo Machiavelli）的《君王论》（The Prince）提到的，政治非关道德的论述，令许多人震惊，其实只是广布于文艺复兴时期意大利一种态度的延伸而已。
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，佛罗伦斯人也和当时的意大利人一样虔诚。在文艺复兴时期行将结束之际，修士萨伏那洛拉（Girolamo Savanarola）在城中的宣道造成了相当于火与硫黄的复兴，并且说服饱经世故的佛罗伦斯人拋弃他们世俗的“虚荣”，包括价值不菲的画作和书籍，丢入火堆中。同样明显的矛盾也可以在罗马教庭发现。世故的佛罗伦斯人是艺术与知识的伟大赞助者，虽然他们被人期望能压制人文主义者的异教倾向，但是到了十五世纪末，教宗们也同样的方向所牵引。在恶命昭彰的教宗亚历山大第四世命令下，萨伏那洛拉被烧死在火柱上。亚历山大第四世公开的、不道德的生活反映了教会高层舒适的俗心。在某种程度上，这是从歌咏美──德行的分支──的态度造成的，而此种态度多源自古代异教徒极富想象力的摇摆，而非圣经的偏离。然而，亚历山大同样也是信仰者，甚至，以他的方式而言，相当虔诚。
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，我们不可论证，文艺复兴导入了西方的现代世俗主义。当然，这远非人文主义的意图。他们如果知道他们被影射要削弱宗教信仰，必定会十分震惊。从某方面而言，文艺复兴提出了许多它自己无法回答的不成熟的问题，其中最重要的是在信仰与实践中的基督徒，如何容让天然的人性冲动充份地发挥其威力。直到当日，基督教在一个毫无二致的声音下，教导自我控制、自我否认与刻意努力的道德，以超越全然的人性。人文主义者并未公开地否认这个道德，但他们以一种认为那并非总是正确的态度来生活，他们对他们的生活方式所导致的结果并没有作太多的考虑。
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.
十五世纪和十六世纪早期，从欧洲北方到意大利的青年人，往来十分频繁。这些北方来的人对意大利人相当亵渎的生活与看法十分震惊，其中有些人也为意大利人无法调和基督教信仰与人文精神感到困惑，他们返家后决定对这些失败进行补救。
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.
最伟大的北方人文主义者是路特单的伊拉斯姆（Erasmus of Rotterdam）。他是严格字面意义上的人文主义者，一个语言学与文学的学者。他也和意大利人文主义者一样，讨厌抽象的哲学，因此他发现自己偏离了天主教会以亚里斯多德过滤阿奎那的主流神学。
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.
伊拉斯姆实际上是将来要被称为基督教人文主义的鼻祖。基督教人文主义最低限度是指应用学术的工具研究基督教经文，尤其是圣经，而不是研究异教徒信仰。伊拉斯姆的目标是藉由引导基督徒进入对信心更确切的认识，以点燃他们更深的敬虔。
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，这个基督教人文主义很可能导致了天主教特定信心的减弱，因为他强调圣经的研究容易产生私人的、甚至与天主教教导不相协调的个别的信心。总体而言，伊拉斯姆在圣经经文中发现了一个简单、本质上道德的基督教精神。虽然他并未否定天主教会的主要教导与常规，但对这些发出许多置疑，并且似乎暗示教堂伟大精巧的结构是没有必要的。之后他曾记下﹕人们说是伊拉斯姆下了蛋，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.
但是伊拉斯姆始终仍是个天主教徒，虽然直到他死只是个边缘人。他在一些基础上反对新教的改革，尤其是因它撼动了教会的团结。另一个北方的人文主义者，伊拉斯姆的好友汤玛士．摩尔（Thomas More），则成为一个激进的东正教（Catholic orthodoxy）的护教者，否定且死于英国教宗（英国国教）的权威。摩尔极富吸引力的原因是他似乎代表了人文主义的态度。他是个结了婚的俗人，热衷于政治，一个社会评论家，富于机智、成就不凡的设计师，一个似乎是会享受生活的人。但是他一度慎重地考虑要当修士，不再对政治抱任何幻想，并且对所有世俗之物的短暂性有一个强烈生动的自觉，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.
至少于男方，文艺复兴在新教改革时已过了它的巅峰期。无论如何，我们可以正确地说，宗教改革成功地把文艺复兴推出了历史的舞台，并且把研究文艺复兴时期提出的问题无限期地推迟了。

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.
马丁路德对文艺复兴时期的人文主义没有什么认识，更谈不上同情。苏黎世的慈运理（Ulrich Zwingli）、路德的助手墨兰顿（Philip Melanchthon）以及喀尔文（John Calvin）都曾是人文主义者，但是对他们的神学或信仰并没有造成显著的影响。从某方面可以论证说宗教改革是反对人文主义的，因为人类罪性与因信称义的教义实际上杜绝了依赖任何的人类力量。伊拉斯姆曾与路德有一次有关人类自由意志的激烈辩论。伊拉斯姆捍卫自由意志，而路德极力地否定之。越激进的宗教改革者也越是反人文主义的，因为他们几乎全然反对艺术用在崇拜上，虽然路德对音乐特别网开一面。其实一般而言，天主教神学是与异教哲学的部份掺和，但宗教改革者避开这个联系，而拥护“纯粹”是上帝的话的说法。
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，从另一方面可以说，新教因为否定了修道院制度而鼓励了人文主义，从此以往基督徒的唯一召唤就是活在这个世界，婚姻与家庭成为既是常态也是典范。世间的职业有了新的、宗教上的重要意义。曾有一个繁复的论证说喀尔文主义合理化了现代资本主义和对财富的追求。如果说一个典型的中世纪教会人物是在他的斗室中罩着长外袍的僧侣，那么一个典型的早期现代新教人物就会是出现在林布兰特的画作、坐在某个市民组织的委员会上，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.
十六世纪时几乎所有的激情──知性的、道德的、个人的、甚至政治的──都被卷入宗教的冲突中。你是天主教或是抗议宗对你的影响甚巨，因为永生的拯救与对基督的忠诚是在赌注上的。虽然他们有时有暴力式的斗争，但是天主教与抗议宗在信心的基本教义上仍然互相一致──三位一体，基督的神性，圣经的权威（无论怎样诠释），神迹，以及十诫等。无论世俗的声音在文艺复兴期如何慎重地被提出来，它们都在宗教改革时期被淹没了。不信神几乎无法想象，唯一的差别只是你信奉什么。一个在公元1550年西方历史布景的观察者很容易作出如下合理的结论：任何世俗化的趋势已经永远地结束了，西方世界是如此深刻而热情的宗教化了，它的整个未来将被互相竞争的信仰所塑造。
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.
然而这个燃烧对如此灿烂的宗教热情可以被视为火焰将熄前的最后一闪。西方世俗化的根已经散布了一段时间，当时未被发现的部份宗教改革的进展，帮助这些根苗窜出了地面。
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