作者：刘赛眉 年份：1980

正如孟道尔(Arthur P. Mendel) 在「马克斯主义着作之精萃」(Essential Works of Marxism) (注一) 一书的序言中所说，马克斯主义对欧亚之影响，已远超过一个世纪以前马克斯和恩格斯所预示的。因为马克斯共产主义的幽魂，不仅缠绕着欧洲(注二)，而且大大地征服了半个地球，其影响力且有日渐扩张之势。其实，马克斯主义之所以盛行，一则固然是马氏哲学本身所具之理想；另一则方可谓时势造英雄，因为他的哲学非常踏实地针对了当时的社会、政治、与经济的情况，同时，马氏的思想极力把 「科学」与 「伦理」溶为一炉，给予伦理上的 「正义」一个科学理论的基础。尽管有人认为马克斯的哲学已过时，但马氏对社会的分析，以及他所许诺的「无阶级的理想国」仍然吸引着不少人。若要了解马克斯的思想，便不能把他的哲学从使其滋长繁生的温床抽离；透悉了马氏哲学诞生的背景之后，则其哲学对经济落后国家特具吸引力一点，便不难瞭解，虽然马氏生前曾预期革命在先进资本主义国家中首先发生。

本文主要是站在基督徒信仰的立场上，对马氏所预许的「理想国」作一神学反省，并与今日神学上所解释的「新圣城」或「新天地」作一比较，以观二者之异同。本文既主要为神学反省，故此并无意详细刻划马氏的思想内容，笔者以为，只是简要地抽出其重心，达到本文之目的便足够。

一　马克斯主义的 「正义王国」

马克斯主义显然是西方文化及文明过程中的产儿(注三)。这个哲学在工业革命时代抬头，一直影响着走向工业化的国家，这个主义融合了欧洲文艺复兴运动以降诸潮流之精髓，譬如：俗化主义(Secularism)、经验主义(Empiricism)、理性主义(Rationalism)、唯物主义(Materialism)、以及对「进化」(Evolution)和「进步」(Progress)的乐观信念。马克斯可以说是法国理性主义者的忠实信徒。他深信人的理性及劳动的潜能，藉以创造出一个 「新社会」。从某方面而言，马氏的哲学为十九世纪的德国诚然是一项突破，他以 「经济决定论」吞噬了费尔巴哈(Feuerbach)的 「唯物论」而打击了黑格尔(Hegel)的「唯心论」。马氏的哲学不仅是彻底的「人文主义」和近乎「实证科学」的「实践哲学」，而且是打击当时的宗教及教条主义的狂潮。马氏的唯物及无神思想主要是受到费尔巴哈的影响，有人认为梅瑟海斯(Moses Hess)亦是影响马氏的「无神论」的人物之一(注四)。马氏以为，宗教只是人理性的投射，幻想有另一世界之存在，在那里神赐给人在现世所不能得到的幸福。宗教不仅不能裨益于人，而且极之阻碍人的自我发展。马氏深信，他所宣布的 「无阶级的理想国」可以取代基督徒所宣讲的「天国」，这「理想的国度」必然在历史的进化过程中实现，在那里充满正义、「各尽所能、各取所需」(注五)。

马氏的 「天国」不是神赐的，而是人为的；不在「来生」，而在「今世」；不在降生成人的神身上实现，而在人的劳动中成就。马氏亦认为，他的「正义王国」必须「强者得之」，因为「暴力革命」是促成这国度实现的要素之一。马氏的「天国」亦一样宣告「穷者乃真福」，因为最后「无产阶级要专政」。马氏的「理想国」扎根于历史，决定于经济，这王国与人、历史、和自然有着决定性的关系。在这王国里，人的本质在劳动中得到满全，而人劳动的场所就是自然，藉着劳动，人不断地自然化(Naturalization of man)，而自然亦不辍地人化 (Humanization of nature)，历史就是人在劳动中创造了自己及自然的过程，当历史完成，人和自然都达到了满全。

在基督徒的信仰中，神是历史的主人。按照德日进神父的思想，神既内在于宇宙和历史，又超越宇宙和历史，祂在宇宙和历史之内(Within)和之外(Without)，推动着并吸引着宇宙和历史不断地向前和向上提升，所以，神是宇宙和历史的中心、始点和终点。德氏的历史和自然是同时向上向前进化的。马克斯的 「天国」则完全禁锢在历史内，是历史进化过程中必然出现的一个阶段，而马克斯主义者所负起的，正是一个「历史性的使命」，以革命者的姿态，促使这历史决定了早晚必要实现的「无阶级王国」的来临 。马克斯本人不喜欢谈论「超越」(Transcendence)及「形而上」的问题，他的「历史观」(如果笔者没有懂错的话)是没有「纵面」的「横面历史观」。他不由时空及事件的角度来看历史，而由唯物及经济的立场来看历史的发展。他套取了黑格尔的「辩证法」却抽空了它的内容，来解释历史的进化。人以劳动推动历史，而历史则依循正反合的自然规律演化；马克斯思想中的人是一个「劳动人」或「生产力」，而他则喜称自己为「现实的人」。人存在最基本的条件是物质，当人开始以生产去满足人最基本的物质需要时，历史便开始，「因此第一个历史活动，就是生产满足这些需要的资料，即生产物质生活本身，同时，这也是人们为了能够生活就必需每日每时都要进行的一种历史活动，即一切历史的基本条件。」(注六)归纳而言，马氏是以人为历史的中心、始点和终点。历史的每个时期有其特征，而其特征则由 「生产方式」来决定。马氏认为在正反合的辩证规程下，历史不断的由「量变」而致于「质变」，当整个人类的社会皆变成了「无阶级」状态，历史的任务才完成。具体说来，马克斯深信全世界到最后只剩下两种阶级的对立，就是资产主义与无产阶级，而小资产阶级最后必沦为无产阶级。由于无产阶级的成员日益扩展，而资本主义则因资本家的互相竞争和彼此吞灭，最后庞大的资本只落在少数人手上，当人多势众的无产阶级受压迫和自我割离(Alienation)到白热化的阶段时，他们的忿恨便会催促他们揭竿起义，消灭资本主义而成为一「无阶级的国度」。因此，共产和无产都只是(必需的)「手段」，「无阶级」才是目的。

再者，马氏的「天国」亦是「普世性」的。共产主义必须向普世进军，若它只限于某一国家及民族，则不能达到其意义(注七)。他的「理想国」必须落实在一切社会和国家之中，换言之，非等到全世界都变成「无阶级」，则他的王国尚未算实现，所以，由 「正义者同盟」脱胎出来的「共产主义者同盟」，一开始就是国际性的。

马氏的「辩证唯物史观」唯一的优点是历史不再是片段和个别事件，而是一气呵成、前后互相呼应、有一贯性、和有目标的动态过程。历史的每个阶段均有着内在的连系。但是，正反合的规律是否是解释历史演进的最好方式？有学者就认为马克斯把历史过于简化了，而存在主义者沙特也曾批判马氏的由「量」变到「质」变之说不甚科学化。此外，马氏认为，在历史演进的过程中，每个阶段本身就潜在着使自己「质变」的因素。例如资本主义，马氏认为它必定会消灭，除了革命的外力推翻它之外，资本主义本身使潜有使自身「质变」因素。若如此，我们必须追问：马氏所谓由无产阶级专政的「无阶级王国」会不曾潜有使自身质爱的因素？若有的话，他的「理想国」岂非仍然不太理想？也许有人会说，当无产阶级运动完全取得胜利时，私产制已废除，产生的阶级经济条件亦已失去，所以，那时不会再有阶级与阶级的对立和挣扎了。果真如此，就是说马氏的 「无阶级王国」也需要具有某种「永恒性」了？那么，他的王国岂不是也并非很科学化？因为科学无法完全实证永恒！如果可能的话，在此之外，我们也许可以再发一个问题：如果今日西方的资本主义先进国家，开始注意到工作中劳工的「自我割离」(Self-alienation)的问题，设法改善，以减弱这种割离的现象，在此情况下，马氏的「天国」会不会再来临？但话又说回来，今日社会的情况与十九世纪马氏所处的社会环境都有类似的病症 财富不均、贫穷、不义。为此马氏的理想国仍然具有某种程度的吸引力。

二　基督教徒信仰中的「天国」

马克斯的「正义王国」本来启发自犹太基督徒的「天国」，一旦他的「理想国」在科学方法上建立了其理论基础之后；便向基督徒所信仰的「天国」挑战。有人认为，马克斯主义可以纠正宗教，而宗教方可以修正马克斯主义。笔者可以同意这句话，但认为对这句话需要解释，否则，会使人感到相当混淆。我以为任何宗教信仰在流传的过程中，都很容易产生一些不太正常的现象，导致这些现象产生的原因，可以是信仰培育的不足，可以是实践的不够，也可以是其他更复杂的因素。这些现象若用潘霍华(Bonhoeffer)的概念来描写，就是 「宗教」和「信仰」的分离。潘霍华所谓的「宗教」，是指把神放在人生活的「边缘」上，只是求神拜佛、求福免祸；而「信仰」则是以神为生活和行动的「中心」，是一种彻底的「投身」(Commitment)，从而产生真正的「使命感」(Discipleship)。前者很容易将福音的讯息僵化，倾向于宗教的教条主义，把神蓄置在「另一个世界」中；而后者则使人成为真正的「使徒」。事实上，马克斯主义所能够打击的是「边缘」的宗教，真正基督的信仰反而是马克斯主义的「救星」。本来，「宗教信仰」是一件「整合」的事；但在实际生活上，往往两者分离，造成了没有宗教的信仰(无神论者亦有他们的『信仰』)，或者是缺乏信仰的宗教。

现在，笔者且按照下列几点，对基督宗教所信仰的「天国」稍作反省：

(一)天国与「物质」

我们不要误解，以为马克斯的唯物论否定精神之存在。其实，若用一般老百姓的言语来表达，唯物论的问题是在于「物质决定精神」。在「德意志的意识型态」中，马氏肯定「生活决定意识，而非意识决定生活」。这里所谓的生活乃指物质生活而言。马氏说：「精神从一开始就很倒霉，注定要受物质的纠缠」(注八)。若物质解决，精神也解决，如此，物质便取代了神。

基督徒所信仰的「天国」与「物质」也有一定的关系，但它从来不把「物」神化。按照德日进的思想，由于神降生成人，潜入物质之中，成为物质宇宙的一部份，从那时起，物质便含有一种朝向「成全」的动力，而基督徒信仰中的 「天国」就是在这位降生成人，成为物质的一部份，而又光荣复活，带着物质超越飞升的神身上实现和满全。「天国」落实在物质的宇宙之内，却又向物质挑战。德氏认为，在我们做抉择及对物质采取立场之前，物质只是一「斜坡」，人可以踏着它上升，亦可以下降。物质与精神虽属不同的层面，但两者并非对立；相反，在复活的人而天主的耶稣基督徒身上，精神与物质是一体。其实，精神与物质是互相决定、彼此影响的。总言之，成人及复活的耶稣基督是 「天国」的核心，若抽去了此核心，基督徒信仰中的「天国」便会由基础上坍塌。

(二)天国与「全新」

马克斯 「质变」的思想，意味着「全新」的概念。由「质变」而来的「无阶级王国」是一个「全新的社会」，与资本主义社会截然不同，在那里再没有不义、压迫、阶级的对立；在那里「各尽所能，各取所需」。

基督徒信仰中的「天国」亦是「全新的圣城」、「全新的天地」。在那里眼泪要擦干，再没有痛苦、不义……等等；在那里盲者复明、塑者听见、哑者说话、饥者得饱、寒者得衣；在那里也没有阶级、不分自由人、奴隶、犹太人，或希腊人。然而，这「无阶级」非由阶级斗争取得胜利之后而来，而是来自「爱的满全」。

天国是天主的能力进入人间，当神的能力进入宇宙内，宇宙就要换上全新的秩序；当神的能力进入人类的生命之中，人类的生命就有全新的变化 。人类的正义不再是 「以牙还牙」，而是「给他走两千步，将内衣也给他」。原来这就是福音的正义，只有这正义才彻底反转「以恶还恶」的恶性循环，把恶由人类中根除，于是，基督徒可以宣布：天主是爱。这爱是无条件和无保留的，它不仅彻底反转「以暴易暴」的旧秩序，而且是打破「交易」和「代价」的交往的有利武器；也是战胜「恶」的途径。对于「暴力革命」的问题，笔者并无深入的研究，故不便发挥。但是，「为什么我不是基督徒」一书的作者 英国哲人罗素，曾在他另一本着作「政治理想」(Political Ideals)(注九)中说，只有脑子里充满物质思想的人才认为可以用暴力取得一切；他举了些例子说明暴力对精神是无能的。事实上，某些西欧的共产主义者也曾主张温和的「和平过渡」。

(三)天国与「历史」

天国就是天主的能力进入类历史的行动，这天国必然与历史有关。基督徒信仰中的天国，不是只在历史的尽头，也在历史的过程中间；不完全在历史之外，也在历史之内。世界的历史是救恩史实现的舞台，人的获救是在历史的过程中。按照圣经学者的探讨结果，发现圣经中所启示的「天国」的确是有着「已经」和「尚未」两面，一方面这天国已经不断地透过许多历史事件进入了人间，另一方面，它仍期待着圆满的实现。不仅世界的历史是一动态的过程，人类的救恩史也是在过程中。这天国在历史中不断地与历史一同向纵向横发展，直至在基督内达于圆满。

结语

本文只是一初步的尝试，企望拋砖引玉，以达切磋之效，其中可能有些思想尚待深入发挥与修正。无论如何，此仅为一起点。

　

注一：Arthur P. Mendel(ed.), Essential Works of Marxism,1961 New York, 1971 16 p.p.592.

注二：见 共产党宣言 马克斯恩格斯选集 卷一 北京人民出版社 一九七二年 页二五O。

注三：同注一 p.1.

注四：袁廷栋著 马克斯哲学简介与评价 台湾光启出版社 民国六十四年 页十。

注五：见 共产党宣言。

注六：德意志意识型态 马克斯恩格斯选集 卷一 北京人民出版社 一九七二年 页三十二。

注七：同上　页四十一、四十八。

注八：同上　页三十五。

注九：Bertrand Russell , Political Ideals , London 1963.

作者：劳伯埙、伍国宝、林祖明 年份：1980

一 、「天主实义」产生之背景

传说自从圣多默宗徒及一些其他初期教会人仕曾到过中国，但无征不信，祇有唐代，约六世纪时，有碑文载景教来华的事迹。千余年来，教会在中国耕耘，至利玛窦才开始有较明显的教会历史传统。(注一)

利玛窦是耶稣会士，于一五五二年生于义大利，一五八二年抵澳门，与范礼安和罗明坚等人一起到中国传教。于一六一零年五月十一日逝世于北京。利比毕生努力宣传福音，并介绍西洋科学着作等，而「天主实义」一书就是其名着之一。(注二)

一五九三年范礼安认为罗明坚之「天主实录」太简略，希望利玛窦重编一部更完备，更适合中国文化思想的教理着作。在此情况下，利氏便着手编写了「天主实义」。这是利玛窦于一五九五年(万历廿三年)在南京时所着。但由于当时没有长上之许可，加以许多神学名词，尚未找到适当之译名，故只是由朋友出版。虽然当时他祇接触中国文化约十年左右，但已能博引六经四子以与天主教义相照明。此书于一五九七年译成拉丁文，呈请澳门主教及范礼安批准，范礼安令孟三德院长审阅，后因孟院长病逝，审查工作中止，直到利氏抵达北京后，约在一六○一年获卧亚教之批准，并且在冯应京，徐光启等人领洗后，确定了神学名词的翻译，才于一六○三年在北京正式出版。(注三)由于在这段时间内，利氏能再深入与中国仕大夫们接触，对于中国的文化精神更彻底地认识，故能进一步瞭解天主教教义与中国文化的联系。他复于此时将「天主实义」的内容再详细整理，尤其是第七章，特别增补了他在南京和三淮和尚及黄辉学士之问答，作为此章之中心内容。(注四)

此书自开始着手编着，至一六○三年印出，其间共历八、九载之久，而利氏在这期间亦在中国文化上作了决定性的投身。他于一百九四年废「僧」名，留长发，穿儒服，严以儒者身份传教。于一五九五年他更超越广东省韶州而深入内陆，首次远赴南京，其间起居皆多与中国儒家人士一起。于一五九六年，在南昌宣发第四誓愿，更肯定自己传教的使命。于一五九七年，他受任耶稣会传教区会长。翌年，他自南昌启程赴南京及北京，后因不许久居，离京经临清而达江苏，通游中国中原文化中心地带。一五九九年他第三次到南京，并准备进贡礼品，北上北京。至一六○一年才荣入北京。辗转八、九年在官场，儒家、佛家和道家思想中国周旋的利氏，已可在中西文化逐步沟通下澈悟，故当其面对中国人论述教义的时侯更显圆浑，思想尤见精辟。(注五)

这本书是在利氏易「僧」为「儒」之后写成，他以孔孟之道，引用中国人传统的伦理道德，来阐明公教教义。他严厉地驳斥佛家，但讨论儒家思想时，则措辞很委婉，而且引儒家的经典来指出宋儒的不足。最终目的乃为证明公教教义与孔孟思想之相吻合。

二 、本书的结构

「天主实义」这书分上下两卷，九八篇，共四万余字，是以中国明朝之文言文写成，文笔通畅，论辩时更用了西方士林哲学的架构来表达，故清晰且俱有逻辑性。同时利氏更仿用中国古文论语式的问答体裁编写，书中「中士」的身份既是他自己在中国文化中的「矛」，又是他自己以西方思想面对中国文化的「盾」。在中西对答中，阐明了天主教的重要教义。

首篇是论天主始创天地万物而主宰安养一切。此篇一望而知其士林派招式甚多，如「四因说」及推论「天主的存在」等思想，都是希腊哲学巨人亚里士多德和欧洲神哲圣人多玛斯的辉煌构思，所以在据理证明天地万物有一主宰，清晰有力，读之使人豁然开朗。

第二篇是解释世人错认天主。本篇批评中国佛道之「空」、「无」及宋儒「太极」之不足，指明「空」、「无」及「太极」皆不可能为万物之真源，而中国古代所祭祀的「帝」就是「天主」。

第三篇是论人灵之不死不灭与禽兽大异其趣。本篇旨在辨明人兽的分别，说明魂有三级，而人之灵魂乃属于最高级，为别的禽兽所无。利氏复证明人灵属神体，不死不减。在评击佛教的天堂地狱一段中，他又指出天主教比任何宗教更古老，即天主教包括一切宗教。

第四篇是论鬼神与灵魂，并解释天下万物不可能是一体，即天主教不主张泛神论。又万物与天主不可能是一体，因万物是天主所创造，而只可以说天主临现于万物之中，他无所不在。又强调各种事物不宜混乱，不然就是轻视上主，赏罚不分，仁义道德解体、世界混乱。

第五篇是驳斥轮回六道及戒杀生的错误观念，并说明斋素的正意。本篇攻击佛教的斋戒是植根于民间通俗的观念，而轮回一事与所知的「魂有三级」的观念矛盾，此举会混乱人伦，相反天主的旨意 万物是供人享用 废农事畜牧。而斋戒的正确观念是在于人的痛悔，正心寡欲乃修德养性之效。

第六篇是解释意向不可无，并论人死后有天堂地狱的赏罚，报答世人所行的善恶。本篇乃前数篇的指向及归宿。世人行善犯恶必遇到天堂地狱之赏罚。因人有自由意志所以要负责他所选择之行为的一切后果。此篇劝人行善，善果使人终身受用。

第七篇是论人性本善并论天主教徒的正学。本篇首先指出善恶之分别：人性中尽理则善，而尽情则恶。仁爱乃一切德行之冠。德行并非天生，而要不断习修。在人内早已潜藏着对真，善，美的倾向。其后论及修德的方法，指出爱乃一切德行的动力 爱人乃基于爱主。他排除中国学士主张修身乃靠己力，他指出若无天主助佑，一切努力乃徒劳。

第八篇是论教士独身的意义与由来。本篇乃利氏为自己辩说，解释独身不娶的意义，并针对中国传统的「不孝有三，无后为大」的观念予以补充。

  

注一：顾保鹄编著，中国天主教史大事年表，光启出版社发行，中国民国五十九年十二月初版，第一、二页。

注二：张奉箴著：利玛窦的前驱罗明坚，神学论集第七期民国六十年三月，第一二三页 一四一页。　

张奉箴著，利玛窦的又一前驱范礼安，神学论集第八期民国六十年七月版，第一八三 一八九页。香港真理学会及光启出版社发行。

注三：刘顺德译注，利玛窦原着：言文对照「天主实义」之序言，光启出版社，民国五十五年七月第三、四页。

注四：同上。

注五：方豪六十自定稿，下册，利玛窦年谱，方豪发行，民国五十八年六月，第一百五页 一五八六页。 一五六五

三、利氏论天主之存在及主宰万物

在第一章，利氏希望证明天主的存在、造化万物和天主的奥妙无穷。他的论证乃依据中世纪士林哲学。一开始他便指出人与禽兽的分别在于人能推理，故人人都以理为标准。跟看便以士林哲学来证明万物必有一位造物主，称为天主，祂乃至高无限及至善而超越万物的，人不能完全瞭解祂。(注六)

本篇所针对的问题，主要是佛教空无之说及宋儒太极之论。「空」和「太极」曾被认为是万物的根源。所以利氏在这篇里证明了天主是造物主，且在第二篇驳斥「空」和「太极」不能成为万物之源。

中国传统思想以人为本，历代思想家都注重个人修养，并以「治国、平天下」为己任，故思想的主流比较少注童纯「形而上」的推理，而多以治国救世为出发点。孔子乃以「四时行焉，百物生焉」来讨论天道。他只是从人可以体验得到的现象中去探讨，而不在「形而上」的境界中来研究。不仅先秦思想如此，两汉之后也是如此。西汉立国后，权力集中于皇帝一人身上，形成「家天下」的局面，为了维持「天下为公」的理想，才形成了儒道两家思想的大综合，「太极」、「四时」、「五行」的思想才揉合于儒家的思想(注七)。所以利玛窦引用士林哲学形而上的思想，看来与中国人注重「人」的心态，不太配合。

况且，从另一角度看。孔子所说的「未知生，焉知死」，并没有排斥神存在的可能。老子在「道德经」中也谈到万物靠「道」而生存。「道」是无形无声，无所不包，深不可测。虽然如此，人能在天地间各种事物中见到「道」的存在(注八)。老子的思想含有「形而上」的色彩，只是后来的道家将他的思想「物质化」，加入阴阳五行的观念。至于庄子也强调修养的最高境界是人与万物合一。其实，中国的传统思想并不完全否定「神」的存在，再者，传统中也有天子祭天、民间敬祖的习仰(注九)，所以有关天主存在的问题(不一定限于士林哲学的论证)，在适当的时机下向中国人阐述，也会为他们所接受。

虽然以今日人的立坊批判过去未免不公允，但读到利氏的思想对今日的天主教神学的意义时，不能不说几句，今日神学不再是纯以护教为目的，而且也脱离了士林哲学的架构。这一方面反映了现代人的思想动向，不喜欢过于追问事物的本体是什么，而愿意间事物为我有什么意义。神学主要的任务是将启示用当代人的思想和语言表达出来，使生活和信仰融为一体。利氏所用的护教辩驳方法，为信仰虽然提供「合理」的基础和意义，但不容易为今天的人所接受。当然，他的方法只是反映他所处的时代的神学动向。

今日神学又注重与其他宗教交谈，互相攻击的时代已过去。「天主实义」对佛教的攻击，引起很多佛教徒的反感及和尚的仇视。利玛窦看来也体会到这情形，故此他写了「二十五言」，只按基督宗教的立场来谈论道德的优美，不再和其他宗教辩论；这书大受欢迎，而他后来也认为「天主实义」也应这样写(注十)。

「天主实义」既是一本介绍天主教义的书籍，故应把此书放在利氏整个传教方法中来批判。他放弃急功近利的方法，不在街头市道直接宣讲，反而一方面介绍西方的科学，另一方面努力研究中国语言及文化，指出公教教义不仅可与孔孟之道融合贯通，甚至还可以使其发扬光大。他先消除中国人对外来思想的猜疑，然后才劝中国人入教。因此利氏崇儒，也不是为讨好士大夫。利氏在促进中西文化交流的贡献上有目共睹，而他的传教方法也是今日教会所接纳的。(注十一)

在「天主实义」一书中，他引用经籍来证明教理，对土大夫的影响很大(注十二)。但影响力还是与作者的为人有很大关系，他待人有礼，德行出众，学识渊博，故为土大夫所敬重。在利氏生时，接受洗礼进教的士大夫，大部份是受传教士的言行所影响(注十三)。或者这就是今日所谓的生活见证。但最好的见证行为若不加以言语的解释，仍会不见其效，故此宣讲(包括文字)仍是必需的。

  

注六：利氏的论述是士林学派所常用的，放在此不用重述。

注七：参阅徐复观著，两汉思想史第二卷，香港中文大学，一九七五年，特别是页一三三至一三七，一七七至一七九页。

注八：见老子，第二十五、四、十四，五十一章。

注九：当然传统中不以祭祀为宗教祭典，而为国家社会的祭典。见罗光著：中国传统对神的敬礼(续)神学论集十八集，页七十六，民国六十三年元月。

注十：在给朋友的信中曾提到这点，见罗光著，利玛窦传光启出版社发行，一九六O年十月台版页一七八。

注十一：保禄六世著，保禄六世通谕在新世界中传福音，刘鸿荫译，闻道出版社印行，民国六十五年三月初版，第二十节。

注十二：方豪著，十七、十八世纪来华西人对我国经籍之研究，方豪六十自定稿下册，方豪发行，一九六九年，其一八六至一八八。

注十三：参看李之藻的教化，见罗光著，利玛窦传，页一五一至一五六。(同上) 归

四 、利氏论灵魂之不灭及天堂与地狱

关于这个论证主要见于「天主实义」的第三篇和第六篇。

利氏认为过份迷恋世物乃造成人与人之间竞争及互相残杀之主因。他深信现世只是人暂时的居所，因此人应期望死后灵魂的升天堂。人必须积德于世，死后才有赏报。

利氏更指出人的灵魂与肉身有两种不同的性质。灵肉的组合有善恶两种相反的倾向，故有爱好与厌恶的心理。人的灵魂有通晓事物的本性，实属神体，乃无形无像，不可消灭。

从人的意志及心理上来看，人都愿意流芳百世，常生不死，加上现世的事物皆不能完全应验赏罚和满足人心，因此，假若人的灵魂随着肉身而灭亡，岂不是枉费了他们一番的善意吗？由此推证，人的灵魂，不拘善恶，皆不随肉身而死亡。

谈到灵魂的归宿及善恶赏罚的问题，利氏指出来世有天堂地狱的赏罚，是为报答世人用自由意志所行的善恶。人的功过善恶来自人的自由意志，行事在外，理心在内，视乎以理心作主或以兽心作主行事。

事实上，看重来世福乐的人，必定轻视现世的利益。而行善也有三种动机：下等的只为升天堂，免下地狱；中等的为报答天主的恩德深重；上等约为顺从天主的圣意，为爱天主，而不是基于利害关系。

利氏更指出中国古籍中有天堂的说法，如「天既遐终大邦殷之命，兹殷多先哲王在天。」的「天」是指「天堂」。

利氏的「天堂地狱」之说，可说是「天主实义」中获教立场的颠峰。因为他指出天堂地狱实为不死不减的灵魂的归宿；更强烈地指出佛教的天堂地狱之说借用了天主教天堂地狱的教义。

至于天堂地狱的详细情形，因为天主没有启示于世人，利氏只以「知之为知，不知为不知」的态度，坦直地说：「难言言也。天主经中特举其概。不详传之。」

利氏指出人为善为恶是出于意志以评老、庄的「勿为勿忘勿辩」的学说。其实，利氏还未深入了解老、庄「无为」、「消遥」及「与万物为一体」的思想。他断章取义的解释，不由整体观之态度，证实利氏对老、庄逍遥酒脱的思想未能融淮贯通。

当被问及「不善不恶的人，先善后恶的人和先恶后善的人死后如何」的问题时，利氏很主观地说出：「不是善、就是恶」；以临死一刻的善恶来决定升天堂或下地狱。于此，他更阐述炼狱是为那些痛悔不深、做补赎不够的人赔补前罪的处所。利氏局限了天主能力，标榜出一个赏罚分明的天主，而忽略了天主慈爱的一面。

五 、利氏的伦理思想

利氏采用士林神哲学来解释善恶的分别：「恶乃善之缺」，他以「子女偷窃为供养父母」为例，说明偷窃本身的恶行会破坏为了供养父母的善意。而且人类要对自己行为的善恶后果负责：善人升天堂，恶人落地狱。人类的意志是判断行为善恶的准则，基于此，他驳斥中士的「君子行善没有任何用意」的学说，并反对老、庄的「无」。

他举中国历史上的圣贤行实为例，说明人类的行为均有意向，圣贤以奖赏来劝人行善，以刑罚来劝人避恶。古人行善是为了保存身体、财物、和名声，行善乃基于利害关系，以「功利」为行善的最高目标。后来利氏谈论来世事情多少有针对「功利」的趋向。

虽然他有说明行善的三种正确意向：为升天堂免下地狱，为报答天主深恩，为符合天主的旨意。他亦以第三者为最上等的意向，而第一者为下等意向。人行善应该基于爱德而不是为了避免刑罚。利氏指出中国历代圣贤行善都是基于一个「利」字 身体、财物、和名声之「利」。由此他用西方圣人方济各为例，说明行善不是对刑罚的恐惧，而是为承行天主旨意为最终目标。最后他利用宗教补充中国传统行为意向之不足，把它提升至宗教的层面上。

下半篇利氏用理论证明天堂地狱的存在；人类无穷的欲望唯有全福才能使之满足；人类有追求真善美的倾向；以及天主对善人恶人的赏罚大公无私等。他又解释了善恶报应的问题，特别是善人贫贱、恶人富贵的不公允现象。

他排斥一些反对天堂地狱存在的儒者；他应用诗经上说「在上」，「在天」、「在帝左右」为例说明古人所指的「天」乃「天堂」。

他又以推理的方式说明善人的归宿是天堂，而恶人的终极是地狱。古代的大圣贤如文王、周公等必定在天堂，而那大奸大恶者一定在地狱。他最后指出不信「天堂」者非君子。天堂与地狱的快乐与痛苦是无尽的，分别为善人与恶人而设。

早期，利氏在中国受范礼安神父的影响极深，对中国文化的学习与瞭解不遗余力，加上天资聪敏，所以能与当时的士大夫接触。虽然他有过人之处，但始终带着浓厚的西洋思想，及士林神哲学的思想方法。由于东西方的文化思想和社会教育等不同，虽然利玛窦努力研习东方的生活言行，但其人始终末能渗透东方的思想而产生彻底的共鸣。

利氏在「天主实义」一书中就揉合了多玛斯的思想方式：以中士与西士的对话为文章的骨干。本书的格调又颇与中国「论语」之表达方式相仿(孔子与弟子们的对话)，利氏极可能参考了它而决定文章的格式。

在本书中他很有系统地把问题连结，又把每篇的中心思想，很清楚的逐步探索；所以有记载说：「文定公除光启当其寻求人生真理之初，问道于罗司铎如望，司铎授之以『天主实义』一书，公持归邸舍，彻夜不寐……曰：『我平生善疑，至此无可疑；平生好辩，至此无可辩，即立志受洗』。

利氏在第六篇「行善避恶」的解释中，用了「子女偷窃为供养父母」为例，说明一个真理：「善与恶誓不两立，永不共存，恶就是善之缺。在此更用了士林神哲学对善恶分析之方法。然而在他所举之日常生活事例中(为了善的目的而行恶)，大概很不容易被中国人所接受。中国的哲学思想多植根于伦理生活，与西方的推理思考方法不同，所以西方哲学的某些原则当遇到实际生活的例子时就会产生不协调。在中国传统文化中，「孝」乃占极重要的地位，有不少民间流传的故事，皆歌颂那些为了父母、子女、朋友之故而犯法的英雄人物。这些犯了法的所谓「豪侠」往往被视为劫富济贫、锄强扶弱的「善」人。为了「孝义」，善恶之分反而次要，「孝经」以「孝」为诸德之根，「天地之性人为贵，人之行莫大于孝」。利氏在阐述善恶的问题时，借用了此事例，文在牵连到「孝」的问题，而他在「天主实义」中，对此问题没有进一步交代。

当利氏讨论到古圣贤劝人行善完全是为了利益时(行善结果是快乐、行恶结果是刑罚)，首引起了一个「意向」的问题。他批评古圣贤行善的出发点是为了自己的身体、财物、与名声，全是「利己」主义。其实不然，以孔子为例：他抱「有教无类」的态度，不问学生家境，而因着学生的天赋、倾向与目标而「因才施教」，授予不同知识。又例如学生问仁时，孔子就有不同的答覆：樊迟问「仁」，子曰：「爱人」。颜渊问「仁」：子日：「克己复礼……」。子张问「仁」，子曰：「能行五者于天下为「仁」矣」。(注十四)由此可见，圣贤教育之目标，不是为个人声望利益，而是为了学生的发展。孔子之所以删正「六经」，提倡「六经」普遍化，是因为看到制度之崩毁，「天下无道」，「名义不正」 天子不知为天子，诸侯不知为诸侯，大夫不知为大夫，庶人不知为庶人，以至国家社会动乱；所以，他倡导「君君、臣臣、父父、子子」之论而救当世之弊。(注十五)

此外，利氏批评圣贤的行为乃功利性的似乎不太了解古人。子曰：「子绝四：母意、母心、母必、母固」。(子罕论语)他着重人有自由的性情，人是活而可变的。曰：「我则异于是，无可无不可。」又日：「君子喻于义，小人喻于利」。而圣贤所唯一执着的乃「义」的行善的目的不是为了别的，而是「义」之所当为，而「利」只是小人所追求者。

利氏在此，对中国传统圣贤的思想未免太快下结论，利氏或许想以天主正教来补充先儒的不足，但由于对儒家思想未有充份的瞭解，所以在某些地方还不十分完善。

当利氏一方面批评圣贤行善是基于「利己的思想」，另一方面，自己在「天主实义」中论「行善避恶」与「天堂地狱」时，反而采用「功利」的思想。虽然他阐明行善的三种正确意向，以承行主旨为最崇高，但在利氏的表达及所用的例证中，就太强调善人得永福的天堂而恶人得永罚的地狱之说。他曾用了半篇来阐明天堂地狱的存在以及谁会升天堂和谁会进地狱的问题。使读者感到他所着重的是赏罚问题 行善为免下地狱，而把「利益」 「得天堂」成为行善的目标。其实升天堂的赏报并非目标而应是结果 善行所带出来的必然后果。它不是唯一的目的，唯一的目的是承行主旨 最高的正确意向。利氏也忽略了善行的内在价值，在很多的事情上，行善并没有带给人显着的利益，但人经常仍作没有利益的善行，因善行本身有价值，是人类内在的共通意向，孟子曰：「人皆有不忍人之心，先王有不忍人之心，斯有不忍人之政矣」。「人皆有不忍人之心」；「人之所以异于禽兽者几希，庶民去之，君子存之」。可见先贤主张行善是因为此乃人之所以为也。

由此可见中国儒家的行善不是基于「功利」的理由，而是因其为人之所以为人，发挥人的善性 人之初性本善。

虽然利氏的努力仍然很有限，但不失为神学本地化的先驱，他努力把天主教义翻译，用适合中国人吸收和领略的方式来表达，本书在多处地方仍挟杂着西方思想，未能达至神学本地化的要求，但他此举实是一大突破，尝试把宗教开入另一个文化，发掘在别的文化内的俱理。

利氏打开天主教在中国的门户，又扩展宗教的视野，他的成就不可抹煞，实为今日传教的傍样。

  

注十四：冯友兰著：中国哲学史，太平洋图书公司，一九六八年五月再版一O一 一O二页。

注十五：梁正延注释，广解语译四书今诂，香港上海书馆印行，一九七三年一月出版，颜渊篇(十一)一八四页。

六 、利氏论 「仁」

在本书中利氏论仁之思想主要集中于第七篇。他讨论人性本善并论天主教徒的正学中所提到的「爱的诫命」就是「仁」。在这章中，他先论我国孟子以后多数儒家所争论甚为激烈的人性善恶问题；再说到恶是「缺点」而非独有存在的形上实体，然后又介绍天主教内修的纲要：「德行」是习惯行的善，不是天赋的善。德行中以仁爱为最贵重。而德行则贵在实践。人要改恶迁善，必须每天反省。爱是基于认识，愿多一些爱天主，就该更多一点认识天主。爱德的深处，不是爱人为我有利，而是被爱者本身的价值。他分七段来阐述仁是诸德中的最重要纲领。

一、爱天主在万有之上，爱人如己，为一切德行之总纲。这里指出，仁之尊贵在于承行天主之德，他先说我们已有「成人之恩」，此人性在乎爱，在乎人心自由意志的抉择，而抉择则在乎明达天主事理，即在于「格物」。

二、瞭解万物在于信。与人往来必须信任他人有实据的话，人与人不能见心，交往在乎信，人与神交往既不能见心，更不能见体面，要更大的信德。至于家国，天下的关系都在于信古人之心得与教训。

三、他把仁爱分成两种：第一种是「已爱」，血气之爱，是未有格物的爱，纯是感情盲目的爱，使人爱财、爱色、爱名、爱利……等，利氏以十一种情爱带来的痛苦及不自由的生活作例子。第二种是「祂爱」，以「神」的意愿为自己的情感和行动的原因。

四、真诚的爱人是爱天主的效果。这爱是活的，不是虚伪的，真心的爱天主，就是可以随便(自由的)做一切的事也不会得罪于人或神。

五、仁的解释在乎被爱者的本身美好，而不是被爱者的美好为己有利。是对物本身的接纳。

六、由于第五点的立论，亦可引伸以下的结论：恶人虽恶，但亦有其可爱的地方。利氏的仁本原则是：世物都是天主造的，天主爱世物，恶人是世物之一。他虽恶，有缺点，但天主仍准他存在，因此天主仍爱他，故我们爱天主，亦要爱恶人。

七、指明这仁爱是不断习修的生活，因为人有灵体之内外分别，故该用外内方法修德，外者以礼仪来事奉天主，久习可启发人内心的德行。内者以祈祷来事奉天主，表示钦崇，感谢，依靠，爱慕，并求天主赦罪，加恩之外，也扫除人心中的恶念，进而同天主结合。

在利玛窦论仁思想的论据中，可以肯定的是利氏紧握着教会大宗师多玛斯的成德之路，就是：要认识以能去爱，并以希腊哲学的三段论证法来表达。由于利氏以信仰天主为大前题，而以信人信万物为小前题，故其结论是爱、信、智就是仁。所以真正的仁，首先是爱 能成为人而感谢并爱护自己在万物之中的地位；其次是要信靠，信靠天主爱「我」，天主所以创造万物亦是以助「我」的成长和发展。同时由于我不能完满自身的活动，必须与外物接触，从而瞭解自己。但人对这外界之投身，必有信靠始可行动。在行动中认识事实，认识天主就是藉万物表达祂对「我」的爱。在个人积聚的经验中，更结连古人，朋友的教训及指示，使成为善的抉择的启发 智。当然，在这里利氏表达仁的思想是汇集了中国儒家的礼、义、仁、智、信，的道统思想。这实使我们中国传统的论仁得以跨越一大步，进入宗教层面，在生活中具体化。使中国仁的文化不再以人作中心，而以天主作中心。简言之，他以为爱一个人，就是爱他所爱的。天主爱我，我又爱天主，所以我爱天主所爱的我就是成全的自爱。天主爱人类和万物，我爱天主，所以我爱天主所爱的人类万物，这就是「祂爱」和「他爱」交流成长的具体表现，这自爱和他爱的合称谓之「仁」。

这思想架构的好处，是绝不笼统，点数分明，使中国儒家子弟们一读就可明白，因为其字句和辞义都是中国道统的思想，论证的次序则取用西体，故颇有爽朗、清晰、精辟之感觉，可以说得上是一「中学」与「西学」交流的作品。然而由于利氏的宗教

思想是他作品的骨架与写作的动机，所以使仁、智、信的思想范畴从人的本体中跳越到神的本体中，使「仁」的意义由存在性的体悟而跃至形而上的超越境界中，(from existential understanding of love transcend to ontological understanding of love)。这实在是给予中国文化再向上提升的作用，所以本书虽然不完美，但可算是当时十六世纪的佳作。

虽然利氏论仁的神学思想有上述优点，但同时也有不少极限，需知由于利玛窦的西方神哲学思想的底子是当时中国人所难捉摸瞭解的，而那超越的创造者天主更是他刻意灌输的大前题，故当他表达其「仁」的论证时，每每有很多天主教信仰上的教义思想。例如其所提出之成人之恩的天主，位格神的思想 以祂的意愿作为人(仁)的情感和行动的原因，及像天主一般的爱人……等等，都是推销教会神修的产品，而忘记了中国人，即使是那些学养很深的儒家，根本就没有以色列选民或欧洲十五六世纪以降人民所有的宗教氛围作背景，所以他的言论多少使人感到渺茫，唯可取者，「天主实义」实为福音在中国之先导。

利氏在其书之最末虽提出天主降生成人是教士守独身的来历，但对天主圣三的奥迹，却保持缄默。虽然传布福音是他第一个原则，但在写作中，一煞也没有传讲的味道，他祇用各哲学与典籍来谈信德。他又以辩护天主真教作一贯的第二原则，这是他始终保持的极限。从利氏身上反映了当时教会传统以来的护教精神，这精神曾下意识地阻限了传布福音的活泼力量。但话又说回来，利氏护教是当时可体谅的，因为利氏一方面要「合儒反道」；另一方面又要「超儒」而传扬真道。其实当时利氏所面对的环境比十六世纪教会在欧洲所面对的新教更困难，因为更难有明确的立场，加上教会当局对中国文化的不了解，利氏在中土传教恰似大海捞针，只是「捞」而已，捞出路线已差不多了。

此外，在「天主实义」一书中，他亦有训导人如何实行仁信。利氏写「实义」的目的是针对知识份子，特别是官宦人士，这与中国向来「学而优则士」的思想有关，利氏欲取捷径，由上而下传扬福音，因为当时的社会情况是「仕」影响社会的力量最大，所以能从其个人所面对的困难来看，利氏讨论之「实义」非明朝之「清谈」派可比。

七 、总结

仁的观念，在中国思想史土是最重要的，也是最伟大的。它在历史上出现和被讨论的次数无可估计。尽管如此，仁只是在孔孟的儒家思想中方很明确地被重视，并由其弟子发扬光大。仁的涵义，非常丰富，大抵可以分三类：伦理的、政治的、和宇宙论的(注十六)，而利氏的「论仁」思想，篇幅祇两三页，不过千多字，已将其中心思想大体上抽出，并汇通西方宗教思想作一提升，使中国「仁」的思想更完美。利氏的「实义」实际上是移植了西方的宗教思想于中国传统文化中。无论怎样，利玛窦远道重洋，尽量适合当地文化，甚至投身为「仕」，全为了福音能在中国扎根。他更不怕多重障碍，几经艰难接近明朝皇帝，以达成其由上而下的传布福音的方法。从其写「天主实义」一书中，又可见到他投身于传福音的热诚。

利氏晚年的生活事迹更为感人，他侍奉病友李之藻之牺牲精神，实是我们传福音者的最好榜样，仁的理论超卓地显现于其行动中，这实在是「天主实义」一书中所难得见到的活见证(注十七)。



注十六：韦政通编发：中国哲学辞典，大林出版社，中华民国六十七年八月二十日版，论「仁」一三○至一三八页。

注十七：同注十，页二二三。

John P. Ga1vin著 劳伯埙译 年份：1980



现代系统神学论耶稣复活 (注一)



一、卡．拉纳 (K. Rahner)

虽然并不是全体的神学家都接受卡、拉纳的见解，但他对「复活的性质」的反省，在神学中有其独特的影响力，因此我们首先介绍他的思想。

既然卡、拉纳了解基督学为 「自我超越」的「人类学」(self-transcending anthropology)，而人类学即为「不完整的基督学」(deficient christology)。所以他的「复活神学」与他整个的「神学人类学」(theological anthropology)是不可分割的。他整个基督学的出发点是人的自由：天主在恩宠中的自我赠予时常触及人具体的存在，人不仅可以在许多的可能性中作自由抉择，而且他可以自由地投身上主而完成自我。这「自由」具有趋向永恒的特质，一旦抉择，便永不能挽回。在人有限的生命历程中，「死亡」是自由抉择的高峰。从这方面看，「死亡」不必是「人体内生命机能」的停顿，而是包括了积极和消极的因素：一方面「死亡」似乎是不可避免和强加于人身上的；另一方面，「死亡」也是人最后的和决定性的一次在天主前运用他的自由。于是，「死亡」成了一个多面性的事实，它的每一层面都与时间有着不同的关系。

拉纳认为，人有一个「超越的希望」(transcendental hope)，就是希望在他的生命历程中所成就的一切，能够永久存在，因此他以为这「超越的希望」不仅内在于人的自由抉择之中，而且与人的自由共存亡和共延展。人若否定这事实，就会「自我矛盾」，因为这事实并不会因着人的否定而消失。使到我们能够从人类学的层面上去了解「复活」的意义的，就是这「超越的希望」，这希望并不是渴望现世生命的延长。而是渴望跃过死亡而进入永恒。既然这个希望是指向整个人，意谓人不但渴望灵魂不死不灭，而且希望肉身的不朽。可是人了解这希望的内容，尤其是对于肉身复活的了解，更为有限；对于解释「复活」这件事所必需应用的各种「意像」(image)，必需予以极大的保留，否则这些「意像」的缺陷就会妨得我们对「复活」真理本身的了解。

耶稣的复活不仅确立这「希望」，而且使它在一具体的人(耶稣)身上完满实现。由于耶稣是唯一无二的，所以祂的复活也含有唯一无二的特征；但另一方面祂的复活也包含了整个人类复活时所有的特点。死亡本身就是人最后一次决定性的自我形成，所以耶稣的复活是祂在世上生存的成果，而不是死后另一段不同性质的时期。复活绝对不是一个外加于祂身上的记号，证明天主赞成祂所做的事，复活证明祂整个命运在上主前是永久有效的。而祂那已完成的及正在完成的死亡的目的表示出：基督的复活不是祂受苦和死亡后的另一件事，而是基督在苦难时所呈现出来的事。就是一个有血肉的人，主动地和被动地将自己完全交付于仁爱的上主，并自由地投身于祂。

拉纳强调，虽然复活并不是单纯发生在信仰当中的事，但我们不要以为它和信仰毫无关系，在某种程度下，我们一定不曾清楚认识到复活后耶稣存在的型态。虽然在他的早期着作中，我们清楚见到他假定了空坟墓的事实，但我们很难说拉纳神父的「复活神学」，必需要求空坟墓的事实。

在他的早期着作里，拉纳曾指出：复活后的显现，门徒事实上并非直接看见了复活主的存在型态，但最近他却对与「复活的启示」有关的各种问题，十分注意。他的研究有一个特点，就是强调人对复活的「希望」只是便人可能认识耶稣复活的条件之一，而非一证实耶稣复活的证据，一如实证主义所了解的。再者，空坟墓并不是证明耶稣复活的充足证据，因为对于空坟墓可以有许多不同的解释。在拉纳神父的许多着作当中，他曾认为，门徒对「复活」的经验是独特的，从他们的作证中，信徒不但得知当时所发生的事，而且还可以知道他们对复活主的经验的可能性和这经验的性质。在一些更近期的着作中，他曾尝试称空坟墓的发现和耶稣显现的报导是宗徒门基本经验的表白，这基本经验就是体验到耶稣生活在天主的光荣中。拉纳神父以为一切信徒皆可得到这种经验，而他们之所以认识到「历史中的耶稣」完全是靠首批宗徒的见证与宣讲，并由此而相信人类所追求的复活，已经在耶稣身上完满实现了。这反映出拉纳越来越重视人的「希望」的超越性，但他同时宣称人不断需要一些「事件」，把启示带给人。

在他早期有关基督学的论文中，拉纳强调的是「基督的降生」，但在他后期所谓「救恩史的基督学」作品中，则很强调复活的角色。在许多近期作品中，「复活」是「基本基督学」上的两个参据点之一，而另一点就是「历史中的耶稣自我了解为末世性的救主」。虽然复活并非用来证实耶稣(是末世性的救主)的这种自我认识的证据，但是由于通过复活，那蕴含在耶稣的行动当中的这种「自我了解」(为救主)，为我们才会变为清楚及可靠，所以复活可以说是我们信仰的根基。拉纳神父曾经为基督学提供了许多不同的「历史参据点」，他首先关心的是从历史的层面上去证实耶稣本人及某些与祂的生命有关的事实。当然，能够知道多少又是另一个问题。由于拉纳知道，要获得所有关于耶稣的史实是十分困难的事，而且他有这种思想上的趋向，就是认为耶稣的「自我了解」(为末世性的救主)基本上是「信仰的对象」，而不是「信仰的基础」。所以他在一篇论文中提议，神学家应考虑，当我们对耶稣这种「自我认识」所知有限时，复活有没有可能成为基督学上充足的「历史基础」。然而，他知道很多神学家不会把复活视作一可以被证实的历史事件，并且意识到，当代人即使接受复活是「信仰的内容」，也不易接受复活是「信仰的根基」，所以垃纳有时候几乎完全诉诸「历史中耶稣的生命与死亡」；亦由此在他的全部着作中，复活似乎有多种不同的功能。不论怎样，一旦复活附属于耶稣的死亡，则它便不会是基督学的中心，而基督学本身也不会是神学的中心了。

二、简士培 (Walter Kasper)

虽然简士培对复活的观点与拉纳的并不完全相同，但在简氏的着作中很易找到拉纳的思想的痕迹。简氏说复活是「天主末世性的行动」，是耶稣进入了「天主的范畴」的事件 。为了避免「幻象论」，一定要提出在复活当中有关「肉身复活」的问题。在圣经里「肉身复活」就是整个人的复活，并且也是人继续接触世界的方式(纵然这方式是完全新异和超性的。)然而，对这样一个「神化的身体」怎样接触世界，我们却几乎不能作出任何具体的陈述。

简士培有时将复活和十字架紧密相连，例如他说：宣认复活信仰的内容，就是肯定新纪元在耶稣死亡时开始出现。他引述拉纳的观点说：「复活就是十字架上的死亡已完成的及正在完成的目的。因此，它不是耶稣的生命和苦难之后的另一件事，而是发生在耶稣死亡中的，换言之，就是一个有血肉的人主动地和被动地将自己交托于上主，而天主又慈爱地接受了这交付。故此复活可说是十字架更深一层的超性层面」。尽管在解释拉纳的陈述时，简氏修正了拉纳的某些思想，但以上所述的一段，使人见到他们的观点十分相似。然而在其着作的他处，简氏指出复活是「天主新颖的行动」，而这行动是人不可推论出来的。他反对(基督学)只是注重「历史中的耶稣」，因为复活有它本身「额外的内容」，那就是被钉死的耶稣在天国内的新生命。故此，简氏的立场有含糊之处，同一的辞句可以有不同的解释：一方面他在基督学上的论据毫无疑问是依靠复活所带来的新启示，但另一方面，他某些对「复活性质」的描述与他基督学的论据并不吻合。

在「复活的启示」这个课题上，简士培主张：既然我们不能从耶稣的「生平」推论出「复活」，所以需要引用一件「新」的事来解释在耶稣死后产生复活信仰的源由。虽然简氏认为发现「空坟墓」在历史上是可能的，但他的主要参据点是复活后的「显现」，而「显现」就是基督或天主主动地再次与人接触的行动。然而，简氏对显现事件的看法与传统的不同，他认为「显现」不必是「奇迹」，而是「信仰的经验」，就是说体验到耶稣的神仍在活动，而耶稣仍生活在祂的神之内。

简士培把复活作为他基督学的焦点，并且常批判其他学者不把复活作为他们基督学的中心。他强调在基督学里基督复活在圣神内的重要性，并且尝试发展他所谓的「在圣神内的基督学」(pneumatically orientated christology)，使学者除「由上而下」的基督学和「自下而上」的基督学外可以有多一种选择。他认为，「由上而下」的基督学并没有充份考虑到当代的环境；而「自下而上」的基督学亦是有缺陷的，因为历史中的耶稣具有来自天主的「自我了解」。此外，由于简士培赞同「复活」为纯粹「由上而下」的基督学，因此他认为「历史中的耶稣」不是产生信仰的充足基础，在祂的生命完结时，祂生命的意义仍悬而未决，而且，从表面看来，十字架窜改了祂的讯息。「历史中的耶稣」也不是基督徒信仰的全部内容，因为除了「历史中的耶稣」带来启示外，复活事件和在圣神的使命里都以一更超越的方式带来启示。故此，「复活」是信仰根基的一部份，因为它除了证明「历史中的耶稣」的「合法性」以外，并给它提供了新的内容，同时简氏认为：为了防止削弱基督学的内容，这新的内容是必需的。基督学的内容和最基本的准则应当是：「历史中的耶稣」和「被提升及复活了的基督」。这二者的身份当有区别，而这区别乃来自「复活」。

三、龚汉斯 (Hans Kung)

对基督学的研究是龚氏的名着 「论基督徒」(On Being A Christian)一书的核心部份。这本书的目的是将基督宗教与世界上其他宗教以及各种「非神的人文主义」(non-theistic humanism)互相比较，从而指出基督宗教的特点。它的出发点是护教，并以类似讲道的文体写成，对象是非信徒和一切信仰受到考验的信徒，故此本书虽讨论基督学的根本问题，但却非系统化的神学着作。他强调他的基督学是「自下而上」的，并认为自黑格尔和史特劳士之后，这是基督学唯一合理的路向。他坚决反对他在都平根的同侪简士培，而认为可以把复活并入「自下而上」的基督学里，因为讨论复活的信仰并不是纯粹基于「由上而下」的基督学，而不必找寻另一个方法以表达之。

龚氏反对布特曼的学说，他认为耶稣的复活不仅表明了他死亡的意义，也不仅是发生在门徒身上的事，而是一真实的事件；这事件是天主干预的行为，发生在一切似乎都失败的时刻。然而，它不属于历史，因为它超越了历史的范畴，因此它不能仅从历史去证实。复活不是(死者)再重入时空中，再渡今世的生活，而是进入了「最后的实有境界」里，即是「死在天主内」。虽然「复活」与「死亡」客观上看来是有分别的，因为「复活」很清楚是与「死亡」和「埋葬」不一样，但「复活」与「死亡」并不一定发生在不同的时辰，因为复活来自死亡，在死亡中，且与死亡同一发生。复活必定包括「肉身」，意指复活起来的是同一个人。但这人的肉身在生理机能上并不一定与从前的身体相同；故此肉身复活并不一定暗含着空坟墓的事实。

纵然龚氏认为「空坟墓」的传统是传奇性的描述，但他对复活信仰的起源的评价在某方面与简士培相似。「复活的启示」主要是发生在耶稣死后门徒对他完全新颖的经验里；毫无疑问，这经验就是新约有关「显现」的内容。可是，显现事件不是超性的干预，它只是门徒对那被钉死而活着的主的体验。龚氏认为不可用心理学来解释显现的事件，而应将它们比拟为旧约先知的被召，或者是在信德中所领受的召叫。「复活的信仰」在历史中的起源不是龚氏的主要问题，因为他以为，有关空坟墓和显现的历史性的问题与复活讯息的意义的问题相较之下，前者就变得不重要了。

龚氏认为复活主要的任务是证明「历史中的耶稣」是合法的。在他的思想里，耶稣本人和他的事业颇紧密相连，二者看来都在他死亡时耻辱地完结了，因为祂死亡的样子，看来就是人和天主都公然地放弃了祂，祂的生命在彻底的失败和充满羞辱的情形下结束。祂的公开生活在群众中引起了不少「期望」，但这些「期望」是否合理，他的公开生活对此并无答案，而他死在十字架上并没有彰显天主克胜了死亡。但也正是在他死亡的时候，引用耶稣名字的活动才真正开始，因为在那时人才真正地信祂。纵然复活是天主用来证明耶稣本人和他的事业是「合法」的，而且没有这证明基督徒信仰便不会有一个充足的基础，但龚氏仍坚持复活本身是信仰的对象，而不是验明信仰的奇迹。无论如何，我们不能单方面研究复活，或让复活减损十字架的中心地位，因十字架乃与耶稣的公开生活相连。因此，龚氏声称基督学的基本准则是「圣经中的耶稣基督」 「在世上、在十字架上、在他的复活、和在团体的宣讲中的耶稣基督本人」。复活虽然不可或缺，但与简士培的观点比较，在龚氏的思想里复活更是从属于耶稣的公开生活和祂的死亡。

四、司褐雷碧 (Edward Schillebeeckx)

在他对耶稣的生平探讨之后，他对「复活性质」的了解与拉纳的完全不一样。他强调复活不仅揭示了耶稣死亡事件所包含的启示，而且更战胜了死亡消极的一面。这个新异的事件赋予耶稣死亡新的意义。他断然反对纯粹将复活看成是教会复活信仰的渊源(虽然他指出二者是不能被分开的)，亦由此，他同样坚决地否定复活是耶稣死亡的「另一边」，它是耶稣死亡具有救赎意义的一面；他否定的主要理由是死亡仍属于消极的。无论如何，司氏认为复活是「超越历史」和「超越经验」的，同时也否认耶稣的肉身复活必须包括了空坟墓的证据。

司氏认为：圣经中有关发现空坟墓的叙述是预先假定了对复活主的信仰。当他分析了有关的圣经章节之后，他结论说：空坟墓事件的历史性不能够确立，而且这事件并不能成为信仰耶稣复活的充足基础。另一方面，他却强调门徒对历史中耶稣的「记忆」的重要性，他从宗徒们对耶稣的恩宠性经验中，获悉了复活的意义，而这经验就是他们体验到耶稣(在死后)仍然活着。当司氏解释显现事件时，他认为视觉的体验并非主要的因素，而更重要是宗徒个人的宗教经验，他们从显现事件中经验到天主对人的罪的宽赦，从而聚集他们成为一个以伯多禄为首的宗徒团体。在此我们应注意一点：上述的宗教经验必需与纯粹的主观信念加以区别，我们不应以一种近乎幼稚的和太现实的态度去解释它；对于我们自己的信仰亦复如此。在司氏(基督学)的荷兰文原着第三版所加插的那部份中，他的立场似乎有所改变，与早期不同。虽然如此，他仍深信，复活乃意味着对死后的耶稣产生了一种新的经验，但在此他并没有指出「罪的赦免」的主题。最后，他对「复活的信仰」在历史中如何演变的问题不置可否，他只坚持此信仰乃源于天主，但他对于所谓的「超自然」主义者的观念一概不接受。

在司氏的基督学中，「复活」所扮演的角色是根据他的基本原则而定，这原则是：「解释纳匝肋耶稣的唯一标准就是纳匝肋耶稣本人」。他很强烈地批判以下两点：第一，救恩只是来自耶稣的复活；第二，复活是神学的唯一出发点。他认为若视救恩仅求自「历史中的耶稣」，或视其仅来自「复活的基督」都是错误的，因为复活若与历史中的耶稣分离，则它使会沦为「神话」；反过来，若历史中的耶稣缺少了基督徒所谓的「复活」，则耶稣的一生便成为一出惨剧。为司氏自己而言，了解耶稣的转捩点无不是耶稣的死亡，而是在此之前，群众拒绝他的时候。司氏在福音中找到证据，证明当耶稣发觉他的宣讲和行动不受群众接受时，他便预先知道他的死亡就快来临，并且明白死亡是他的使命的一部份，但同时，耶稣的死亡作为一个最后的「先知性标记」而言，它有待后人去深入解释。原来基督学就是有关耶稣整个生命的描述，而耶稣的死亡是最先使到基督学的描述成为可能的，然而耶稣的公开生活和死亡决不是最后的。最低限度它们不是基督徒希望的基础。在耶稣的死亡与早期教会对祂的宣讲之间所存在的，并非是「复活」，而是「宗徒们的经验」 经验到祂还活着。司氏不愿意说复活是天主对耶稣一生行实的「认许」或「批准」，他认为一句信仰的陈词不能够使另一信仰的陈词「合法化」，而且真正使到基督徒信仰「合理化」的不是目前的事件，而是未来的事实(末世性的事件)。

  

一：译自：John P. Galvin, The Resurrection of Jesus in Contemporary Catholic Systematics, in Heythrop Journal vol.XX(1979) n. 2 p.p.123-145

五、贝善思 (Rudolf Pesch)

贝善思是一位释经学家，他也着手研究有关复活信仰的起源的问题。我们在这里提到他乃是因为他曾清楚表示要为「基本神学」的发展作出贡献。他接纳拉纳的复活思想，但认为对于「空坟墓」和「显现」事件的历史性的论证并不足以使人信服。他主张基督徒的信仰乃扎根于历史中的耶稣，而不是在祂死后所发生的事情上。他坚持说，在耶稣生时，宗徒们便已相信祂是一位「先知性的默西亚」。既然在犹太人的习俗里已有「末世性殉道先知」死后复活的传统，所以宗徒们的信仰在本质上的改变，纵然不诉诸「显现」或「空坟墓」的证据，亦是可能的，而他们在信仰上的改变是耶稣被钉死后必然的效果)，特别是当耶稣的公开生活快将完结时，祂不断预期着死亡的来临，并把祂的死亡视作一「救恩性的事件」，特别当祂在最后晚餐时祂明显的如此表现。贝氏讨论「复活的启示」时，把重点放在历史中的耶稣身上，并且假设了门徒们(对耶稣的生命)有很深刻的反省；毕竟，贝善思坚持「启示」和「反省」决不是彼此排斥的。

在他看来，复活的功用不是用来证明历史中耶稣所做的一切是合法的(天主所认可的)证据，因为耶稣的公开生活和祂的死亡已经足够成为基督徒信仰的基础，故此不用找其它合法的证据，故此更好说复活在基督学上是一种合法和必需的表白，它从耶稣死亡的观点说明了耶稣这个人(对我们)的末世性意义，而这一点却是不能完全从历史的层面上去确立的信仰基础。

六、耶洛钖 (Hans Jellouschek)与叔普(Franz Schupp)

对复活在基督学上的作用耶洛锡(JELLOUSCHEK)和叔普(SCHUPP)也提出了他们的见解，他们都接受拉纳对「复活的性质」的解释。在一篇讨论历史中的耶稣在基督学上的意义的文章里，耶洛钖指出「复活」这个名词并不会增加基督学的内容，反而它是指向被钉死的那一位，因为复活与耶稣及其一生息息相关，故此复活指出耶稣的救恩意义，并表达出耶稣本人的永久重要性。耶洛钖认为宣信「耶稣复活了」就是等于宣信「耶稣是基督」；但宣信「耶稣复活」并不是宣信「耶稣是基督」的理由。这两句信仰陈述的内容主要是主词所指的耶稣，而不是宾词所指的事物。

叔普曾尝试表达耶稣和整个历史的关系，而同时避免贬低耶稣在历史中的真实性和祂救赎全人类的意义，结果他承认我们不能确定「耶稣复活」的信仰在历史中的起源。但他坚持我们并不会因此而无法为这信仰作出神学的探讨，因为我们要把一个陈述的起源及其有效性的问题分辨清楚，若我们不知道一个陈述的来源时，仍可以研究它是否有效。叔普主张十字架无疑是「救援学」的中心，但它却不是耶稣直接宣讲的内容。十字架只是代表耶稣接受祂自己在当时个人宣讲所带来的后果，故此十字架也同时表达了当时的人无法逃避耶稣的讯息。为了解释上述的主张，他提出了一个「救援学」的大纲，反对将耶稣的一生的有效性建基于祂死后的事件(复活)上；同时他恐怕若我们说救恩是来自祂死后的另一件事(复活)，便会贬低了十字架的价值。为此他认为复活就是对耶稣本身的宣信，而更重要的是表达出祂的死亡具有救赎的能力。

七、卡斯洛 (Hans Kessler)

卡斯洛深信在过去救援论由于太注重耶稣的降生和苦难，因死疏忽了祂的公开生活，结果妨碍了救援论的研究。他概略地提出了一个基督学，复活在其中的功用很少。他的学说十分依重萧石(FRANZ-JOSEF SCHIERSE)对释经学的研究，萧石的神学立场基本上是这样的：耶稣在祂的言行中揭示了全部最后的真理，而后来的解释只是尝试用概念来表达出救恩事件的某一层面。卡斯洛坚持说我们应以历史中的耶稣为基础去了解救恩。卡氏研究了法兰克福学学派的「批判学」后，提出了一个救赎理论的初步大纲，特别强调耶稣具有解放性的公开生活(但他同时也没有声称这是一个完整及周密的理论)。稍后，在另一篇文章中，卡斯洛又提出，尽管在十字架上耶稣看似是一位失败者，但复活展示了祂是最后及唯一的救世主。同时，在复活这个基础上，说明了耶稣并非已成过去，现今只是活在人们的记忆或在祂对人的影响力中，其实，祂是以一种新而唯一的形式与天主生活在一起，并藉着圣神，不停地临在于人间。

八、素宾奴 (Jon Sobrino)

素宾奴是一位巴斯克籍(BASQUE)的耶稣会士，现在执教于萨尔瓦多。他从拉丁美洲解放神学的角度去研究复活，由于深受莫特曼(Moltmann)的影响，他坚持应以战胜不公义和死亡的希望作出发点去面对复活的问题。

素宾奴认为复活是一末世性的事件，与从近似死亡状态中苏醒过来是两回事，因此复活并不能直接地去全部了解。尽管他认为有关空坟墓的历史性的问题仍是悬而未决，但由于显现事件很早便在基督徒团体中流传，故认为可能是事实；同时，这些事件的主要内容都显示有其历史性，故此，他这样判断：虽然我们不能确切地指出显现经验的性质，但可以肯定门徒都曾获得独特的经验，而这些经验恢复了他们曾一度被粉碎的信心。

素宾奴的研究，主要不是在显现和空坟墓的事件上。他企图将基督学建基于历史中的耶稣身上，并且提出警告说：基督宗教所面对最深的诱惑，就是片面地集中在复活了的基督身上。他认为，正由于众人都视复活为信仰耶稣的根基，故此这就成为了忘怀耶稣具体生活的原因；过份强调复活就是使到神学离开具体生活的病征，并使复活由「信仰」沦为「宗教」和「歌颂权力」的事件。为防止这种情形出现，他认为必须把「复活」和「十字架」相连为一，还要极力避免掩饰「十字架的丑闻」。从正确的观点去看，复活实在显示了天主是谁，一方面它澄清了生命的意义；另一方面它又澄清了人类生存和人类历史的意义。纵然素宾奴提到耶稣「成为」天主之子这一点，但他并没有用这个观点来解释复活，一如「嗣子论」所说。

九、佰特沙(Hans Urs Von Balthasar)

伯特沙视复活在时间上是与耶稣死亡分离的事件。纵然复活是和历史有关，但它不可能是一件在历史中发生的事，因为它不是(耶稣死后)重渡现世的生活，而是耶稣进入了另一个存在的境界，永久摆脱了死亡，超越现世的限制。复活不是信仰的起源，因为它本身都根源天主圣三的奥迹。既然耶稣的复活并无其他事情可资相比，故此伯特沙认为，复活了主的存在境界是绝对独一无二的，并且若从人类学的观点来看，讨论这存在的境界的性质并无很大的价值。

伯特沙发现众人多以下面的思想来了解复活，就是圣经里「生活的天主」的概念。用犹太的「默示文学」(apocalypticism)以及历史中的耶稣曾自称为末世性的救主的思想都不足以解释复活这一独特事件。虽然空坟墓的发现是历史性的事，但空坟墓本身却只是一个标记，意义是模棱两可的。启示复活的含义的主要是显现的事件，这事件超越任何「批判」，因为它是(门徒)和一位活生生的人(耶稣)的「遇合」。没有显现的事件，门徒就不会宣讲复活，因为他们的信仰与耶稣本人和祂的工程太过紧密相连，若没有另一件事(显现)发生，他们是不会继续耶稣的事业(宣讲)的。

既然伯特沙是和他人合作，尝试作出一个综合性的信理神学，并且在这一套神学里去探讨「巴斯挂奥迹」，所以他的复活神学并不能表现他个人的特征。他似乎让「复活」在神学里扮演一个中心的角色，认为复活是教会内一切神学的出发点，好使我们能正确地把握着耶稣生命的意义，为启示基督的天主性和天主圣三的奥迹，复活似乎十分重要，而且它也是教会根基的一部份。然而从他重视十字架的一点来看，若把复活看成是他的神学中心似乎是不正确的。

十、哥年士 (G. O' Collins)与兰尼 (D. Lane)

澳洲耶稣会士哥年士和爱尔兰神学家尔尼都提出了相似的复活神学。

哥年士认为复活是一件真实的事，而且包含了耶稣肉身复活的事件，这肉身曾三天被埋在坟墓里。这件事意味着基督曾离开了人类的历史，祂光荣的肉身进入了一个新的存在形态里，祂不仅充满了圣神，并且成为了全人类生命的泉源。虽然天主曾决定性干预了复活的事件，但我们不能把它当作历史的事情看待，因为它并非发生于时空，而更好说，耶稣是脱离了人类历史，进入了另一个属于天主的永恒世界。

哥年士虽然承认「空坟墓」的历史性，但却认为它从属于「显现」的传统。另一方面，圣经中有关显现的记载又依靠在另一可靠的传统上，就是怕多禄和其他的门徒遇见复活了的基督，可是，有关显现的详情却仍旧是含糊不清，在这点上，哥年士找到了「复活的启示」：「复活后的基督对一群人的自我启示使他们产生了复活的信仰，并使他们组成了第一个基督徒团体」。

在哥年士的基督学里，复活扮演着一个主要的角色：他很逻辑地判断复活是基督学的根基。一方面，他坚决反对布特曼(BULTMANN)，强调历史中耶稣的重要性；另一方面他同时批判趋向于过份夸大历史中的耶稣在信仰里的重要性的潮流，而这些潮流的主要代表人物是耶肋米亚 (J. JEREMIAS)和(E. FUCHS)福克斯。耶稣的死亡和复活既是天主启示的最高峰，若我们尊重耶稣的生命是特殊的，则不应贬抑祂的死亡和复活为不必要的附属物。

兰尼认为复活是天主在耶稣身上的超历史行动。复活既然是在死亡的「另一边」发生的事件，故此不在时空的范畴内。复活既然是天主的行动，我们只能从它的效果认识它。这些效果首先是「显现」的事件，为门徒来说，显现是真实的，具有启示性和历史性的事件。「空坟墓」的传统也十分可信，然而与显现的事件相比就变为次要了。虽然在基督学里我们必须研究耶稣的公开生活，但只研究它是不足够的，因为它的意义模棱两可。而且，祂的「死亡」是一个失败的标记，祂的死亡曾摧毁了宗徒们的信念。「复活」和「五旬节」可以说是一个「渐进的启示过程」中最后和必需的阶段，也是天国介入人间的重要事件，它澄清了那早已蕴藏在耶稣的言行中的意义，也同时为基督信仰注入新的内容：就是使复活后的基督成为信仰的新对象。

十一、雪适 (Leo Scheffczyk)与哥德兹(Franz Coorth)

对「复活的性质」的最传统观点，可以在雪适讨论这个问题的书本里找到。他多次说过需要为复活提出一个「实在」的见解，而这见解也同时是客观的、历史性的、以及属于圣经实证的，它与存在主义和混合了存在主义及注释学的见解对立。纵然复活和十字架相连，但二者并不是同一件事；因为复活是天主的干预行为，亦是一新的创造。既然复活是天主的行动，这行动既属于历史，同时又超越历史，若追寻它发生的源由似乎不甚恰当，一如人追寻天地万物的起源一样。无论如何，耶稣的复活必定包含着空坟墓。

虽然「空坟墓」的传统比「显现」事件较为次要，但是雪适坚持空坟墓的传统不是一个「传说」。「看见了复活的主」后，首批信徒宣称祂复活了，既然认出显现的那一位是谁乃是信德的行动，而这行动又包含了人的自由在内，故此，相信复活并非是人推理的结果。在雪适看来，显现不仅是门徒相信复活的基本因素，而且它也是内在于复活本身的，谁若认显现就等于否认复活。

在他的着作的开端，雪适声称系统神学在研究复活的课题上有三个任务：第一：解释复活是基督宗教的特点；第二：从圣经里发掘出复活的神学意义；第三：说明复活的真理是一切真理的关键和中心。但他认为第三点是最重要的。为此，在他的着作里他用了不少篇幅去说明，为正确地了解天主三位一体、基督、创造、圣事和末世论等神学课题，必须以复活为最中心的参据点。除了强调整个神学都应以复活为中心之外，雪适并严厉地批判传统神尚没有明认这点。

哥德兹在慕尼黑曾是雪适的学生。在他的一篇论文里，他同样指出复活的中心地位，这篇论文主要是探询以「历史中的耶稣」作为解释信仰的准则是否正确的问题。一方面他承认历史中耶稣的重要性；但另一方面，他坚持：若没有复活，耶稣的生平与命运会显得很含糊，甚至对于宗徒亦然。因此他结论说：复活就是基督徒信仰在历史上的基础。他引述新约里不同的章节来证明，新约最主要是肯定耶稣的复活是天主决定性的启示。故此，他主张解释基督徒信仰最后的标准不是历史中的耶稣，而是死而复活的主，祂藉着圣神不断临在于教会内。他认为除了这标准以外，其他标准很难不削减基督学的内容，因为它们没有注意到复活本身不仅包括了历史中的耶稣，而且还超过这一点，只有复活才包含了基督学的真正内容。在两篇较为近期的文章里，哥德兹明确地肯定，「信仰」必须顾虑到复活本身及其藉「显现」而表达出其为天主救恩性行动的意义。他亦曾批判司褐雷碧，认为司氏反对耶稣死后的事件(复活和领现)的肯定，并不足以支持司氏的「复活的概念」。

十二、结论

这篇文章简单介绍了当代天主教在基督学上对「耶稣复活」的各种立场。在我们所讨论的三个课题上：复活的性质、复活的启示、复活在整个神学中所扮演的角色，神学家的观点分歧很大。纵然在短期内(或者永远)我们不可能在这些课题上达到同一的意见，但我们可以提出一些评语，使我们留意在各种不同观点里面所共有的中心问题。

首先，研究「复活的性质」和它的「神学功用」之间的关系会使我们获益。我们不清楚各种对「复活的性质」的观点是否符合它在神学上可能有的功用。试举一例以说明：若果一面以消极的词句来说明十字架的意义，而另一方面却说复活有证明耶稣自称为救世主是合法的的功能，那么，我们说「复活」与耶稣的「死亡」不可分割是否有些矛盾？以龚氏和简氏为代表，他们收集各种歧异的资料，却没有仔细研究在综合各种不同的思想时所遇到的问题。因此，当他们讨论复活在「基督学」中的功用时，使人想起潘南培(Pannenberg)的立场；而他们对于死亡和复活之间的关系的描写却明显地过于依重拉纳的思想，然而，拉纳对「复活的性质」的看法与潘氏在基督学上的论证看来是不甚吻合的。对这课题更深刻的探讨会帮助除去某些作者表面看来似乎矛盾的观点。

第二：在讨论复活的神学功能时，争论的焦点是「历史中的耶稣」是否足以成为基督学的基础和准则。这个问题也是当代基督教在基督学上的中心问题，就如潘南培和艾具龄(Ebeling)的对立见解所显示的。很可惜讨论这问题时常受到用词上的妨碍，原因是同一的词汇却有多种不同的用法。不论是主张「历史中的耶稣」足以成为基督学的基础和准则的神学家(例如萧石、卡斯洛)抑或是否认这观点的某些学者(例如哥德兹、简士培、兰尼尼)，在提及「历史中的耶稣」时，都很少提及祂的死亡；但另一批学者(例如贝善思、叔普、耶洛钖)则不仅提到祂的死亡，而且还给予祂的死亡一个很显着的地位。因此，对于讨论「历史中的耶稣」是否足够成为基督学的标准这个问题，前者和后者的 意见便很难一致了。至于那些宣称「历史中的耶稣」足够成为基督学的基础和准则的学者，曾有人指责他们削弱了基督学的内容，其实，对那些认为「历史中的耶稣」是不包括祂的「死亡」的学者，这指责可能是对的；但对其他持不同意见的学者，这指责并不一定正确。原来，不加批判地接纳潘南培将「耶稣的行动」与祂的「苦难」和「复活」区分开来可能是产生各种难题的根源。若视耶稣的死亡为祂公开活动的后果，而又将祂的死亡与其公开生活分离，才评定祂的公开生活的价值，几乎是不可能的事。另一方面，我们也应当更加仔细地审查那些强调「历史中的耶稣」(包括祂的死亡)足够成为基督学的基础与准则的观点。这观点有一最大的好处，就是基督学的基础和准则可从历史的层面出发，而其他的准则(例如龚氏的「圣经中的基督」与简士培的「世上的耶稣与光荣复活的基督」)都预先假定了一个「答案」，这「答案」就是针对了拉纳所认为是首要又最根本的问题：就是：从「历史中的耶稣」跳到「初期教会的宣讲」这一「步」的合理性。

最后，「耶稣死亡」的神学意义是讨论「复活」的关键和枢纽。虽然「赔补」和「祭献」的理论均属此问题的范围，但耶稣死亡的问题还包含了更复杂的因素。有系统地进一步研究更形需要。尤其是释经学最近对新约中各种解释的研究成果，对神学探讨更是有利。为达到更适切地解释耶稣的复活，避免把耶稣的死亡从祂的公开生活中抽离是一很重要的先决条件。即使在此无法鸟瞰各家之言，以提供一较完整的建议，但无论如何，可以肯定的是：一个消极地评估耶稣的死亡的神学始终不能在基督学上有根基及积极地肯定祂的生命的意义。

作者：McLoughlin, Michael 年份：1980

"As the Catholic Church is foreign to no nation, so should every nation produce its own sacred ministers." "Wherever there exists an indigenous clergy, adequate in number and training, there the missionary work must be considered as having been brought to a happy end, there the Church is founded." (Benedict XV).

Since the beginning of the catholic missions in China, the Church has sought to establish a full regular normal local Church. In practice, from the beginning, efforts have been made to foster and to multiply Chinese vocations. It was not, however, until the present century that a concerted and organized plan for the whole country was devised. For many years the great Seminary of the Martyrs in Penang had been a sort of Central Seminary for most of the Far East, and in various parts of China there were Major Seminaries for special districts. All this was good, but still more was needed. Church Law laid it down that there should be a seminary in every diocese: where that was impossible, the Bishops of an Ecclesiastical Region, by their mutual assistance, were to open a common seminary for all the dioceses of the Region.

The First Council of China in 1924 urged the matter as of great importance, and under the guidance of the Apostolic Delegate to China, then Mgr. Costantini, a network of fourteen Region Seminaries were planned. By 1936 eleven of these seminaries were functioning: Kirin (Manchukuo), Chala (Peking), Suanhwafu (Hopei), Hankow (Hupeh), Tsinanfu (Shantung), Tatungfu (Shansi), Kaifeng (Honan), Chengtu (Szechwan), Nanchang (Kiangsi), Ningpo (Chekiang), and Aberdeen (Hong Kong). In 1949, there were sixteen Regional Seminaries, as well as many local Major Seminaries. Today, none of those seminaries is in operation in any form except one, Aberdeen, Hong Kong.

The origins of the Regional Seminary, Aberdeen, are to be found ultimately in the initiative of the Apostolic Delegate in China and of the Bishops who ruled the vicariates of South China in the early decades of this century (1). Even after that all-important decision had been taken, even after Hong Kong had been chosen as the general address, there was still a very great amount of practical work to be done; for as yet, there was no building, not even a site, and no staff.

This last problem proved the easiest to solve. The Irish Jesuits had just recently arrived in the Vicariate, and were not yet deeply committed. A stroke of a pen in Rome and the whole matter was settled in the traditional ecclesiastical way. The Jesuits in Hong Kong became responsible for finding the necessary staff.

A stroke of a pen may produce a staff: it will not level a site or raise a building. Mgr. Valtorta, then Vicar Apostolic of Hong Kong, had half a dozen sites in mind. One of these interested him particularly; it was the hill-crowned tip of a peninsula overlooking the fishing village of Aberdeen, near the Southwest corner of Hong Kong island. When the Apostolic Delegate came to Hong Kong to decide where the Seminary should be built, it was to this site that he was first brought. The other sites were not even looked at: the Regional Seminary was to be in Aberdeen.

The site had been chosen: but obviously there would have to be months of negotiation and waiting before taking possession. On 25th February 1927, Mgr. Valtorta brought the Jesuit Fathers to the scene of future labour. Having seen it, they promised St. Theresa of Lisieux that if she would secure possession of the site within six months, her feast would be celebrated in the future Seminary with special solemnity. Months passed, and nothing seemed to be happening. It looked as if the Saint were ignoring the time limit. But on 24th August, the very last day of the six months, an unheralded telephone message informed Mgr. Valtorta that the site was his.

To design the Seminary building, an architect long famous for his grasp of the traditional Chinese style, Dom Adalbert Gresnigt O.S.B., was chosen. The original plan provided for a great quadrangular building, stepped down the hill towards the sea. Later on it was decided to reverse the plan, so that the whole grandiose structure might face the busy road rather than the lonely sea. The economic blizzard of the thirties shrivelled these high ambitions. One side of the proposed quadrangle was indeed built according to Dom Gresnigt plan; but the connecting wings, the great facade, and the Chapel itself had to be resigned with a sigh.

Yet, incomplete though it is, the portion that was erected bears evident testimony to the wisdom of the choice of an architect. For all its elaboration of colour and detail, the present Seminary is pre-eminently a building of stately unity.

Now the Seminary had a site and a plan. Nothing more was needed, except labour, tools, bricks, stone and mortar, and someone to see that all these were properly used to carry out Dom Gresnigt's plan. Fr. Grampa P.I.M.E. undertook this last arduous labour. Almost fifty years and, during the war, an unknown number of guns have done their worst; but the fabric is still a striking monument to Fr. Grampa's skill and devotion.

On 3rd October 1930, the feast of St. Theresa of Lisieux, Mgr. Valtorta, in a private ceremony, blessed and laid the cornerstone of the already rising building.

In so far as the Regional Seminary of Our Lady, Queen of China, had an official opening, it was on the Feast of All Saints, 1st November 1931. The first students had arrived a few days earlier, October 28th, and classes had already begun. Since the last touches had not yet been given to the building, there was no question of an elaborate opening; but on November 1st, there was a simple ceremony, which suitably symbolized the union that should bind a regional seminary to the dioceses it serves and especially to the Ordinary of the diocese in which it is built.

In the presence of H.E. Mgr. Deswaziere and a few priests connected with the dioceses of South China, H.E. Mgr. Henry Valtorta said Mass for the students, during which he preached the first of his inspiring Latin sermons which were to be heard and appreciated for the next twenty years. He pointed out to them the significance of this new development for the missions of South China. He also showed how this seminary was a visible symbol of the universal catholic charity, which is not limited by national boundaries. The students should show forth this charity in their own lives and, as priests, they should teach it to the people committed to their care. Union and charity between the students and their superiors and between the students themselves should be the distinguishing mark of the new Seminary, and the surest sign that it was achieving the results expected from it.

Fr. T. Cooney S.J. was installed as the first Rector. The other professors were Frs. G. Kennedy, P. Joy, D. Finn, and R. Gallagher, and Rev. H. O'Brien and G. Casey. There were, to begin with, seven theologians and thirteen philosophers.

Life in the Seminary at Aberdeen was similar to life in any seminary in a mission country in the thirties. There were, of course, events particular to Aberdeen. During the first ten years, a kitchen, laundry and servants' quarters were added to the original building. In 1936 a large telescope was set up and put into working order. The preliminary tests gave good definition and magnification. With this a meteorological station was established and regular readings were taken. Unfortunately with the approach of the war in 1941, the telescope had to be dismantled, and has not been restored.

Another activity of value to the students was provided by Fr. Finn's interest in the archaeology of South China. Besides being Professor of Scripture and Spiritual Director, Fr. Finn was a trained archaeologist. During his time in the Seminary he studied the superstitions and customs of the boat people of Aberdeen; his findings were sent, along with a selection of idols and charms, to the Lateran Museum. He also made many pottery finds on the nearby island of Lamma. Some of the students used to accompany him on his field work, and became quite expert in recognizing primitive artefacts and recording their location.

But the most important event of this period was the Japanese war, which caused so much physical suffering and poverty in China. To alleviate these distresses, a Chinese Catholic War Relief Organization was set up. This gave the seminarians an opportunity to show their zeal, and their contribution was substantial. Here is part of a letter from the Treasurer of the Organization to the Prefect of the Seminarians.

"A third time, and in such a short time, the Chinese Catholic Relief Organization has received a generous contribution from the Seminarians of Aberdeen... Your letter is very inspiring and I hope to quote it in the next issue of the Catholic Digest... In your own way, you too are bearing the burden of your country's suffering and you are to be congratulated on the generous sacrifices you are making... Hundreds upon hundreds of wounded are being taken care of and thousands and thousands of refugees".

For the first two years the number of students was small, but an influx from Fukien and Kwang-tung brought about a sudden increase in 1933. In 1937, the Fukien Seminarians were recalled to Foochow, to continue their studies in the newly opened Regional Seminary for that province. This step had been foreseen; for it was only natural that a group of dioceses in which vocations were numerous and where language and customs differed so much from those of the Cantonese, should have a seminary of their own. Numbers, however, did not fall off at Aberdeen. The Minor Seminaries of Kwang-tung, which in the preceding ten years had been both increased and reorganized, now began to send increasing numbers of candidates. A few more came from the Chinese diaspora - one from Banka, and a steady flow from North Borneo. There were dioceses in Indonesia and Siam which also applied for places, but had to be refused because the space was needed for those who had first claim to be admitted, and also because it was felt that the Seminary should be kept purely for the Chinese. The largest number of students in the Seminary at one time was seventy-five; while the number ordained to the priesthood during these first ten years was forty-eight.

Ordination, of course, is the whole purpose of a seminary. For the Aberdeen Seminary, its greatest day was not the opening but Easter Saturday, 31st March 1934, when the first of its students were raised to the priesthood. His Excellency Henry Valtorta, Bishop of Hong Kong, performed the ceremony in the Cathedral. The Apostolic Delegate to China, H.E. Mgr. Mario Zanin arrived in Hong Kong for the first time during the ceremony, and was present in the sacristy at the conclusion to receive the new priests.

The following article, taken from the 'Rock' 1934, is quoted here as a tribute not only to those first priests of Aberdeen, but also to all who have followed them. Since they left the Seminary, these priests have been asked to undertake difficult, even heroic assignments. Some have been in prison, some are in prison, many have had to leave their country to work in other lands. To all the Regional Seminary offers its greetings and thanks.

"This event (of the first ordinations from the Seminary) gives us many reasons for rejoicing, in the first place for the great gift that has been conferred on the recipients themselves. No higher honour can be conferred on man than that he should be called by God to the service of the altar. The priest is the minister of Christ on earth. In Christ's name he pours on the neophyte the waters of Baptism, in Christ's name he brings comfort to the sinner... But above all－and this is the sublime dignity of the Catholic priesthood－in Christ's name he stands at the altar, Mediator between man and his Maker, to offer up once more the Sacrifice which was offered by the great High Priest Himself on the hill of Calvary. ... It is a sublime dignity indeed and the Catholic faithful look to the priest as someone who stands to them in the place of Christ. ...He is the servant of all. But he is well requited for his life of sacrifice by the love and gratitude of his people. We therefore congratulate in the first place these three young men whom God has called to serve their own China and the Chinese people in this supreme service."

The years sped by unperceived until suddenly it was realized that the tenth year had arrived. The students wanted to celebrate the occasion, but the conditions caused by the war made that almost impossible. It was finally agreed that Mgr. H. Valtorta would celebrate pontifical high mass in the Seminary and that he would administer tonsure and minor orders to those who were due (sixteen candidates).

On the tenth anniversary, the sixty-six students in the Seminary represented between them all the Vicariates in Kwang-tung, the Vicariate of Wuchow in Kiangsi, and the missions of Borneo and Sarawak. A commemorative card, showing the area from which the students were drawn, was distributed. On a map of the region each of the mission centres was indicated, and the number of former students ordained for each mission was marked. The total of those who had entered the Seminary and had already been ordained was forty-eight; of those many had already spent some years in other major seminaries, others had completed studies commenced in Aberdeen, in Rome, in the new Regional Seminary in Foochow or elsewhere. Twenty had made their full course of Philosophy and Theology in the Regional Seminary. One had died, Fr. James Wong Sing Foon.

The happiness of the tenth anniversary celebrated on 1st November 1941 had barely faded from memory, when the terrible tragedy that is war became imminent. On 7th December 1941, a quiet Sunday evening, the Hon. Mr. John Wu Ching Hsiung, afterwards Chinese Minister at the Vatican, came to the Seminary to give a lecture on one of his favourite topics, the Chinese Classics as a Providential Preparation for Christianity. After the lecture, he and the professors were chatting and expressing their confidence that there would be no war. Little did they realize that the disaster of Pearl Harbour would have taken place within the next twenty-four hours. The next morning a telephone call from the city gave the news of the attack on Hong Kong.

The Government had already informed the Rector that, in the event of war, the Seminary would be requisitioned for the safe housing of the families of the officials and workers in the naval dockyard, and that the seminarians and fathers would have to leave the house. The quest-ion then arose of the disposal of the seminarians. Government did not feel itself obliged to provide accommodation. In order to make sure that all would have a definite status in war-time, professors and students had enrolled for various forms of civilian service. The house was now made ready for the reception of the government's protegees, and all prepared to go to their posts as called up. Eventually not more than fifty people, instead of the expected five hundred, came, and the seminarians were not all called on for service. In the early days of the war, some did go to Hong Kong to help with the work of accommodating refugees, while others directed the distribution of food to the poor in Aberdeen village. But the very swift advance of the Japanese soon put an end to these activities. Those who remained in the Seminary sandbagged the windows of the refectory according to plan. That proved be be a necessary and effective defence.

During the last three days of the siege, December 23rd - 25th, the seminary was in the very front line. British look-out posts and gun-positions had been set up near the property, and this apparently drew the fire of the advancing Japanese. Fortunately they did not use guns of sufficient calibre to pierce the strong walls of the seminary, and only a shot through a window could have done serious damage. As everybody remained in the sandbagged refectory, there was little injury to personnel. Of one hundred and twenty persons, only three were wounded, and their injuries were but slight. However, Providence was at work. The Rector had decided that in future, beginning with Christmas Eve, Mass would be in the refectory. If they had remained in the chapel that Christmas Eve morning, they would have had Benediction after Mass. Just at the time when Benediction would have been in progress a shell came through a chapel window and exploded destroying the altar.

This escape and the continuous thunder of the guns on the walls was so unnerving that the seminarians made a vow to Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces, to be fulfilled if She would preserve them from harm (2).

On Christmas morning the Rector decided to take the women and children away from the Seminary to the convent in the village; two-thirds of the seminarians went also, while the others volunteered to stay behind to protect the house from looters. The fighting ended that afternoon and all returned to the seminary on the morning of the 26th. Those who had remained behind were in good spirits, even though the house had been bombed twice on Christmas Day.

With as little delay as possible, the Seminary was temporarily patched up and cleaned, the remaining families were sent back to the city, and by January 1st the regular life of the seminary was restarted. On January 7th after the lapse of only a month, normal classes were in progress, but many hours had still to be spent by the students in repairing the damage to the building.

For the next three and a half years the usual life of the seminary was carried on amid the customary difficulties of an occupied city. The Japanese never got to the point of registering the seminary, as they could not fit it into any one of their categories. It was neither school, church nor monastery－and so it carried on, protected by its very incomprehensibility. This liberty granted by the Japanese, however, would not have been sufficient in itself to ensure survival, had it not been for the arrival, irregular and unforeseen, of financial assistance from Rome and Ireland.

For some now forgotten reason, in May 1945 fears were expressed that Hong Kong would be subjected to a devastating bombardment, food was running too low, and prices were exorbitant, rice costing up to $65 U.S. per 1b. It was decided, therefore, to accept the generous invitation of H.E. Mgr. J. Ramalho, Bishop of Macao, to join his seminary. Professors and fourteen students set out and were given a wonderful welcome.

When in August 1945 peace was restored, the seminarians were still in Macao, and in Aberdeen there was only one priest, the Rector Fr. J. O' Meara, S.J. At first it was proposed not to open the seminary until after Christmas, but on November 7th six seminarians, three from Kaying and three from Swatow, arrived unexpectedly by minesweeper from Swatow. It was then decided to recall the other seminarians and start lectures as soon as possible. On November 19th the normal course of lectures began. During the next few days more students arrived, bringing the number to thirty one.

That was quite a large group to maintain at the time, for life was still difficult. Electricity and water supplies had only recently been re-connected. Transport was not organized, and so communications with Hong Kong city depended on chance lifts in Government or military trucks. Food rations were supplied by the Government at a price, and these had to be supplemented by local produce.

A more serious difficulty was malaria. The regular precautions against mosquitoes had been neglected during the occupation, and mosquitoes were numerous and voracious. Malaria was rife in the neighbourhood. Many of the seminarians contracted the disease, and there were two violent cases of cerebral malaria. But in January 1946, the house and grounds were sprayed with insecticide which brought relief.

Gradually, during the next few years, normal conditions were restored in Hong Kong. In the seminary, there was regular discipline, varied by the usual chance occurrences that happen in any life.

Meanwhile the community was changing. Fr. J. O' Meara, having steered the seminary through the storms of war, handed over his charge to Fr. R. Harris. Three years later, Fr. J. Garland succeeded Fr. Harris, who had been appointed Superior of the Hong Kong Jesuits. A few months later Fr. Joy, the last of the original staff, left for Singapore. In 1957 Fr. Garland was succeeded by Fr. J.B. Wood, who remained in office until the close of the Regional Seminary in 1964. There was also a considerable change in the teaching staff since the end of the war.

1949, Febr.
3rd 1 priest, 27 seminarians from Kingshien:
  Febr. 17th 4 priests from Kingshien:
  Mar. 28th 30 seminarians from Kingshien:
  April 16th 26 seminarians from Hankow:
  April 28th 17 seminarians from Shanghai:
  May  2nd 7 seminarians from Fushun.

Thus it went on, comings and goings, so that from day to day no one knew how many; except perhaps the Rector, Fr. Harris, and the Minister, Fr. Morahan. At one time during May there were 120 seminarians in the house.

Of these refugee seminarians, those from Hankow went to Macao, those from Kingshien to Manila. After one year the Shanghai seminarians returned to Shanghai; the rest remained in Aberdeen to complete their course. Since then more refugee students from various minor seminaries, as well as the students from the Hong Kong area have kept the numbers above average. In 1956, the 25th anniversary of the Regional Seminary and roughly ten years after the war, there were fifty-four theologians from twenty-one dioceses and one religious congregation and twenty-five philosopers from ten dioceses and one religious congregation. But the ending of communications with China had its effect. By 1963 the number of seminarians had diminished to eleven theologians from five dioceses and fifteen philosophers from three dioceses and one religious congregation. It was not surprising then that on Monday, February 17th, 1964, the Acting Rector of the Regional Seminary, Fr. John Foley, S.J., received a letter from the Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda to the effect that the Sacred Congregation had decided "to discontinue the activities of the Seminary" from the end of the academic year. Finally, on 21st July 1964 the Regional Seminary Aberdeen came to an end after thirty-three years with the signing of a document by Fr. John Foley, S.J. and Fr. Dominic Bazzo, P.I.M.E., Rector of the combined Major and Minor Seminary for the Diocese of Hong Kong.

During its brief existence, the Regional Seminary has had a varied history. What has been mentioned here is only an outline of the more important events in that history. Many other events could have been recounted, e.g. the social work of the seminarians among the boat people of Aberdeen, the "hedge" school for the children of the area, religious broadcasts, the newsletter "Vox Almae Matris" (Yuen Shing) sent monthly to the priests who had studied in Aberdeen, the new chapel completed in 1957 and so on. To sum up briefly and factually the achievement of the Regional Seminary, two hundred and fifty priests have been ordained since the Seminary opened in 1931. Besides Hong Kong, which has the largest number, and the Republic of China, these priests are to be found in sixteen different countries. Some have died (certainly more than 16); some have given up the priesthood; but by far the vast majority of them are strongly active in the mission of the Church. The spiritual achievement of the Seminary, through the apostolate of its priests, is impossible to estimate: that judgment belongs to the Lord.



  (1)Joseph Da Costa Nunes, Bishop of Macao; Adulphus Rayssac, Vicar Apostolic of Swatow; Anthony Fourquet, Vicar Apostolic of Canton; Henry Valtorta, Vicar Apostolic of Hong Kong; James Edward Walsh, Vicar Apostolic of Kong-moon; Aloysius Penicaud, Vicar Apostolic of Pakhoi; Francis Xav. Ford, Prefect Apostolic of Kayingchow; Paul Mary-Joseph Julliotte, Superior of the Mission of Hainan; John Guarona, Pro-Vicar of Shiuchow.

(2)"Die 24 Decembris 1941, cum omnes in Seminario degentes maximo in periculo a globulis ignitis constituti essent, Fratres Alumni, annuente P. Rectore, Beatissimae Virgini Mariae, si domum et omnes habitantes in ea salvos incolumesque piissime custodiret, se vota infrascripta impleturos esse, polliciti sunt.　

A. Tertiam partem SS. Rosarii per unum mensern cotidie in actionern gratiarum recitare.　

B. In Seminario Regionali, speciali modo, colere Beatissirnam Virginern Mariam sub titulo: 'Mediatrix Omnium Gratiarum'.　

C. Unumquemque post Ordinationern sacerdotalem denas Missas offerre. "

作者：陆鸿基 Luk, Hung Kay, Bernard 年份：1980

FROM the Old Testament TO St. Thomas Aquinas



  When as little children we made our first acquaintance with Catholic doctrine, we recited in the Catechism that a human being consists of a body of clay and a soul made in the image of God. At death, body and soul separate－the former decays and returns to earth, while the latter, which is immortal, comes before God for trial and reward or punishment eternal. The Catechism, true to its nature, did not tell us about the development of this doctrine from its ancient roots to its mediaeval fruition; rather, we were simply, and simplistically, handed the doctrine in its Tridentine fossilisation. Those were the days before Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council.

More recent developments in the Church have called for a broadening of the intellectual foundations of our understanding of the Catholic Faith. Such a task involves, among other things, breaking out of the confines of Western philosophy (which is not divinely inspired, but only accidentally grafted on to Christian teachings) towards more ecumenical interpretations of the Faith. This essay is an attempt to outline the evolution of the concept of the soul, in the hope of contributing to a popular appreciation of the role of Greek philosophy in the making of the Catechism doctrine. (1)

The concept of the soul that we have inherited was born of a fusion of a Jewish eschatology with Greek myths and speculations, and then nurtured in generations of Christian minds.

THE OLD TESTAMENT

The notion of a soul surviving after death is not readily discernible in the Bible. Hebrew monotheism, or the worship of Yahweh, was an ethnic religion; its central message was the contract between God and Israel, and the individual Israelite had significance only as a member of the Chosen People. It was the people as a whole that was rewarded or punished for its conduct, in this world. Belief in an individual hereafter was left rather vague.(2)

The Old Testament distinguished four elements in a human being.

There was the neshamah or 'breath' which comes and goes in the act of breathing.
There was the nephesh. The basic meaning of this word was 'throat'; eventually, the meaning expanded to include 'breath', 'desire', 'appetite', 'life', or 'self’. For example, the Book of Proverbs has: "A righteous man has regard for the nephesh [life] of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel." (RSV, Prov. 12:10). In Psalm 103: "Bless the Lord, 0 my nephesh [being]." And in Genesis 2:7; "Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (ruach); and man became a nephesh [living being]."
There was the basar or 'flesh', which denotes the stuff of which the different parts of the body are made. This word was not used in a perjorative sense in the Old Testament.
Finally, there was the ruach, literally 'wind', a kind of life force bestowed from above, without which the psychophysiological composite of the nephesh-basar would have no life and no consistency. Sickness and sleep were considered loss of ruach; death was an almost total loss of it. The use of this word only became common with Ezekiel, during the Exile.(3)
These elements together formed a single psycho-physical organism. There was no dichotomy of body and soul. So long as a person was alive, each of the four constituents, including 'flesh', was alive too. Upon death, the composite whole was irreparably dissolved. Although the Yahwist thinkers could not envisage a complete personal extinction, they never defined what part of a human would survive death. Whatever it was (sometimes vaguely identified as the nephesh), descended beneath the earth to She'ol. This place of the dead was also variously described in different parts of the Old Testament as an awful pit, a walled city, or a land of dust and darkness. Descent to She'ol was the common fate of all, regardless of social or moral standing; and She'ol and its denizens were considered to be outside the interest or care of Yahweh. Thus, the life of the individual in the hereafter was not an important concern for the Yahwist religion, whose main business was the collective vigour of the Chosen People.(4)

This belief began to change during the Baby-lonian Exile(5th century BC), when questions began to be raised. If Yahweh had the power to save his Chosen People, why did he allow them to be overthrown and suffer in this way? Faced with this criticism, the emphasis on retribution began to shift from the communal to the personal, and from the this worldly to the hereafter. The concept of an almighty and just God demanded an eschatology that promised individual Israelites vindication after death for injustices suffered before it. This new trend was reflected in Ezekiel's vision of a post-mortem judgement and the resurrection of the dead: it was a restoration of the entire psycho-physical being, not immortality of a soul. By the time of Daniel (2nd century BC), these beliefs had received more concrete, if still largely communalistic and apocalyptic, treatment. In the Book of Enoch, however, a new development became evident. Not only was there going to be a final universal judgement at the end of the present world order, there were also individual judgements at the point of death. Instead of being a shadowy, undifferentiated place where all the dead were treated similarly for an indefinite time, She'ol was now compartmentalised into a place of refreshment, and other, hollow, places for the dead of different moral calibres. Thus the nephesh began to take on personality, as well as continuity with life in this world. The Pharisees around the time of Jesus Christ probably believed in rewards and punishments between death and the apocalyptic resurrection.

Among the Hellenised Jews of Alexandria, a very different concept arose. In Wisdom 9:15: "A perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind." This dichotomy, in which the soul is all that counts, has more affinity with Plato's Phaedo than with the Hebrew tradition, as will be seen. Thus, it was not until late Old Testament times that the Jews came to believe in personal survival beyond death; except in a few instances, there was as yet no well-defined idea of an immortal soul.(5)

GREEK MYTHOLOGY

In the Hellenic tradition, the initial position was similar to that of the Hebrew. Homeric Greeks regarded the human being as a living organism compounded of three parts: a body (soma), a thymos or conscious self, and a psyche or life principle. A human being was only truly a human being when all three components were functioning harmoniously together as an inter-related whole, which was shattered by death. With the dissolution of the body, the thymos merged with the air, while the psyche was transformed into a shadowy replica of the living human known as the eidolon, and descended into Hades, an underground cavity rather like the original She'ol. These eidola had no memory, and were completely unconscious, insubstantial, and apathetic. Thus, the Greeks also had no notion of a personal survival after death, and Homer could speak of "the strengthless heads of the dead". Life in this world was the only full full and proper life.(6)

But there was another set of ideas about the soul among the Greeks, that of Orphism, a religious reform movement in the 6th century BC. The Orphics held that the key to human nature was the mythical murder and eating of Dionysos-Zagreus by the wicked Titans, sons of Earth, who were then blasted by the victim's father, Zeus. Because of their last meal, the ashes of the monsters contained elements of both Dionysos and the Titans. Out of these ashes arose humankind, with a dual nature－a material body which was a child of Earth, imprisoning an ethereal and immortal soul derived from a god. For the soul, the body (soma) was a tomb (sema). This soul or psyche combined the conscious self (thymos) and the unconscious life－principle (psyche) of the older Homeric conception, and came to be regarded as a preexistent conscious self that survived the death of the body. Because this divine psyche was tied to matter and to the evil inherent in it, it had to pass through a number of human or bestial incarnations lasting many centuries before it was sufficiently purified to return to the divine realm. This awful burden of births, deaths, and miseries, known as the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis) could be reduced only if an enlightened soul lived for three successive incarnations as a phi-losopher. Among the Pythagoreans, who formed one branch of the Orphic movement, the soul was associated with the 'higher' or intellectual faculties: for them, devotion to science was the highest form of purification of the soul.(7)

Thus arose a dichotomy between a divine, individual and immortal soul, and a material body. The soul and the body did not form one person: rather, they were an antagonistic duo, each with its own personality. This dichotomy was to become prominent in Plato's thought, and also influenced the Old Testament Book of Wisdom.



  

1.Jorg Splett, “Immortality”, in Karl Rahner, ed., Encyclopaedia of theology (NY, 1975), 678-689. New Catholic Encyclopaedia (NY, 1967), “Soul, Human, Immortality of”, XIII, 464-470. Cf. Ch’ien Mu, Linghun yu hsin (Taipei, 1978).

2.S.G.F. Brandon, The judgement of the dead (NY, 1967), 56-58. Cf. New Catholic Encyclopaedia, ibid.,467.

3.New Catholic Encyclopaedia, ibid., 449-450. C. Ryder Smith, The Bible doctrine of the hereafter (London, 1958), 1-9. Albert Gelin, The concept of man in the Bible (NY, 1968), 13-19.

4.Brandon, Judgement, 59. Smith, 3.

5.Brandon, 60-75. Gelin, 21. New Cath. Ency., XIII, 449-450, 467-468.

6.Brandon, 76-87.

7.Brandon, 88-96. Gelin, 20.

GREEK PHILOSOPHY

As philosophy began to emerge among the Greeks, the human being came to be considered within the framework of physis or basic principle of all growth and movement. The psyche came to be identified with whatever element each philosopher held as primary, e.g., fire, water, air or ether. In general, it was agreed that the psyche was material: while it was a source of growth and movement, it was not considered personal or immortal. On this, the pre-Socratic philosophers generally harked back to Homer rather than to the Orphics.(8)

Socrates and Plato took a different approach; it is difficult and here quite unnecessary to distinguish the two. Plato's idea of the soul was related to his theory of knowledge. The material world is marked by particularity and impermanence; sensual perception can only give us impressions of a confusing multiplicity of concrete objects subject to the vicissitudes of time. For Plato, that is misleading and is not real knowledge. What are reliable, because permanent, are concepts, Ideas or Forms (eidos). If that is the case with concepts of substantives, it is all the more true of abstract qualities such as beauty, justice, or truth, which are never embodied as such in concrete objects. Furthermore, concrete objects are never simple. A chair contains more than 'chairness' ; it also has 'woodness' , etc. A beautiful person contains not just 'beauty', but also has other qualities such as being 'human', and so on. So a concrete chair is less perfectly a chair than the Idea of a chair; and a beautiful person is less perfect than the Idea of beauty. What is more permanent and more perfect is of course also more important; and, Plato insists, also more real. Hence, the world of Ideas is more real than the world of concrete objects. The body with its distracting and entangling senses which inform one of concrete objects is the 'lower' part of a human being; thought, which alone informs one of the 'higher' world of Ideas, is the most important human activity; and what enables one to think is the soul, the 'higher' part of the human being. A successful life for a human being is therefore the intellectual life, the life of the soul, which alone can commune with the higher, more real world.

In the Phaedo, Plato's account of Socrates' last conversation with his friends, the distinctions between the soul and the body are made clear:

Did you ever behold [absolute justice, beauty, and goodness] with your eyes? ..... Or did you ever reach them with any other bodily sense? －and I speak not of these alone, but of absolute greatness, .....and of the essence or true nature of everything..... Is not the nearest approach to the knowledge of their several natures made by him who so orders his intellectual vision as to have the most exact conception of the essence of each thing which he considers? .....And he attains to the purest knowledge of them who goes to each with the mind alone, not introducing or intruding in the act of thought sight, or any other sense together with reason, but with the very light of the mind in her own clearness searches into the very truth of each; he who has got rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the whole body, these being in his opinion distracting elements which, when they infect the soul, hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge－who, if not he, is likely to attain to the knowledge of true being?(10)

Not only is the soul higher than the body, the body also drags the soul down from intellectual heights. It is only when the soul is rid of the body that it can attain wisdom and purity:

For the body is the source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement for food; and is liable also to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after true being: it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of every kind, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us the power of thinking at all ..... It has been proved to us by experience that if we would have pure knowledge of anything we must be quit of the body－the soul in herself must hold things in themselves : and then we shall attain the wisdom which we desire, and of which we say that we are lovers; not while we live, but only after death; for if, while in company with the body the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things follows－either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death ..... And thus having got rid of the foolishness of the body, we shall be pure and hold converse with the pure, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere, which is no other than the light of truth.(11)

The conclusion is that "the soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intellectual, and uniform, and indissoluble, and changeable." The care of the soul is the most important task in life: preparation for the soul to leave the body and return to the invisible world, the preparation for death. The fate of those who have neglected the soul and lived the life of the body will be reincarnation as beasts.(12)

It is clear then that Plato conceived of the human being as a composite, with soul and body being distinct substances; and in conformity with the theory of Ideas, it is the soul, not the body, that is real; it is the soul that is the person. At the end of the Phaedo, when Socrates was asked how he wanted to be buried, he said:

However you please, if you can catch me and I do not get away from you ...... I cannot persuade Crito, my friends, that the Socrates who is now conversing ..... is really I: he thinks I am the one whom he will presently see as a corpse .....After I drink the poison I shall no longer be with you, but shall go away to the joys of the blessed .....(13)

The Orphic influence in these passages is obvious. It will presently be shown how Plato's concept of the soul merged with Jewish eschatology to form a cornerstone of Christian thought.

Plato's disciple Aristotle started out with a concept of the soul similar to his master's, but it gradually developed into a very different and more subtle idea. Aristotle's emphasis was biological rather than religious; he was concerned to find in his work on the soul the principle of life rather than guidance for life. Yet his doctrine on the soul is more metaphysical than that of Plato.(14)

As a biologist, Aristotle was concerned to find a common definition for all living things.(15) This was his goal in the De Anima, his systematic general theory on the subject. In this treatise, he defined soul as "the first actuality of a natural body potentially possessing life. "(16) This terse definition requires explanation.

First, the terms he used. A 'body' is a substance, that is, "something which is neither predicated of a subject nor present in a subject", e.g., a human, a tree, a stone.(17) A 'natural body' is a body that is not made by human hands. 'Life' is "the capacity for self-sustenance, growth, and decay."(18) To understand 'potentiality' and 'actuality', it is necessary to delve further into the concept of substance.

As a class of existing things, substances may be divided into three:

matter, in the sense of pure matter without shape or form, which in itself is not an individual thing;
shape or form, which attributes individuality; and
the compound of the two.
In this analysis, matter is potentiality, form or shape is actuality.(19) For example, a piece of shapeless wax is potentially a statue; the shape that the wax acquires from a mold is actuality. The wax originally had the potential to be made into a statue, which potential was actualised when the statue was made. Similarly, certain natural bodies have the potential to be made into living beings; what actualises this potential is the soul.

Now, the term 'actuality' (or 'entelechy', or 'fulfillment') has two senses, which are analogous to

the possession of knowledge, and
the exercise of that knowledge.
For example, before a person has learnt what Aristotle means by the soul, one has the capability or potential for learning it. Once having learnt it, the person is capable of tracing the steps of the arguments, but does not need to do so; that person may be said to know, to have fulfilled the capability. This is analogous to the first actuality. This actualised knower may prefer to spend every waking moment retracing the arguments; that active exercise of the knowledge is analogous to the second actuality. Again, every person has the potential to study to be a historian. Once having fulfilled that potential (assuming that 'history' is a discreet subject), this person is a historian even in an undisturbed slumber (cf. first actuality). When researching and writing, he is a historian exercising the knowledge (cf. second actuality).(20)

To return to the definition of the soul. The natural body having a potential or capacity for life is related to its soul in a manner analogous to the knower's relation with the knowledge possessed, to the historian's relation with history. Without historical knowledge, one would not be a historian; without the shape provided by a mold, an amorphous piece of wax would not be a statue; without a soul, a natural body that has capacity for life would not be a living thing. Thus, a living thing is a compounded substance of body and soul, as matter and form. The soul, the form, is the first actuality of the life potential of the body, the matter. (The living thing－body and soul together－exercising its vital functions is second actuality. 'First' and 'second' are in ontological, and not necessarily temporal, order.) Thus, the soul is the cause and first principle of the living body, not only as the formal, but also as the efficient and the final cause, while the body is the material cause.(21)

Here, a few points need to be made.

Since form and matter are both substances, the soul is as substantial as the body; but the soul is not, of course, material, and therefore not corporeal.
Since a soul is the actuality of a particular potential, a human soul will not actualise a dog's body, nor vice versa; there is little, if any, room allowed for a Platonic transmigration of souls.
Since soul is form, and body matter, and the two compounded make up the living thing, "one need no more ask whether body and soul are one than whether the wax and the impression it receives are one."(22) It is also obvious that the soul must be spatially co-extensive with the body.(23) "Furthermore, the soul cannot exist without the body."(24) Hence, by this definition alone, Aristotle seems to have ruled out the immortality of the soul.(25)
But Aristotle goes further and introduces ideas on the hierarchy of nature into his discussions on the soul. "A thing lives if any one of the following is present in it－mind, sensation, movement or rest in space, besides the movement implied in nutrition and decay and growth." Of these vital functions, the most basic is the capacity to absorb food, because "it may exist apart from all other powers, but the others cannot exist apart from this in mortal beings". Hence, nutrition is found in all living things, from plants to humans. Similarly, animals have sensations, and among different sensations, touch is the most basic, being common to all animals.(26) Proceeding this way up a ladder, so to speak, one can enumerate the faculties of the soul: nutrition, appetite, sensation, locomotion, and thought, and rank living things accordingly.

Plants have the nutritive faculty only, but other living things have the faculty for sensation too. But if so sensation then also for appetite..... In addition to these senses some also possess the power of movement in space, and others again－viz., man and any other being similar or superior to him－have the power of thinking and intelligence.(27)

This, then, is Aristotle's ladder of souls. Just as there are higher and lower orders of life, so there are higher and lower kinds of souls－the higher souls possessing more faculties than the lower ones. This ladder may be roughly said to have three steps:

the souls of plants that are strictly nutritive ;
those of animals that are nutritive as well as sensitive; and
those of thinking and reasoning beings.
Are any of these living things immortal at all? Aristotle talks about biological reproduction－like nutrition, a faculty common to all living things－as being done for the sake of having "a share in the immortal and divine in the only way they can ....."(28) But this striving for the immortality of the species is not personal immortality, nor yet the kind of which Socrates assured his friends.

It has been noted above that Aristotle's definition of the soul seems to leave no room for immortality. There is, however, an escape hatch, so to speak, in his hierarchical scheme. For although the soul of a living thing is an inseparable whole exercising all the numerous vital functions, "in the case of the mind and the thinking faculty nothing is yet clear; it seems to be a distinct kind of soul, and it alone admits of being separated, as the immortal from the perish-able."(29) Elsewhere in the treatise, Aristotle elaborates on this point. Just as there must be a distinction between an art and its material, between the matter in a thing and its efficient cause, so there must be a distinction between an active mind and a passive mind within the soul. "Mind in the passive sense is such because it becomes all things", and its thinking is closest to perception－which, according to Aristotle, is a passive or neutral sense receiving messages from an active object and is temporarily actualised by the object. The active mind, on the other hand, "makes all things; this is a kind of positive stage like light; for in a sense light makes potential into actual colours. Mind in this sense is separable, impassive, and unmixed, since it is essentially an activity; for the agent is always superior to the patient, and the originating cause to the matter." He concludes:

[The active] mind does not think intermittently. When isolated it is its true self and nothing more, and this alone is immortal and overlasting (we do not remember because, while mind in this sense cannot be acted upon, mind in the passive sense is perishable), and without this nothing thinks.(30)

What does he mean? He has admitted above that he was not yet clear, and Greeks, Muslims, and Christians have debated this concept for more than two thousand years. This is indeed the most obscure part of his psychology. It is probable that he believed in a hierarchy reaching from the lowest beings to God, with the active reason of a human being among the highest members in the scale, yet still below God and other intelligences. Whether or not that is a correct interpretation of what was at the back of Aristotle's mind is not important for this essay; the main point here is that Aristotle admits of the immortality of the individual human soul, and thus enters the mainstream of discussions on that problem. After a certain metamorphosis, his psychology as outlined here became established Catholic doctrine.

To oversimplify a long and complicated story, that metamorphosis may be said to have taken place in two stages. First, a Judaeo-Christian eschatology merged with one form of the Platonic concept of the soul, resulting in the Augustinian doctrine that dominated the early middle ages; the emphasis of this teaching was the substantiality of the soul and its independence from the body. Second, the early mediaeval Christian idea was redefined by St. Thomas Aquinas in essentially Aristotelian terms in the 13th century; this redefinition emphasised the unity of the human being, of body and soul together. The Thomistic approach was officially adopted by the Church, especially by the Council of Trent.



  

8.New Cath. Ency., XIII, 447, 451. S.G.F. Brandon, Man and his destiny (Manchester, 1962), 174-184.

9.Sir R.W. Livingstone, Portrait of Socrates: being the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Plato in an English translation with introductions and notes (Oxford, 1953), 78-81. Cf. A.E. Taylor, Plato: the man and his work (7th ed., 1960), 180-193.

10.Livingstone, 100-101.

11.Ibid., 101-102.

12.Ibid., 126-129.

13.Ibid., 194. Cf. Antony Flew, “Immortality”, in Encyclopaedia of philosophy (NY, 1967), IV, 139-150; Herschel Baker, The image of man (NY,1947, 1961), 46-49, for Plato’s later views.

14.Wm. A. Hammond, transl., Aristotle’s psychology: a treatise on the principle of life (London, 1902), xxvi-xxvii. For stages of development of Aristotle’s psychology, see Sir David Ross, Aristotle, Parva Naturalia: a revised text with introduction and commentary (Oxford, 1955), 1-18; also, Ross, Aristotle (5th ed., London, 1964), 112.

15.Ross, Aristotle, 112, 129. Hammond, xv, xxi-xxii, xxvii, 1xxxiii.

16.W. S. Hett, transl., Aristotle: On the soul, Parva Naturalia, On breath (Cambridge, Mass, 1957), 69 (de Anima II, 1, 412b5 in the Greek Text). Cf. Ross, Aristotle, 134.

17.Hett, 67.

18.Ibid.

19.Ibid.

20.Ibid., 97-101. Ross, Aristotle, 134.

21.Hett, 87-88. Hammond, xxii.

22.Hett, 69, 79-80.

23.Hammond, xxii-xxiv. Baker, op. Cit., 60.

24.Hett, 79.

25.Flew, op. cit. Hammond,1xxxv. Ross, Aristotle, 131-132, 135.

26.Hett, 75.

27.Hett, 81-83. Hammond, 81-83. Ross, Aristotle, 129-131. Cf. Joseph Needham, Science and civilisation in China, II, 21-23.

28.Hett, 86-87.

29.Hett, 77.

30.Hett, 171, (De Anima, III, v, 430al0-25, in the Greek text), on the 'active mind' Ross, Aristotle, 135, 148-153, on 'active reason'. Hammond, lxxi-lxxxvi, on 'creative reason'. Also known in the middle ages as 'active intellect' or 'agent intellect' (intelligentia agens).


THE EARLY CHRISTAINS

The first Christians expected an imminent apocalypse.(31) The Jewish followers of Jesus believed that he was the Messiah of Israel, and that he would soon return to them as Lord of the Judgment, bring an end to this world, and resurrect the dead－ i.e., reconstitute their psycho-physical organisms. Their concept of the human being was still the traditional Hebrew one, essentially un-Hellenised, of a psycho-physical unity.(32) However, as more and more Christian converts were Greeks, and especially after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the central Church there, Hellenic dualism began to gain ground within the Christian faith. The Jewish eschatology of Last Judgment and resurrection of the dead now had to exist side by side with a more uniquely Christian eschatology of an immaterial soul of each person being judged individually at death and given everlasting reward or punishment, without waiting for the apocalypse and the resurrection of the body. How this development came about, and how the two eschatologies came to be reconciled, is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to note here the process was a gradual one.(33) Even St. Paul, who considered his own mission as towards the Gentiles, never adopted the body and soul dichotomy of the Phaedo entirely. Although his attitude towards the body or flesh (soma and sarx respectively) was ambivalent, and he eventually came to distinguish between a lower, natural body (soma psychikon), and a nobler, spiritual body (soma pneumatikon), and left some hints of a body (soma) ,soul (psyche) , and spirit (pneuma) trichotomy, the soma was the self. He did not elaborate on body versus soul, but rather, on different tendencies within the self, the soma. (34)

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD

It was not until the Patristic period of doctrinal development that there began to emerge a clear distinction between body and soul. Athenagoras (fl. 177), self-styled Christian philosopher of Athens, first made the point of an immortal soul surviving the death of the body, and an eventual reunion of the two at the resurrection. St. Irenaeus attacked the Platonic idea of trans-migration of souls and their divinity, but insisted on an incorporeal, immortal soul, distinct from, but united to, a mortal body. Origen was the first among the Fathers to formulate the idea of the soul as a spiritual, rational substance. He also held that all souls of intelligent beings were created at once, in the beginning, pure, equal, and alike, and were put to the test by God. Except for the soul of Christ, all fell to some extent, and became angels, demons, or human souls. St. Gregory of Nyssa objected to this theory of creation, and held that the body and soul of each human were brought into existence together, but he did not know how. Nemesius (whom the Scholastics wrongly identified with Gregory) wrote the first summa of Christian psychology, the De natura hominis (ca. 400), in which he rejected the definitions of the soul of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, and concluded that the soul was an incorporeal substance, subsistent in itself, not dependent on anything else for its being, yet intended for union with the body. He was unable to answer satisfactorily how the soul and the body were joined together. Tertullian tried to solve this problem by urging that Adam's soul alone was created by God, while all other human souls came into being by the act of biological generation. This 'traducian' theory (Adam as tradux or 'shoot') was never officially adopted by the Church.(35)

All these theories on the soul grew up in the Hellenistic world in the form of Christian polemics against:－

the Sceptics, Epicureans, and Stoics, who did not believe in life after death;
the Gnostics, who held an extreme dualism of body and soul, perhaps derived from Orphism and Platonism; and
the pagan neo-Platonists.
Of these three, the last had the most influence on Christian thought.

The most important, though not the earliest, neo-Platonist was Plotinus, a third-century Egyptian. His philosophical system was built around his psychology. The soul for him was an incorporeal reality which gave form to the body but owed nothing in return. With the soul were all the metaphysical qualities of pure intellect, unity, moving and vitalising power, and even matter. Among these, the greatest was intellect, and intellectual self-knowledge was the highest mode of subjective life. The human intellect bridges the realms of matter and mind, of which the latter was superior and illuminated. In fact, the intellect was one of the higher emanations from the First Mover, the One that is pure Being, or God, and by relying on intellect, the soul can free itself from corporeality and begin the long ascent to the One. Thus, for Plotinus, the soul is a created divinity, a part of the Universal Soul, whose destiny it is to return to merge into the One. This soul cannot sin or suffer, and has no individual mortality. Moreover, the body-soul dichotomy is absolute. It is obviously not a Christian conception.(36)

ST. AUGUSTINE

Unlike Plotinus, St. Augustine's Platonism was a Christian one. For Plotinus, all that matters is the flight of the soul to the One; historical events on earth are of no consequence. For Augustine, on the contrary, history has a goal, namely, the salvation of human kind by the Incarnation of God on earth. Worldly events therefore have eternal meaning. Furthermore, since God is all good, everything made by God must also be good, and that includes this world and human bodies. On the other hand, Augustine is true to the Platonic position that the ultimate good is spiritual, and is to be sought in the intelligible world of the soul, not the material world of the body. Hence, he is anxious to show the superiority of the soul to the body; and he defines the soul as a rational substance equipped to rule the body. By defining the soul as a substance, he asserts its independence from the body. He also borrows, with adaptation, Plato's proofs in the Phaedo of the immortality of the soul. However, he is also careful to say that neither is the human soul a part of the divine substance, nor is there only one soul for all of humanity; the former because the divine substance is indivisible, and the latter because each human has different and distinct lives and actions.

Now, if Augustine's definition of the soul guaranteed its independence from the body and its immortality, it accentuates another problem inherent in any dichotomous formulation: What is a human being Augustine's answer to that question is that a human being is a rational soul using a rational soul using a mortal and earthly body. The soul uses the body to keep in touch with the world of material objects and sensations, and it gives life to the body by mediating between it and the divine Ideas. But if the model is that of someone using an instrument or tool, the unity of the human being is called into doubt. Scripturally, the human being is a unity; further, retribution on the immortal soul after death would not be fair unless body and soul acted as a whole during life. This problem of the unity of the human being was one of the unsettled questions bequeathed by Augustine to the Middle Ages, and which none but St. Thomas Aquinas could resolve.(37)

ST. THOMAS QUINAS

Just as St. Augustine Christianised neo-Platonism, St. Thomas Aquinas has often been said to have "baptised" Aristotle. If in Augustine's thought, the fullness of Christian faith was always in advance of his philosophy, Aquinas was able to assert the independence of philosophy as well as its instrumentality for rationalising that faith.

Aquinas's conception of the human is basically the hylomorphism (from hyle, 'matter', and morphe, 'form') of Aristotle. He defines the soul as "the first actuality of a natural organic body having life in potentiality"; and as "the first principle by which we live, sense, move, and understand". However, these definitions have to be seen in a broader framework to show his solution to the problems bequeathed by Augustine.

Aquinas posits a hierarchical universe of actuality and potentiality. The more something is actualised, the higher it is in the hierarchy; the more it remains potentiality, the lower it is. Matter is potentiality, form is actuality. Undifferentiated matter is pure potentiality; it is the lowest on the scale. God is pure actuality; It is the highest. Only God is fully actualised; only God exists by Its own essence (God is, simply because of What It is.) Everything else exists because its potentiality for existence is actualised to a less complete degree.

Now, the human being stands in the middle of this hierarchy. It is composed of a certain material substance, and a form which actualises the material substance into a living body. This form is the soul. Since the soul can perform certain of its operations in which the body has no part, it must subsist by itself; i.e., it is a substance, an immaterial substance. As a substantial form, the human soul is higher than those forms which are wholly embedded in matter, such as the soul of a dog or the form of a chair, but lower than the angels which are forms completely separated from matter. The human soul possesses the degree of being that its nature, its location on the hierarchy calls for. Unlike an angel, it does not have enough actuality to attain its perfection in a separated state. It is incomplete in itself; it is a simple intellect whose light is so faint that it needs a body to perform most of its operations. At the same time, the body is just potentiality that requires a form to actualise it. So body and soul each need the other for its own completion. The human being that results from such a union of matter and form is a substantial union, not an accidental one. It is not a mixed being, because each component still subsists. It is neither an angel locked in a material prison, nor a spiritual motor driving a material shell, because the soul needs the body to complete itself. Both components are made by the one true God and are therefore both good, and both necessary. The human being is hence not one being made up of two other beings, because it is only the soul, the form, that actualises, that provides the act-of-being (esse), for the body, the potentiality. So there is only one act-of-being for the human unity, one being of two distinct substances (but not two real subjects or distinct existences). It follows that there can be only one substantial form or one soul for this human unity－a single indivisible soul that has all the rational, sentient, and nutritive powers, not three separate souls for various functions. And if the soul is indivisible, it cannot have been derived by division from the souls of one's parents. It can only have been individually created by God from nothing.

In this way, Aquinas guarantees the unity of the human being without endangering the immortality of the soul. The soul is immortal because all substantial forms are by definition immortal or incorruptible. Since the soul's existence does not depend on the body, but is derived from God, it cannot corrupt with the death of the body. Further, since the act-of-being and individuation of a thing are always found together, and both are therefore found in the soul, the human being does not lose its individuation by the death of the body. Finally, since the human being is a unity of soul and body, and neither is complete without the other, a reunion in the apocalyptic resurrection is not only reasonable but also necessary. Thus, Aquinas succeeds in completely harmonising Hellenic concepts with Hebrew eschatology. His is still a dualistic view of the human being, but it manages to avoid any extreme form of dichotomy.(38)

THE MAGISTERIUM

By the early 17th century, doctrines on the soul had received many official definitions by the Christian Church. While many of these definitions were not established as infallible dogma, they were issued by popes and councils in exercise of the magisterium of the universal Church, and constituted positions from which no Catholic might lightly depart. These positions, as summarised in the systematic index of the Enchiridion symbolorum, included the following: the human soul is not a part of the divine substance; it is created by God from nothing; it did not pre-exist, and is not generated by parents; it does not evolve from the sensitive to the rational; it is a substance; it is not one for all humans, but one for each; it is not naturally either good or bad; it is rational and intellectual, but is not by itself an object evident to cognition; it is immortal; it is united with the body, not accidentally, but is the form of the body truly as such and in the act-of-being; it is endowed with freedom, which can be proved from Scripture as well as from reason.(39) Such, in the main, was the doctrine of the soul which the Jesuit missionaries brought to Ming China.(40) Such too, was the basis of the pre-Vatican II teachings handed to us in the form of questions and answers on the nature of humankind. Its indebtedness to, and imprisonment by, Greek philosophy is evident. Where do we go from here?

  

31. Brandon, Man and his destiny, op. cit., 204-208.

32.Brandon, ibid., 208-211. J.A.T. Robinson, The body, a study in Pauline theology (London, 1966), 11-16.Gelin, op. cit., 23-24.

33.Brandon, ibid., 211-236.

34.Ibid., 211-224. Robinson, op. cit., 17-33.

35.Brandon, ibid., 224-236. New Cath. Ency., XIII. 452-455.

36.A. Hilary Armstrong, St. Augustine and Christian Platonism (Villanova, 1967), 4-9. Baker, op. cit., 94-96. Thomas Whittaker, The Neo-Platonists (4th ed., Cambridge, 1928), 40-53.

37.Etienne Gilson, The Christian philosophy of St. Augustine (NY, 1960), 44-55. F. Coppleston, S.J., A history of medieval philosophy (NY, 1972), 42-43. Armstrong, op. cit., 4-17.

38.Etienne Gilson, The Christian philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (NY. 1956). 174-199. Coppleston, ibid., 186-189. H.D. Gardeil, Introduction to the philosophy of St. Thomas (London, 1956), III: Psychology, 5-7, 14-42. A.C. Pegis, St. Thomas and the problem of the soul in the 13th century (Toronto,1934).

39.H.J.D. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum: definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, edited by J.B. Umberg, S.J. (Friburg, 1937), 'Index systematicus, VI-d, Anima humana '

40.Ai Ju-lueh (Giulio Aleni), S.J., Hsing-hsueh tsu shu (Hangchow, 1623; Shanghai, 1873), is the earliest and most complete example. Cf. the Jesuit edition of Aristotle's works published at Coimbra, Portugal, in the late 16th century, entitled Commentarii collegii conimbricensis e Societate Jesu (Vatican Library microfilms).

作者：祈士真 Casey, John J. 年代：1980

Perhaps it may seem strange to some to talk about effectiveness in relation to philosophy rather than to talk about truth, certainty or meaningfulness, three terms with which philosophy traditionally has been associated. But the idea of the effectiveness of a philosophy cannot be overlooked today given the fact that our modern world is one of philosophical pluralism with its competing systems. Among the various philosophers, we have seen the effectiveness of a number of French existentialists led by Jean Paul Sartre in shaping the minds of their countrymen and beyond the borders of their country the minds of many others as well. And who is not impressed with the expanse of Marxism although well aware that in many cases the freedom to accept or reject the doctrine was not an individual option. So the fact of the matter is that philosophies differ in their effectiveness, that is in the ability of any given one to stimulate the minds of intelligent people to seek rational solutions to contemporary problems in accord with its principles. In view of this, it is easy to see that the question－How effective is contemporary Christian Philosophy? －is indeed a valid query on its own merits and perhaps particularly so to us in the Orient where the outward reach of the Church in mission is a prime concern.

The first problem that arises, of course, is the question of suitable criteria. By what means that you can be reasonably certain are independent of other influences, do you measure the effectiveness of a philosophy? And again, although Marxism's effectiveness may be measured by the number of revolutions it has fostered and existentialism even by the effect it has had on the world of Letters, how does one measure the effectiveness of Christian Philosophy? We shall see that the answer to this question, that is the criteria whereby we might judge the effectiveness of contemporary Christian Philosophy, was one of the prime concerns of that very philosophic movement. As a result, an understanding of what Christian Philosophy in the contemporary sense is, also tells us what the built-in criteria for judging its effectiveness are.

What the name Christian Philosophy indicates might seem obvious at first glance but both within the context of local experience, as well as within the context of general Catholic experience, it can be misunderstood easily. The misunderstanding within the context of local experience can arise from the fact that Buddhism and Taoism in traditional Chinese thinking have been considered to be both religions and philosophies. Therefore it is easy to interpret Christianity in the same way and consider Christian Philosophy as the non-religious part of the total teaching. The misunderstanding within the context of general Catholic experience can arise from thinking of Christian Philosophy as referring to a period long since past in the history of philosophy which covers roughly the thirteenth century and a short period of time immediately after. But in actuality the name Christian Philosophy designates a movement that has been part of the Catholic scene since the beginning of the nineteenth century, waxing and waning with the circumstances of the times. Basically, the movement is the search for a suitable systematic reflective understanding of man that would be acceptable on its own merits to intelligent people of any given culture and at the same time would offer a firm foundation for a presentation of Christian revelation.

The focal point of the Christian Philosophy movement is commonly considered to be the famous Encyclical of Leo XIII, called Aeterni Patris from the first two words of the Latin text but offically sub-titled "On the Restoration in Catholic Schools of Christian Philosophy According to the Mind of the Angelic Doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas. "(1) Whether one considers the effect of the encyclical either as slowing down the progress of true Christian Philosophy or as rescuing it from chaos and setting it on the right track, one cannot deny its impact. The encyclical explicitly recognized the Christian Philosophy movement which had taken place within the Church and was an obvious attempt to control it by making it an official movement and giving it a norm, namely the mind of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

In content, the encyclical was an optimistic piece whose author reasoned as follows. Of all the periods in the history of the Church, the scholastic period was the most remarkable for the intellectual activity of its ministers. During that time Christian scholars set up a system of thought that was more than a match for the religious, social and political problems of their day. Chief among these scholars was Thomas Aquinas. Given his accomplishment, why could not Christian scholars of the present day follow Thomas Aquinas in their attempt to cope with the religious, social and political problems of the modern era. To help this along, if seminaries and Catholic universities taught according to the mind of Thomas Aquinas, then the pastors and teachers of the future would all speak the same language in addressing the problems of their times and places and seeking solutions to the same.

Leo's optimism grew out of his conviction that there was basically one philosophy in the same sense that we today think there is only one science. That one philosophy is valid at any time or in any place because it is based on reality as it is and not as it is understood. Therefore one need not talk about a European, a Chinese or an Indian philosophy but rather one need only talk about true philosophy and false philosophy just as no one in science talks about a European, a Chinese or an Indian science but rather about real science and charlatanry. So it was, then, that Leo urged seminaries and Catholic universities to get to the task of teaching this true philosophy and developing it' to meet contemporary needs.

The result of Leo's optimism was a flurry of scholarly research into medieval thought that has helped all of us understand better that remarkable period in the history of philosophy. Such scholarly research also produced materials for seminary and university use from the philosophy course of Desidere Mercier to the Insight of Bernard Lonergan.(2) And yet, withall, the hundredth anniversary of the encyclical passed less than a year ago－August 4, 1979－with hardly a ripple in Catholic scholarly circles. It was not that the movement of Leo XIII lacked success or that Thomism lacked any internal consistency whereby given its common principles, it could not more than hold its own. In fact the encyclical of Leo XIII helped establish Thomism as a respected philosophical position in contemporary philosophy. What happened was that the problems that Leo XIII saw philosophy solving simply had moved off center stage and were replaced by contemporary problems of a different nature.

Leo saw philosophy in relation to the Christian faith as fulfilling several functions. First, he saw philosophy in the traditional scholastic sense of both demonstrating the existence of God and revealing certain things about the nature of God. Second, he saw philosophy as fulfilling an apologetic function whereby belief could be shown to be perfectly reasonable. Third, he saw philosophy as providing the methodology whereby belief could be shown to be perfectly reasonable. Third, he saw philosophy as providing the methodology whereby theology became a true science. And finally, he saw philosophy as the defender of the truths of the Faith and the destroyer of error. In short, Leo saw a world more complex to be sure but still the same world Thomas Aquinas had addressed in his Summa Contra Gentiles. But there were others who saw a world primarily concerned with man and his place in a rapidly expanding universe. These were the ones whose vision set Christian Philosophy on the road it was following, so different from that to which Leo hoped to bring it back.

The initial impetus towards Christian Philosophy in the contemporary sense of the movement was provided by a Frenchman by the name of Louis de Bonald.(3) He had lived through the turbulent period of the French revolution and although his sympathies were with the old order rather than the new, nevertheless he was steeped in the intellectual climate of enlightenment in France with its deep concern for man the social being. At the same time he was a serious Catholic who deplored the divorce of reason from religion. Therefore, when he began to develop his philosophy, it showed two important characteristics drawn from this background. First, it was a social philosophy concentrating on man as a social being and second, it sought to demonstrate the absolute need for God's revelation. The first characteristic would make it relevant to the intellectual climate of the times and the second would make ti specificially Christian.

Taking a page from Descartes, de Bonald proceeded from a basic principle by natural reason alone. But his first principle was not the result of a process like Descartes' famous methodic doubt but rather was an observable fact, namely men speak. On reflecting upon this observation, it became clear to him that Language is indeed the constitutive principle of society in general and therefore of the particular domestic, civil and religious societies. Since it is Language that makes social life possible and therefore society cannot exist without it, Language itself had to begin with society. But what is its origin? It could not be an invention of man because when man reasons, he must use Language. And if he had made up Language himself, then he would have had to reason without using words which is impossible. Therefore, Language had to be a free gift given to man by his creator, God. And because of the necessary connection between language and reason, with this gift also came the figt of Truth. In short, all of this giving is God revealing and therefore a proper understanding of man in society brings us to the absolute necessary of God's revelation.

The philosophy of de Bonald was far more complex and far-reaching than the short summary given above but his idea of a Christian philosophy is clearly delineated in it. His thought provides a rational foundation for God's revelation which in the religious society of Christianity we have in the Scriptures. But it is also easy to see that de Bonald's doctrines are capable of development in several ways, two of which caused difficulty in the Church. On the one hand, if one concentrates on the priority of Language in reasoning－that is, man reasons only through the use of Language－and Language is a gift of God which also contains the gift of truth, and the whole process of God giving language and truth is by definition revelation, then the role of reason in arriving at truth becomes completely overshadowed by revelation. In short, reason becomes unnecessary. On the other hand, if one concentrates on the fact of Revelation, it is quite obvious that God revealing is much broader in its scope than the Christian Scriptures. In fact, the initial Revelation of God, which came long. before the Christian Scriptures, gave us truth. Therefore, what the Christian Scriptures contain is already implicit in what God initially revealed to us and can be arrived at through the use of Language in reason. It was in the light of such interpretations of the Role of Reason and Faith that the statements of the first Vatican Counicl, while somewhat quaint to us today, were so vigorous in their own time.(4) And it was to support in a very practical way the teachings of the first Vatican Council that Leo XIII published his encyclical Aterni Patris in which he attempted to steer the Christian Philosophy movement back into orthodox channels by wedding it to the Thomistic tradition.

But as mentioned above, changes had already taken place on the world intellectual stage and a return to Thomism could not overthrow these changes. Even de Bonald himself was one of the last who would analyse society from an organic point of view. Those who followed him would tread the positivist path and several became the basic theoreticians of the new science of sociology. Philosophy, for its part, continued to focus more and more on anthropology not as a metaphysical extension of what science had to offer but rather in directions totally its own. The first philosopher to come to grips with the problem of Christian Philosophy within this new context rather than within the context of Leo's encyclical was Maurice Blondel in his famous work L' Action.(5)

Blondel was convinced that creative thinking in the Church must take place within the context of the thought that occupies modern man. Past philosophical systems may solve problems to the satisfaction of specialized groups but in making use of them the group becomes isolated from the wider intellectual community and from the thought patterns of society in general. In short, we end up talking only to ourselves and not to the people to whom we intend to speak. To overcome this defect, he looked for a key notion taken from inner experience as his starting point, a notion understandable and common to everyone. This was the notion of action.

Blondel saw man as both a thinker and a doer and it was always something of a puzzle that there is a dichotomy between what we think and what we do. Indeed the simpler and more straight forward approach to a problem lay in doing rather than in thinking. Thus, if we ask the question－Does man have a destiny? －the more effective way by far of answering that question is to study man doing rather than thinking because it is by action AND NOT thinking that we solve the problem of our destiny. Now the question of man's destiny is the central human problem for Blondel, the focal point of all man's willing and therefore the focal point of all his action. Blondel chose this problem because he saw the question of Destiny as the universal one that could not be avoided. If one tries to suppress it, by so doing he affirms it in its entirety. Nor does the problem have a negative solution since the will for nothingness is a contradiction. The problem of our destiny springs from the deepest source of our willing; it is the principle of our action. What we must do is measure its scope and its scope can be measured because action that is the result of man's willing is determined in so far as it must fall within a certain structure.

Beginning with the more elementary activities of man and continuing to the more complex, we gradually come to understand the inner structure of action and its development. In knowledge, for instance, the most elementary datum is sensation which man recognizes to be beset by inconsistencies. To overcome this defect, man creates science which in turn leads to the action of synthesis. Society begins in the determinism of consciousness which necessarily gives rise of freedom. Freedom in expressing itself in action meets resistence from both the body and the world. The result of this interaction is the individual. Still under the same restraints of his action, the individual seeks a complement outside himself to be a cooperator. This gives rise to deeper unions among individuals from whence comes the various levels of society; family, nation, humanity. Moral action successively passes through a utilitarian ethics and metaphysics to a disinterested ethics based on an absolute that is not yet defined. Finally, there is the action of man seeking self-fulfillment and self-sufficiency. First, he attributes religious values to his natural actions by attaching to experienced finite objects, infinite and absolute characteristics. When he realizes that such superstition involves a contradiction, he is faced with the stark fact that within the natural order, he will never find the self-fulfillment and self-sufficiency that he is seeking. And now comes the ultimate question－How in such a situation can action continue?

In Blondel's reasoning, we have now arrived at the point where action brings us to God. Once man realizes that in the natural order he cannot find what he needs for self-fulfillment, then he is faced with his most important decision－either to accept God or to do without him. But to reject God is the death of action. Therefore, man cannot truely live unless he consents to introduce God into his life. But even when he consents, man is powerless to place God under his control since God is completely beyond man's grasp. In the final analysis, then, man can only reach his destiny by God freely giving himself to man. Man himself can only wait for the unknown Messiah. Philosophy, then, can bring man to the threshold of Christianity but no further. Anything beyond that requires faith and practice.

Although this is a very sketchy summary of Blondel's early thought, we can see contained within it two very clear criteria by which he himself judged the effectiveness of Christian Philosophy. The first is that whatever thought is to be developed in the quest for a genuine Christian Philosophy must be within the mainstream of contemporary thought. And the mainstream of contemporary thought is not the domain of the specialist but the general undercurrent of present thinking. In short, we must think the way that the people of our time think. The second is that whatever philosophy meets this first criterion must truly provide a suitable basis on which to present the Christian faith if that philosophy is to be a Christian philosophy.

Before turning to a contemporary Christian philosopher and subjecting his work to the scrutiny of these criteria, it must be said in all fairness to the Christian Philosophy movement that Blondel's idea of Christian Philosophy although indisputably the contemporary one is not the only one. A second and very different idea of what Christian Philosophy should be was advanced by Etienne Gilson, the historian of philosophy and Thomist.(6) According to Gilson, Blondel's model became the standard model of contemporary Christian Philosophy because of a general misunderstanding of a key phrase in Leo XIII 's encyclical Aeterni Patris. That key phrase was "according to the mind of" Thomas Aquinas. Most interpreted this phrase as referring to content and therefore indicating the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas. This misinterpretation led to the development of what we know of as Neo-Thomism. Actually, according to Gilson, this phrase did not refer to content but to an approach or methodology. Thus, what should have resulted from Leo's encyclical was the study and adoption of Saint Thomas' method.

Gilson summarily stated Aquinas' method as follows. Thomas was a theologian who was interested in making the Faith understandable to the people of his time. To do this, he took the best of the secular knowledge of his time－which was the thought of Aristotle－and adapted it in a striking way to the needs of theology, always beginning from Faith and returning to Faith as the endpoint of each of his investigations. Now it was precisely this procedure which made Aquinas so successful, namely the taking of the best of the science of his day and putting it to the service of the Faith. In Thomas' time, all secular knowledge was one; that is, there was no separation of science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics. This separation began with Descartes and has been plaguing us ever since. But at that time it did not exist. Thus Aquinas could take his questions of Faith and trace their understanding through physics and metaphysics back to theology. What made this possible was the fact that Aristotle's metaphysics was based on his physics, the important link that made secular knowledge one. At the present time, we do not have a contemporary metaphysics drawn from contemporary physics; but nevertheless the best science of our time is contemporary physics. Thus the true Christian Philosophy movement of the present day should be the work of theologians who are also good scientists and who are truely attempting to discover the contemporary metaphysics necessary to synthesize Science and the Faith.

The differences between Blondel's position and that of Gilson are immediately evident and need not be commented upon further. Suffice it to say that the Second Vatican Council in its Decree on the Training of Priests－a direct descendent, to be sure, of Aeterni Patris－gave its blessing to the approach of Blondel. The Council document stated that while students should rely on the philosophical patrimony which is forever valid, they should, nevertheless, become familiar with modern philosophies, particularly the ones that are most influential in their own countries. In learning philosophy, they should be concerned with seeking rational solutions to real problems of life in their time and place. In short, philosophy should enable them to dialogue with the men of their times.

But the Second Vatican Council, unconsciously perhaps, also gave a new impetus to the Christian Philosophy movement in its contemporary approach and this new impetus produced the contemporary Christian Philosophy to be examined in this paper.(7) In the same document mentioned above, an admonition was given to seminary personnel to seek a better integration of theology and philosophy in order that students might understand more clearly how both work together in explaining the mystery of Christ. In fact, says the document, this harmonious interlocking of philosophy and theology should be the subject of a special course to be given to students at the very beginning of their major seminary training. It is easy to see how this admonition challenges scholars to demonstrate, as it were, how a philosophy can offer a rational sub-stratum for the truths of the faith. No one has made a more serious attempt since the second Vatican Council to do just this than Karl Rahner in his work Foundations of Christian Faith.(8) For this reason, we take his as the representative contemporary Philosophy

Rahner approaches the philosophy that will set the stage for Christianity as would Blondel, looking at it not with the eye of the philosophical specialist who together with his fellows has given us a plurality of conflicting starting points, but rather with the eye of the average intelligent person who sees man as the universal problem he is to himself and therefore as the starting point of philosophical speculation. Thus, Rahner defines philosophy as "every theoretical reflection upon and self-interpretation of human existence." But this reflection is not done in isolation from the flow of life but rather in the world, in time and in history. In short, man reflecting upon himself must do so in the context of this world, his times and cultural-historical milieux. What this means in practice is that there is present to each man a ready-made interpretation of what he is, an interpretation springing from the cultural-historical milieux into which he was born. This ready-made interpretation is his historical origin. What he actually does, then, is reflect upon his historical origin to see what it tells him about himself. Once he receives this information, he then asks himself whether this information is still valid within the context of his own self-experience and therefore whether or not he should still remain bound to it.

At this point an important question concerning the validity of philosophic experience arises. Since cultural-historical context differ, will not a person's understanding of man differ in accord with his historical origin? Although Rahner does not specifically ask this question, we know from what he says on cognate points particularly on the relationship between philosophy and theology that his answer would be no. Different cultural-historical contexts simply provide different roads whereby men will arrive at the same destination because that destination is the basic anthropology that underlies any culture. And whether we understand it or not we must act in accord with it. Because all of our cultural-historical constructs have been built on this one anthropology, we can arrive at a clearer understanding of that basic anthropology through reflecting upon any of these constructs in relation to ourselves.

Rahner's reflecting man would, indeed, be very "Western" in the sense that the cultural-historical milieux within which he is going to reflect is a world of advanced science and technology as well as a world of Christianity. Science presents him with an anthropology but this anthropology is one that allows him to experience himself in a number of ways to be sure, but always in ways that are not himself. In other words, science presents man only as an object which can be dissected and studied. And yet only he, the subject, can analyse and study himself as an object. What this means is that he cannot be derived completely from the sciences; there is something more that is uniquely his own and that depends on himself. As a result, he begins to experience himself as subject and person.

From subject and person, man's reflection inevitably leads mim to the experience of transcendence. For Rahner, transcendence is intuited by man when he realizes that although he is limited in his world, time and history, his horizons in both theory and practice are unlimited. Given this intuition, to evade the experience of transcendence is impossible; at best one can only postpone it and if one waits too long, he comes to that most striking experience of transcendence, death itself where the gap between man's infinite horizon and finite reality is most clearly thrust upon him. But in experiencing transcendence, man also intuits himself as responsible and free. He experiences this intuition in relation to his becoming; that is, he experiences himself as both responsible for his own becoming and free to choose within a given range of actions associated with his becoming in his world, time and history. It is easy to see that this experience also carries within it the experience of dependence because in practicing his responsibility and freedom he sees that he is also at the disposal of his world, time and history, a disposal over which he has no control.

Once man experiences what he is－subject and person and therefore transcendent, responsible and free as a result of his transcendence, and finally dependent as to his own disposal－he has arrived at what Rahner calls the presence of mystery. This mystery is basically the vast, silent darkness of what is beyond the feeble light of man's attainment. In short, it is the recognition of the beyond ourselves. Rahner calls this the unthematic or undifferentiated perception of God, and it is this perception that sets the stage for Christianity. As mentioned above, Western man is not only reflecting in a world of advanced science and technology but also in a world where an important part of his historical origin is Christianity. Therefore, as he stands before the unthematic perception of God, he must ask himself is the Christian thematic perception of God still valid within the context of his own self-experience and should he still remain bound to it.

Now it is easy to see that Rahner's thought meets both of the criteria we have taken from Blondel to judge the effectiveness of contemporary Christian Philosophy. In the book in which Rahner states his thought－ Foundations of Christian Faith－the first criterion, namely that Christian Philosophy must be within the general mainstream of current thinking, is theoretically fulfilled. After all, Rahner specifically stated that this is what he set out to do and he gave convincing reasons to show that he had actually done so. The second criterion, that is that the philosophy expounded must offer a suitable basis on which to present the Faith, is not only theoretically fulfilled but also practically fulfilled in this instance. Rahner not only said he was going to show how philosophy and theology complement one another but he actually demonstrates this very claim in the major portion of his book.

But it is clear from the above that we are faced by one problem, and that is how do we know that Rahner's philosophy is indeed within the mainstream of contemporary thought practically as well as theoretically. Probably most would answer by saying that a general survey of contemporary European Philosophy would help remove this problem. But for those of us in the Orient, an example closer to home would be much more welcome. Can we find a Chinese philosopher doing Rahner's kind of thinking? The answer is yes, we have one in Fung Yu-lan (馮友蘭) an outstanding contemporary Chinese philosopher.

Fung Yu-lan, in a brief work entitled A Short History of Chinese Philosophy written just before the Chinese liberation, revealed much of his own thinking on philosophy in the Chinese tradition.(9) To him, philosophy is systematic, reflective thinking on life. Everyone who is not yet dead is in life but only some who are living engage in reflective thinking about life and among these, a smaller number still whose reflection is systematic. These people we call philosophers, that is those who think reflectively on Life and then express their thoughts in a systematic way.

When one reflects on Life, he sees that part of the universal experience of man is that of transcendence and to Fung Yu-lan this creates a major problem in relation to his historical origin in this world and at this time. He is aware of the fact that in the West, the transcendental experience has been a major force in the stability of a strong religious tradition. On the other hand, Westerners looking at the cultural-historical reality of China see the Chinese as less concerned than they are with religion. And, indeed, Fung Yu-lan recognizes this as a fact. But what does this mean? Does it mean that the Chinese man simply denies the transcendental experience and as a result there is no spiritual basis in Chinese civilization?

Fung Yu-lan's reflection on the kind of a man he is in relation to his own historical origin leads him to assert that the Chinese man does not deny the transcendental experience but rather expresses it differently from the Western man. To clarify this, he analyses religion and philosophy. His analysis brings him to the conclusion that the heart of the matter is a question of values. Religion is thought to give one super-moral values while philosophy only moral values. Love of God, for instance, is a super-moral value while love of man is a moral value. Does this mean, then, that the Chinese are not conscious of those values that are higher than moral ones? The answer to this question is, of course, no. The reason is that the Chinese man satisfies his craving for transcendental experience in philosophy in a way that would be very similar to the love of what Rahner would call the non-thematic God. So therefore, in philosophy he has the super-moral values expressed and appreciated and in living according to philosophy these super-moral values are experienced.

In reading Fung Yu-lan, we find a number of peculiar prejudices and preconceptions expressed concerning religion in general and Christianity in particular that are not incorporated into the above summary. But they are no more surprising than similar Western thought concerning Chinese religion and institutions. But what we do see quite clearly is a good practical example of a Chinese philosopher going the same kind of philosophizing that Karl Rahner is doing and from this we can judge that Rahner's Christian philosophy would be effective in this context. In short, Rahner and Fung Yu-lan would be perfectly capable of dialogue, one with the other.

What we have seen above is only one example taken from the oriental context. Unfortunately, the exclusiveness of Marxist thought in China precludes free interaction of philosophical opinion, particularly on the important point of human transcendence. But the one example we have is clear enough to give a strong indication that the kind of philosophizing the contemporary Christian Philosophy movement is engaged in is effective in addressing itself to the intelligent, thinking person.



  

1.AETERNI PATRIS may be found in Etienne Gilson, THE CHURCH SPEAKS TO THE MODERN WORLD. THE SOCIAL TEACHINGS OF LEO XIII (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1954), pp. 31-51.

2.Lonergan saw his work as contributing to the movement of Leo XIII. In INSIGHT (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), p. 747, he says as much. However, his later work METHOD IN THEOLOGY (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979), shows a shift away from this position towards what we call in this paper Contemporary Christian Philosophy.

3.De Bonald's works have not been put into English. However clear presentations of his thought may be found in Mary Hall Quinlan, HISTORICAL THOUGHT OF THE VICOMPTE DE BONALD (Washington: CUA, 1953) and Etienne Gilson et al., RECENT PHILOSOPHY: HEGEL TO THE PRESENT (New York: Random House, 1962), pp. 209-214, 714-718.

4.See CONCILIORUM OECUMENICORUM DECRETA (Rome: Herder, 1962), pp. 780-787.

5.A complete analysis of Blondel's work is contained in Henri Bouillard, BLONDEL AND CHRISTIANITY (Washington: Corpus Books, 1969).

6.Gilson explains his position at length in his work THE PHILOSOPHERS AND THEOLOGY (NewYork: Random House, 1962).

7.Clear documentation is contained in Austin Flannery, O.P., ed., VATICAN COUNCIL II THE CONCILIAR AND POST CONCILIAR DOCUMENTS (Northport: Costello Publishing Company, 1975).

8.Karl Rahner, FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH (New York: The Seabury Press, 1978). The theoretical content of Rahner's Christian Philosophy is found primarily in the first forty-three pages of the work. The rest of the book is devoted to the practical application of this philosophy to the understanding of the Faith.

9.Fung Yu-lan, A SHORT HISTORY OF CHINESE PHILOSOPHY (New York: The Free Press, 1966). The work was originally written in 1947 and the author saw it as an opportunity to explain both his own philosophy and Chinese philosophy in general to an English -speaking audience. He does this primarily in the first chapter of the book.

作者：白敏慈 Baptista, Marciano 年份：1980

1. INTRODUCTION

One of the less publicized facts concerning Karl Rahner is that his doctoral dissertation in theology, written in 1936 and as yet unpublished, was "on the Church's origin from the wound in the side of Christ as portrayed in the writings of the Fathers." Rahner's interest in the pierced side of Christ has never left him. It is the aim of this essay to examine briefly some of his writings on the Sacred Heart and to discuss their relevance for the local Church in Hong Kong.

2. THE WORD "HEART"

Rahner begins his consideration of the devotion to the Sacred Heart by examining the word "heart" in its symbolic significance. Although the word "heart" of necessity includes the idea of bodiliness and therefore includes also the bodily heart, "in the original (and not the subsesequent, derived or metaphorical) sense, 'heart' is a primal word. It is not susceptible of a proper definition by the joining of better known concepts."(3) The word "heart", Rahner adds, "falls into the category of words for the whole man; that is, it signifies a human reality predicable of the whole man as a person of body and spirit, a reality which is therefore prior to any possible distinction between body and soul."(4) Rahner continues:－

"Heart", taken in this primal sense, denotes the centre which is the original kernel of everything else in the human person..... Here is the focal point of a man's primal and integral relations with others and above all with God: for God is concerned with the whole man, and in his divine actions it is to man's centre, his heart, that he addresses his graces or his judgements.(5)

Since a heart can either be good or wicked the author emphasizes that "it is..... by no means inevitable nor a matter of course that 'heart' should imply love. The fact that Lord freely wished the centre of his Person to consist of 'love for us' is just the incomprehensible thing in our experience if him. "(6) Rahner adds, as if in wonderment, :－

And our ultimate discovery is that this centre (this "Heart") is possessed by a free, unfathomable love. This love, as the inmost "essence" of God himself, is bestowed on us as a free gift. And it is this love that characterizes and unifies all the attitudes of our Lord. (7)

Given the above considerations Rahner goes on to define veneration of the Sacred Heart as "the latreutic cult of the Person of Christ under the aspect of his Heart in so far as this is governed by the prodigal love of God for sinful men, the love in which God gives himself to the sinner."(8)

3. CERTAIN DOGMATIC CONSIDERATIONS

Rahner states that "theology can and must show that the devotion to the Sacred Heart is materially contained in the Scripture and in patristic and medieval tradition."(9) But he immediately adds: "nevertheless this abstract dogmatic argument and the indication of a precedent will not provide sufficient basis for the present devotion to the Sacred Heart. "(10) For this we must appeal "to the ‘private revelations’of Paray-le-Monial."(11)

In its present form the devotion to the Sacred Heart is a "new creation, from the perennially valid material of the faith, of something that was demanded at that precise moment by the actual historical circumstances of the Church. "(12)

Rahner further explains that "the private revelation points out the one path which the Church must with all urgency take. What is new is not the matter of such a revelation but the placing or shifting of the emphasis within the ambit of what is legitimate for Christianity."(13)

4. DEVOTION IS ESPECIALLY FOR THE MODERN WORLD

Some have claimed that devotion to the Sacred Heart was a corrective for Jansenism. Rahner denies this and states, concerning what is new in the devotion, that: "It cannot be described exclusively or even principally in terms of Jansenism. Not only was Jansenism and its range of ideas too ephemeral a phenomenon to provoke such an answer, but the message only became effective in a period no longer swayed by Jansenism."(14)

Rahner now comes to one of the central points concerning his theology of devotion to the Sacred Heart. He explains the newness of the devotion thus:－

The message must therefore be intended for the modern situation in general, which properly began only with the French Revolution. This period is characterized, and that in ever increasing measure, by the secularisation of life (of the state, society, economy, science, art). The religious values of Christianity are being progressively eliminated from modern life, and the burden of belief is resting more and more exclusively on the personal decision of the individual. The Christian world, which could once carry a man almost independently of his own decision, is subject to unceasing attenuation. Every man must live, irrespective of whether he decides for or against Christianity, in a situation marked by the outward, and therefore also inward, "absence of God", a situation which corresponds to Golgotha and Gethsemane in the life of Jesus (Mk. 14, 32 ff.; 15, 32 ff.), where life is to be found in death, where abandonment implies the deepest proximity to God, and where the power of God parades itself in weakness. (15)

Since the world is becoming more and more secularised and followers of Christ in the modern world find themselves more and more in a context of a world in which love has grown cold, then it is fitting that devotion to the Sacred Heart emphasizes the following: "the interior life, faith in the love of God, present even when it seems furthest away (in consequence of the growing sin and godlessness of the world, from which believers and unbelievers alike suffer), and reparation."(16) Rahner now explains these three aspects of the devotion more fully:－

Interior life is not the selfish luxury of religious introversion. The interior man is rather he who, by the power of God, believes and loves in spirit and in truth, in a world where the love of God has grown cold, or at least has almost ceased to project itself into "exterior" life. Interior life means the strengthening of man in faith and love without the props of an externally Christian society.

The second characteristic is faith in the love of God in spite of his judgements. It has a special meaning in our day, when God, the Lord of history, appears as an angry judge, when the hour of darkness seems to have overtaken human history, and the historical situation of the world reflects mysteriously the interior state of souls.

Reparation means the endurance of this godless situation with and in the Son, in Gethsemane and Golgotha, and fellowship in Christ's apparently fruitless love for the sinful world.(17)

5. SPIRITUALITY AND DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART

Although devotion to the Sacred Heart is, according to Pope XI, summa totius religionis (the epitome of all devotion), nevertheless it would be wrong to think that "devotion to the Sacred Heart and the spiritual life are one and the same thing..... The heart is the origin and centre of, but it is not identical with, the whole spiritual life."(18)

One could speak broadly about devotion to the Sacred Heart in such a way that it "would be conceptually and materially identical with Christianity. But that could be only harmful to the devotion."(19) Although it is possible to focus the whole of the spiritual life on explicit, conscious devotion to the Sacred Heart, "such a concentration is not part of the devotion recommended to every Christian."(20) This is because "Christian spirituality, which will include devotion to the Sacred Heart..... allows of an endless variety of forms, and within it devotion to the Sacred Heart can appear in the most various shapes and degrees of intensity. "(21)
  

1.Herbert Vorgrimler, Karl Rahner: His Life, Thought and Work, trans. Edward Quinn (London: Burns and Oates, 1965): p.26.

2.Karl Rahner, "Some Theses on the Theology of the Devotion," in Heart of the Saviour: A Symposium on Devotion to the Sacred Heart, edited by Josef Stierli (Freiburg: Herder, 1957): pp. 131 - 156. This same essay has been published, in a different translation, in Karl Rahner, "Some Theses for a Theology of Devotion to the Sacred Heart," Theological Investigations, vol. 3: The Theology of the Spiritual Life, trans. Karl-H and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon, 1967; London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1967): pp. 331- 352. In this article quotations will be take from the former Stierli edition. Cf. Karl Rahner, "The Theology of the Symbol," Theological Investigations, vol. 4: More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966; New York: Seabury, 1966): pp. 245 - 252.

3.Ibid., p. 132. Cf. Karl Rahner, "’Behold This Heart.’: Prelimiaries to a Theology of Devotion to the Sacred Heart," Theological Investigations, vol. 3: The Theology of the Spiritual Life, trans. Karl-H and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon, 1967; London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1967): pp. 321-330; Karl Rahner, "The Theological Meaning of the Veneration of the Sacred Heart," Theological Investigations, vol. 8: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life 2, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971; New York: Herder and Herder, 1971): pp. 217 - 228.

4.Ibid. Cf. Karl Rahner, "Faith as Courage," Meditations on Freedom and the Spirit (New York: Seabury, 1978): pp. 9-11, for a further discussion of this category of words.

5.Ibid., p. 133. Cf. Karl Rahner, "Sacred Heart," The Eternal Year, trans. John Shea, S. S. (London: Burns and Oates, 1964): pp. 121 - 128.

6.Ibid.

7.Ibid., p.137.

8.Ibid., p.138.

9.Ibid., p.139.

10.Ibid.

11.Ibid.

12.Ibid.

13.Ibid., p.140.

14.Ibid., p. 141.

15.Ibid.

16.Ibid., p.142. (Rahner’s italics.)

17.Ibid. (Rahner’s italics.)

18.Ibid., p.144.

19.Ibid., p.145.

20.Ibid.

21.Ibid., p.146.

6. FOR WHOM IS EXPLICIT DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART?

Explicit devotion to the Sacred Heart will be practised by "a small circle, a holy remnant of devotees, of true witnesses, fruitful patterns of genuine piety for others to imitate, a circle of which priests too would be members. "(22)

In particular, this devotion will be singularly appropriate for the priest of tomorrow since he will be a man whose "office will not carry weight through social prestige; he will have to set forth and prove its validity by the proofs of the Spirit and of power, by the authentic vigour of his experience of God."(23) Furthermore, "he will be a man who truly endures the grievous dark-ness of existence together with all his brothers and sisters, knowing that both its first source and its blessed fulfilment are found in the mystery of love which conquers by the incomprehensibility of the cross. "(24) In addition, "tomorrow's priest will be a man whose calling is most difficult of all to justify in profane terms, because his real success is always vanishing into the mystery of God and because he is not a psychotherapist dressed in the old-fashioned costume of a magician."(25)

In short, the priest of tomorrow must be man with a pierced heart

..... from which alone he draws strength for his mission. With the pierced heart: pierced through by the godlessness of life, pierced through by the folly of love, pierced through by lack of success, pierced through by the experience of his own wretchedness and profound unreliability, believing that only such communicates the strength for his mission, that all the authority of office, all objective validity of the world, all the efficacy of the sacraments' opus operatum, are only turned into the event of salvation by the grace of God if they come to man through this ineffable channel of the pierced heart. I say he is the man with the pierced heart because he is to lead .men to the very core of their existence, to their inmost heart, because he can only do so if he has found his heart; because he and others can only find this centre of existence, the heart, if they accept its being pierced, pierced by the incomprehensibility of love that is pleased to conquer only in death.(26)

Rahner concludes thus concerning the priest of tomorrow:－

Now when a priest of tomorrow who must be like this is always overtaxed by what he should be－and is by the grace of God at the bottom of his heart－anxiously asks where he is to find what he has not of himself, where he can contemplate in its archetypal simplicity what he himself should be, then there is only one thing for him to do－turn to the Lord whom he serves, look on him whom they pierced, and venerate the pierced Heart of Jesus Christ.(27)

Devotion to the Sacred Heart is also most appropriate for Jesuits whose spirituality, like all spiritualities, needs a “new protective force, protective (oddly enough) against itself; so balancing its internal forces that the particular within it builds up and does not destroy.(28) Rahner then explains that "our point is..... the devotion to the Sacred Heart is an inherent and necessary preventive for Ignatian Spirituality against its own dangers.”(29)

7. IS THE DEVOTION OUT-OF-DATE?

Rahner has no problem admitting that certain elements of the devotion to the Sacred Heart as handed down to us

….. do carry clear signs of their age; the limited viewpoint from which they have been presented can only be explained from the theological background of the seventeenth century. For example, this form of the devotion has no ordered connection with the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity….. Moreover one misses in the devotion a lively awareness of the dogma that Christ is our mediator with the Father….. But these "period" failings are not essential to the devotion and can be supplied without undue difficulty.(30)

Rahner adds that "all the ingredients of devotion to the Sacred Heart are borrowed from dogma, and in this sense the devotion is valid for all ages of Christianity."(31)

The situation of "love grown cold," however, which was the external stimulus for the devotion in the first place, far from decreasing in our time has, in fact, intensified. This has prompted Rahner to write, concerning the circumstances of secularisation, of the experience of absence of God and of "love grown cold," that since these circumstances

..... are still with us and show no sign of changing, indeed are only now revealing all their breadth and gravity, the cult of the Sacred Heart can only become more and more seasonable. If the devotion, understood in its proper and most profound sense, has suffered a reverse in very recent times, this is not because it is ill adapted to our age. Such a reverse is rather itself a sign that "charity has grown cold."(32)

Rahner now elaborates his position concerning why he considers the devotion is most modern in these words:－

Do you imagine that this devotion to the Sacred Heart is old-fashioned, dated, a piety of yesterday. What is old-fashioned? What is modern? The really modern Christian is not the man who makes a point of non-conformity to a certain past and conforms to a today that only shallow minds take for the future; he is the man who keeps the old and anticipates the real future. Much in the Church which seems old really anticipates the future before anyone has yet caught sight of it..... No, the rare, resolute people who find things of tomorrow in those of yesterday are the ones to tell us what today really is. So it may be with devotion to the Sacred Heart..... The heart of man is always unknown country only discovered by the future, the first beginning at which we have not yet arrived. And therefore understanding the heart of Jesus in faith, hope and love is one long adventure ever new, that only ends when one has arrived at one's own heart and discovered that after all the frightful pit is filled with God. This is true of the individual and it is true of the general situation at the present day.(33)

RELEVANCE OF THE ABOVE FOR THE CHURCH IN HONG KONG

Does what Rahner says about devotion to the Sacred Heart have anything to do with our local Church here in Hong Kong? I believe it does especially if we reflect on our recent past and on our future. Let me explain what I mean.

8. LOVE GROWN COLD IN HONG KONG?

What has been the most significant event for our Church in Hong Kong in the last twenty or so years? This is a moot point, but I would like to stick my neck out and single out the Golden Jubilee Affair as the most momentous event in our recent history. The reason why I say this is that that event was the occasion when for the first time the Church in Hong Kong came face to face with the fact that She is the Church of sinners. The sin I speak about is not an isolated, individual sin, but rather the disunity, disharmony and division in our Church during the months in which the Golden Jubilee affair occurred. During this time priest was fighting against priest, sister against sister, brother against brother and Christian against Christian.

I happened to be away at the time when the main events of the Golden Jubilee affair were taking place. The reports I received showed that there was a real confrontation in the Church here. Having returned from overseas recently, I have discovered that there is still much rancour concerning the whole Golden Jubilee episode.

Now I am quite willing to admit that my perception of the situation may be quite wrong. Indeed I hope and pray that I may be wrong and that in fact the situation in our local Church following the Golden Jubilee affair is just as it was prior to the those same events. But at least the question must arise whether or not our charity has grown cold. If it has and if there is discord in our local Church then the only way it will be healed is by forgiveness, compassion and reparation; it will not be healed by renewed accusation,' by vituperation and by making demands.

In a way the Church of Hong Kong has reached the point of no return. Either we get on our knees and pray for forgivness for our own part in injuring the Body of Christ and for the grace to be able to forgive our enemies (especially our enemies within the local Church) from the heart, or else the damage to the Church in Hong Kong will be permanent because, in a very real sense, we wish it to be so; even God cannot forgive if we do not want to forgive and be forgiven.

If, however, we humbly admit our own contribution to the damage done to Christ's Body as incarnated in Hong Kong and forgive our enemies from our hearts and, furthermore, pray for them and make reparation for their sins as well as our own, if we do this then the Church in Hong Kong will rise like our Master, wounded but glorious. The choice is ours and the time for choosing is now.

9. THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH IN HONG KONG

The discord and divisions in the Church in Hong Kong spoken about just now will pale in comparison to the disunity we will all experience in the local Church if Hong Kong is returned to the Chinese Government. If that day comes there will be some who will refuse to compromise on any issue, there will also be those who will join the Patriotic Church and then there will be those who will wander around like lost sheep without a shepherd, not knowing what to do or what to believe.

Objective criteria for orthodoxy will become clouded over with time: contact with the Vatican will become more and more problematic as silence descends on the local Church; unity with the bishop will be no less uncertain since there will be some bishops who will be suspect; relations between the priests and the faithful will become harder and harder and, for many, all will seem to be lost.

If that time comes it will be hard to evaluate who belongs to the true Church and who does not. When all other signs seem ambiguous the indisputable sign of the True Church will be recognized by those who are true followers of Christ: do they love one another, do they love their enemies and pray for them, do they make reparation for the wrongs their enemies do, do they forgive those who persecute them? ..... If they do they are the true Church.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus teach us to love and pray for our enemies and give us the grace to forgive them from the heart.

  

22.Karl Rahner, "The Man with the Pierced Heart," Servants of the Lord, trans. Richard Strachan (London: Burns and Oates, 1968; New York: Herder and Herder, 1968): p. 110.

23.Ibid., p. 111.

24.Ibid., p. 112.

25.Ibid., p. 113. Cf. Karl Rahner, "Unity－Love－Mystery," Theological Investigations , vol. 8: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life 2, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971; New York: Herder and Herder, 1971): pp. 229 - 250, concerning the relationship between the Sacred Heart and Mystery.

26.Ibid., pp. 113 - 114.

27.Ibid., p. 115.

28.Karl Rahner, "Ignatian Spirituality and Devotion to the Sacred Heart," Woodstock Letters 91 (Feb., 1962): p. 22.

29.Ibid., p. 23.

30.Karl Rahner, “Some Theses,” p.142-143.

31.Ibid., p.143.

32.Ibid.

33.Karl Rahner, "The Man with the Pierced Heart," pp. 117 - 118.

作者：陈尹莹、汤汉 Tong, John 年份：1980

丁光训主教访美加记后



(甲)记述

一九七九年九月初，共产中国改变了三十年来的决策，遣派一个由基督教、佛教、回教领袖组成的代表团出席在美国新泽西州普林士顿举行的第三届世界宗教与和平大会。这十人代表团美国之行，不但明显地表示近日中国对宗教逐渐改变的态度，代表团中四位基督教代表，更给我们海外的基督信徒一个与他们直接切磋的机会。

这个代表团出席世界宗教会议，显然是中国决意把一九七八年人民大会议章中第四十六条文「人民宗教自由」的决策付诸实行的表现之一，这并不是一个突如其来的改变。远在去年一月，停顿多年的北京宗教事务总署连同它在上海及广州的分支同时重新开放。二月的时候，中央政府在云南省首都昆明开设宗教研究所，订八年计划。跟着，基督教传教士王明道获得释放。七月的时候，四十七岁的傅铁山神父被选为北京天主教主教，到去年年底，各地大小教堂渐渐开放，由政府协助逐一收回房屋地产，以助未来各宗教团体自给自足。中央政府甚至资助南京宗教研究所重新编订圣经，于今年内继续出版，供国内基督徒使用。最近，被囚禁二十二年的广州天主教主教邓以明，获得释放。这一切的表现，跟六十年代文化大革命进行得如火如茶的时候，各宗教信徒所受身心的迫害，自然都是令人难以置信的对比。

共产主义否定所有宗教信仰，是无可否认的事实。但是在中国九亿多人口中，共产党员只占百分之三也是事实。在中国全力推行现代化的今天，中央政府知道，要全国安定进步，非得到其他百分之九十七的国民悉心合作不可。于是这广大人口中的一亿佛教徒、一千万回教徒、三百万天主教徒和七十万基督教徒，他们的宗教信仰，便因此而受到容忍和某种程度的尊重。

经过过去三十年的惨痛经验，中国政府突如其来的转变，自然使人满腹疑团，至少也采取观望态度，正如代表团中的基督教南京主教丁光训说的：「在美加各地，不少同胞都问我：『你是政府派来的特务吗？政府如今鼓励基督教的三自运动和天主教的爱国教会，真正的目的是在消灭宗教吗？』我就回答说：『文化大革命之后，一切与宗教有关的事物摧毁无遗。如要宗教消声匿迹，政府只要袖手旁观即可。如果要消灭宗教，却又出面支持宗教研究，岂不是多此一举？』」所以目前最切要的问题，倒不是中央政府有多少诚意，目的何在，而是在政府容忍的范围内，如何能将耶稣基督仁爱的讯息，在中国身体力行，正如丁主教去年十一月在加拿大多伦多说的：「今日中国的信徒和世界其他许多地方的基督徒一样，正要踏入人类历史的一个新纪元，摆脱欺压的制度。在一个半殖民、半封建的土地上，协力建立社会主义。在这个历史过程中，中国基督徒怎样负起这个使命，结果可能与中世纪时欧洲大陆从封建制度进入资本主义的纪元的时候一样，影响力会深远无比。这个在我们国土上进行中的试验，无论成果如何，凡是关心基督信仰在未来世界中的命运的人，都不可以忽视。」

基督信仰如何能在局限的条件下与共产主义共存？身为基督徒，在共产制度下是否也能做一个好国民？这是丁光训主教及无数其他身处共产中国的基督徒正在追寻解答的问题。丁主教在这方面的努力并不始自今天，他原籍上海，早年毕于上海圣约翰大学及纽约的哥伦比亚大学。远在四十年代，他和他的妻子已经是海外基督徒的青年领袖。五十年代初期，他俩返回中国的时候，萦绕心中的就是同一的问题：共产主义认定所有宗教信仰与它的唯物论背道而驰，那么基督信仰在中国有任何立足的机会吗？「可是我和我的妻子都觉得跟我们的同胞一起同甘共苦，比什么都重要。」于是，在一九五一年底，丁主教和他的妻子返回中国服务。

基督信仰在中国的前途，跟佛教、回教比起来，似乎更加荆棘满布，有数不尽的社会及历史的远固和近果，其中最大的结症，当然是因为基督信仰在中国的发展，和过去百多年来中国的同胞在国土上受尽欧西强国欺凌压榨的事实分不开。当年外国传教士满腔热忱，远渡重洋，来到中国的大城小镇，为中国的老百姓带来救恩的佳音。但同时在国际舞台上发生的，是一一使中国人抬不起头来的屈辱。而且在广大的土地上，简朴单纯的老百姓见到的是靠欧美汇来的金钱兴建的教堂、学校、慈善机构，以及用西方传统思想和教育训练出来的中国知识份子凌驾在吃不饱、穿不暖的老百姓之上。于是原来基督仁爱的讯息、天父的形象，变得模糊不清。中国过去三十年革命的努力，尽管犯了多少无可补救的错误，经历了多少使国土满目疮痍的挫折，但无可否认的事实是中国的同胞得回了自尊，抬起了头。

今日中国的基督徒也成了努力建国的同胞中的一份子。在这个自醒自觉的年代 ，基督的信息大概比在任何其他时代更有意义。但最要记得的是，基督信仰在中国发展，绝对不能重蹈覆辙，因此，丁光训主教去年十一月在加拿大发表谈话时说：「要基督的真正讯息在中国发扬光大，我们一定要为基督信仰努力探讨一个纯中国化的表达方式，这个形象一定要要同时是基督化，又是中国化，绝不能是西方思想传统的附属品。」在此时此地的中国，要探索一个纯中国化的基督信仰，仍是一条崎岖漫长、艰钜无比的路途。要在无神论者统治下的中国发扬基督信仰，也许并不如我们没有身历其境的人想像中那样毫无协调的可能。在加拿大的时侯，丁主教曾经准备了一篇谈话，叫做 「一个中国基督徒对无神论者的钦佩」，内容反映他三十年来对此问题的探讨。远在一九五七年的时侯，他当时是南京宗教研究所的主任，曾经对学生发表过一篇关于宗教信仰的演讲，指出了不少人否定神的存在，其中一个原因是因为教会并未能真正传达了真神的形象。他说：「主耶稣说：『让你们的光芒照耀大地，好使所有的人看见你们所作所为的美善，回头去赞扬你们在天上的父亲。』但是，我们并没有这样做。人们看见我们基督徒的生活、思想和工作，却无法看出得我们主耶稣的天父如何慈爱、公义、光明正大。他们通过教会所见到的神，是他们良心上的正义感和道德观所无法接受的，………。 所以，今日面对共产中国的基督徒，在批判指责之余，还需要俯首诚心地忏悔。」

丁主教在美国纽约与神学家聚会时，曾把无神论者分为三大类：第一类是「道德败坏的人，他们为人自私、刻薄、不负责任、毫无纪律，致使他们不能相信有神存在，因为如果真的有神的话，这个神一定不能容忍他们这样生活。」第二类的人虽然对神的观念抱着严肃的态度，却不能不否定神的存在。丁主教解释说：「我们基督徒坚持神是父亲，而且无所不能。你可有想过在这一个充满苦难、分裂、缺陷的世界里，要信一个这样的神真是谈何容易？较易接受的是一个慈爱但是有心无力的神；或是一个无所不能却并不慈悲为怀的神；又或者是一个既无德又无能的神。神或许不能也不愿意克服邪恶；或者祂可以克服邪恶却不愿意去做；或者祂想做却又做不来；又或者祂既能够也愿意征服邪恶。当然只有最后者才当得起是神，可是，实际上又好像并不如此。从世界四方八面种种不幸、丑恶、不公不义的事看起来，要相信神是无所不能的天父，我们要感谢祂而不能咀咒祂，实在太难了。犹太长老李察鲁实斯坦谈及『神的死亡』的理论时说：『我说我们正生活在神死亡了的时代，意思是指神人天地之间的连系中断了，我们孤零零地站在冷酷无情、无声无臭的宇宙中，除却自己以外，再没有任何饶有目的的主宰来相助。经过第二次世界大战，六百万犹太人被宰杀，一个犹太人对神还有什么话说？』所以有些无神论的人虽然很想对神抱有严肃的态度，但实实在在不能没有疑问，这些人值得我们同情和谅解。」

第三类无神论者是热爱人类的革命志士。他们不信神，是因为他们所见到被宣扬的神，只是特权阶级的护盾，不容许任何为老百姓着想的价值或制度上的改革，维护着不公不正的社会秩序。对这样的神，被剥夺和压迫的人就只能否定祂。这种无神论并不是毫无可取的地方，因为它的出发无是对人群真正的关怀，它鼓励无私的男女掌握自己的命运，再不俯首缄然认命。丁光训主教认为我们那个滞停了数十年的社会，正需要这一种抗议，因为在这些无神论者对神的否定中，找寻的是人灵的尊严和解放，他们为了要为广大的人民争取身心的自由，拒绝接受那虚假的神的形象。

「在这种无神论据内，有无可比拟的高贵情操。」丁主教继续说：「例如马克斯主义里说的：『人世在生，就是要参与创造的伟大工程；人与人之间的分歧，与人的本性相违，是社会制度自我矛盾的结果，人生的自由，与生俱来，要参与创发性的劳动……』这些马克斯信条本来就有很浓厚的神学观。」

杜斯妥也夫斯基说：「神真的不存在的话，人就什么都会做出来了。」丁主教不同意这位俄国大文豪的话，却认为无神论并非等于没有道德观。他说：「我认为许多革命之士，他们否定神的存在，但有许多事他们不曾准许自己去做。他们自律很严，极力避免做任何事以损害革命最终的目的－－老百姓的自由和解放。」今日中国国土上满布的就是这样的无神论者。「他们热爱群众，愿意为老百姓作任何牺牲，他们并不为自己斤斤计较，去找寻安逸的生活。他们在老百姓中，把他们所信的身体力行。革命最重要的标志是爱，不是恨。真正的革命志士的出发点，必须是对人的热爱。毛主席说：『所有参加革命的人士都必需彼此关怀互助。』在革命过程中，暴力和恨怒到处皆是，但一个革命人士之所以恨，原因是他要爱。他对老百姓的关怀，使他跟有违人道的制度势不两立。他对正义的热忱使他对不公正的事，不胜其烦……革命之士也是人，他们也能犯错。但是，由于他们知道个人的错误会如何损害到革命的目的，所以他们不停地严格反省、自我检讨和批评，努力克服自私和短见……我们身在中国的基督徒，早就不再自鸣清高，处处找寻这些革命之士的缺点。相反的，他们的舍己为人使我们愧悔莫名。他们非宗教的精神修养，是我们身为基督徒的人所不能忽视的……中国的老百姓，就是在这许多舍己忘我的革命之士引领下，得到解放，文化物质生活慢慢得到改善。今天世界上四分之一的人口在我们占全世界土地七分之一的国土上得到温饱，三十年来物价平稳，我们的食用很简陋，但再没有人挨饿，吃树皮的日子已成为过去。我们四分之一的国民在学校里受教育，我们有的是一个比以前公义的社会，使基督信仰中的神－－一个既慈爱又无所不能的神－－渐渐有被接受的可能。舍己为人的精神本来就是基督讯息的原则。「这些革命之士和神这样接近而又非否定祂不可，归根到底，大半还是我们身为基督信徒的错啊！」

基督信徒能和这样的无神论者并肩而行吗？丁主教对这一点毫无疑问。在基督信仰漫长的历史里，和其他哲学理论共存，并不是第一次。他说：「基督徒认定耶稣基督是罪人的救主，这点固然重要，但是在圣约翰的福音里，在圣保罗给以弗所和歌罗西基督徒的书信里，我们所见到的基督也是宇宙之主，整个受造的世界的荣耀与满全，上主创造万物的最终涵义。这个基督是上主教导万邦的圣言，照引全民的亮光。到历史终结的时候，祂就会从整个人类－－包括信者和不信者－－的手中，接纳他们的工程，不是要把它丢弃，而是要使它升华，使它十全十美，好献给神－－我们众人的父亲。」

「基督的福音并不硬定要把所有的真理包罗，真理显示的方法不一。不直接从基督信仰而来的真理，我们并没有害怕的必要，因为真理就是真理……我们对任何的启示都应该钦羡不已，欢天喜地的去探讨：因为它们一样能够引带我们向着最终一统的真理－－基督－－走去。」

「我深信革命之士亦能在基督的讯息中找到有意义的地方。基督的福音不曾削减他们的革命精神，但会使它更纯洁、更高贵、更能为上主所悦纳……我们充满陈腔旧调、繁文褥节而呆滞不前的教会，也可借助这个革命的过程，大大地革新。我想望着有一天，这两者会合而为一，这时，我们见到的，就会是一个崭新的世界，崭新的基督信仰了！」

在这个漫长的路途上，我们身为基督徒的能做什么呢？丁主教说：「让我们求上主赐给我们一个谦下的心吧！一九五七年的时侯，他曾对他的学生说：『同学们啊，要在社会主义统治下建立基督教会，在教会一千九百多年的历史里还未实现过。在三自运动里，我们肩负的是一个非常重大的责任，为什么上主把这个职责给了我们，却不给别人？是因为我们优人一等吗？不！主有他的理由，我们还捉摸不到，但至少我们知道，因为我们在中国的教会，既低且微，无权无势，我们就可以表现主的教会如何在微不足道中发挥她的力量，显扬主工程的伟大，把光荣归于上主，因为只有这样，才显得真正的力量并不来自我们，而是来自上主。」

(乙)分析

究竟丁主教三十年探讨的结果，与目前共产中国的哲学思想有何异同？让我们运用我们所认识的共产中国哲学思想的分析方法，去设法透视丁主教言论所特别强调的地方。我们将依照下列的次序逐步分析：（一)世界观；(二)认识论；(三)伦理观；(四)历史政冶观。

(一)世界观

在中国哲学史上，「理」与「气」及两者之间的关系，一直是表达不同世界观的主要词汇。今日中国哲学思想所强调的世界观，可以用下列两句话概括：「理在气中」、「无理则无气」。究竟这两句话有什么意思？原来，按照他们的解释，「气」就是「器」，即「物质世界」；而「理」就是一切物质世界变动的原则。所谓「理在气中」，就是说，一切物质世界变动的原则都是从物质世界本身产生。而「无气则无理」这句话，则清楚地表达出物质是一切运动原则的基础及根源。无疑，这种世界观就是唯物主义内涵的演绎。

站在基督徒立场，丁主教的世界观已把「理」改作我们信仰中的「神」。一方面他强调及同意「理在气中」的说法，但他的意思却是：神不断在这个现实物质的世界中，指导物质世界的进化；但另一方面，他所接受的「无气则无理」的意义却落在不同的层次上。唯物论者的解释是在「存在意义」上，意指物质是世界的根源；而丁氏的解释却在「认识意义」上，意思是：只有透过服务世界、热爱人类，我们才能真正接触及认识神。

因此，一九七九年九月九日在纽约市河滨教堂的主日讲道词中，丁主教说：「今日越来越多基督徒瞭解到，与超越神的接触，主要不在『某处』，而在于人类的位际关系中。即使人际关系看似十分俗化，每当我们自己投入这种关系的深处，我们实是开放自己，通往神圣的领域，与神接触。神既是爱，就只有在这爱中，我们才能与这位宇宙的至高者接触，把我们自己调协在神的本性内。

所以，丁主教虽然同意唯物论者所强调的「理在气中」的说法，也在认识的层次上接受「无气则无理」的意义；但在存在的层次上，始终坚持有神论者的内容，肯定神才是宇宙之主、万物之源。这样的采纳，不但有利于一位基督徒在共产国家内生活，也能纠正一些基督徒的错误观点，不再以为神只住在教堂或天上领域，也不再把基督信仰与实际生活割开。

(二)认识论

随着以「气」为主的世界观，今日中国哲学思想特别强调「实事求是」的认识论，要求每个人抱着科学精神，脚踏实地，从实事实物的接触及验证中，去认识事物。同时，今日中国哲学所特别反对的，就是「主观唯心论」及「客观唯心论」。根据他们的解释，「主观唯心论」使人脱离现实世界，共会从幻想或推测中去认识事物，犹如天生瞎子之揣测颜色一般；而客观唯心论」则是在获得了一些有限的真知真识后，再凭幻想力或推测力去扩大这些有限的知识，以致推想出其他不可能证实、甚至不可能存在的事情。

作为共产中国的一份子，丁主教在他的言论中也强调「实事求是」的认识论；但丁氏再把这种认识论划分为两类：一类是对「自然科学」的客观认识论，另一类则是对「人文社会」的客观认识论。前者可以透过科学方法或知识去获得，因为自然科学是人类研究的对象，有普遍规律可寻；但后者则只能透过「位际关系」(INTERPERSONALRELATIONSHIP)才能领悟。因为知、情、意在每个人生命中的活动复杂无比，要透过「心心相印」的体验才能成全。所以，丁主教虽然接受「实事求是」的认识论，但站在基督徒的立场，他所特别关心的问题，不是「自然科学」，而是神、人、与社会。

早在一九五七年六月十二日，丁主教在南京神学院对他的学生，发表了一篇提名为「基督徒的有神主义」的演讲，其中的说话足以反映出他的认识论：「如果有人发现，在历史的某些时期，有某些宗教信仰人士，曾运用宗教作为鸦片，因而结论出神并不存在，我们便该对他说『你的逻辑推断不正确，你不可从那个大前提，获得这个结论。……每个人应切实研究宗教，不该从一些已含结论的定义去探讨；不然，我们便陷入教条主义的错谬里。』」

在纽约河滨教堂的讲道词中，丁主教直截了当地提出他「以心体心」的认识论，他说：「爱护同胞，并非只是向他们微笑或德待他们，而是要我们设身处地，以心体心，去体贴他们的感受，明瞭他们的正义精神，与他们并肩作战……。」无疑，丁主教对位际体悟的强调，与他本人的神学背景及信仰使命有着密切的关系。但这种强调却是一般唯物论者尚未深入探讨的领域。

(三)伦理观

在以「气」为主的世界观的脉络下，今日中国的哲学思想特别强调「顺欲」的社会伦理观。按照他们的解释，「欲」就是指人的基本生理要求；而「顺欲」就是满足人的基本生理需求。不过，这些基本生理要求的满足，并非是个体性的，而应是社会性的，就是要满足社会整体的基本生理要求，使所有人民丰衣足食，物质生活获得正常发展。故此，能够「顺欲」，满足大多数人民的生理要求的，就是合乎伦理，也就是「善」；否则，就是违反伦理，就是「恶」。所以，世界上没有先天的及不变的伦理观，有的只是后天的及顺应社会生活要求的伦理观。这也是「理在气中」及「无气则无理」的世界观的一项演绎。

站在中国基督徒的立场，丁主教也强调「顺欲」的社会伦理观，但是他把「欲」的内涵扩阔，不但指人的基本生理要求，也指人精神上的要求。在他看来，「顺欲」就是使人得到整体及全面的发展，包括物质及精神两方面。而传播福音就是接受这方面的挑战，要先从社会上大多数人的物质生活方面着手。因此，他在同一次纽约河滨教堂的讲道词中说：「今日我们大多数中国基督徒所认为崭新的观点，就是醒觉到：人不单是罪人，也是被欺压的人；不单违反神的律法，也被别人侵犯权利。我们亦瞭解到：传播福音的任务，不单使人深悟自己的罪过，也与我们社会中被欺压的人站在一起，体察他们的感受，跟他们一起生活。单是便人深悟自己的罪过，尚未算是彻底的传播福音。……曾有人很巧妙地指出，传播福音就如同一个乞丐告诉另一个乞丐，何处可以找到食物。这观念不错，但仍末透彻地说明传播福音的含义。乞丐还需要明白，他们自己的饥饿疾病、无家可归、婴儿死亡，及失业行乞等，并非神的旨意，而是少数人贪占权利的结果，也是他们被动忍受的结果。我们应该帮助乞丐看出，神的旨意并非要社会一小群顶尖人物控制一切，享受丰美的生活，把剩余的去救济乞丐，而乞丐却要被欺负，接受行乞的命运。只有当所有被欺压的人士，都变成我们关怀的对象时，神才会把圣言放在我们口中，去见证基督为罪人的救主。这样，我们才够资格说话，群众也乐于听从我们。」

这样，丁主教的社会伦理观与一般共产中国哲学思想的社会伦理观，两者在关怀的出发点上虽然相同，但在最终目标上，却大有分别，因为丁主教始终承认，人的精神生活仍占着最高的地位。

(四)历史政治观

今日中国哲学思想，除了主张「顺欲」的社会伦理观外，还强调「顺势」的「历史政治观」。这个「势」就是指历史发展的客观规律。他们认为历史发展的客观规律依次是：奴隶制度、封建制度、资本主义、社会主义、共产主义。

丁主教也强调「顺势」的历史政治观。所以，他以中国基督徒的身份，放弃外国的工作和生活，毅然回到祖国，接受共产政权，希望付出力量，与同胞一起建设国家，要亲自体验和表达出，一位基督徒如何也能在共产政权下做个好国民。此外，他更以基督徒领袖身份，领导中国教会变成一个自治、自养、自传的本地化教会，洗脱「洋教」的污名。

一九七八年在接受一位美国退伍军人侯活、海曼(Howard. S. Hyman)的访问时，他说：「基督徒可分两类：其中一类认为自己应该只是信奉基督宗教，而基督信仰与服务人民没有任何关系。这并非说，他们反对服务中国人民，只是说，基督信仰与他们的实际生活无关系。另一类中国基督徒则认为，他们在社会所作所为应反映基督的训导，服务人民就是实践对神的信仰。你们在美国基督教会中也有这两类人。我较同意第二种的看法。话虽如此，我并非想把马克斯主义宗教化，也不是想把宗教马克斯化。总之，我不以为两者可以融合一起。」

在同一访问中，丁主教又说：「三自运动(于一九五一年在政府宗教事务局领导下成立)是中国基督徒所推动的一种运动，目的要使我们的宗教获得真正的独立。换言之，我们要使中国的基督教会成为本国化，如同英国教会是英国化一样。我们不应该是美国、英国、和加拿大宣教会的属会，故中国教会该自治、自养、自传。」

这样，丁主教透过推行三自运动，表达自己对政治及信仰的认同。无疑，丁主教本人因为受过比较开明的神学教育，具有深阔的学养，且又隶属于不太强调传统体制的教会，故能把自己的信仰与国家的历史政冶观调协，但对于其他大多数中国基督徒，如果他们从未接受过同样的神学教育，且又隶属于不同传统体制的教会的话，他们要如何面对教会与国家的不同要求？这仍是一个需要继续探索的大问题。

(丙)问题

的确，丁主教的处境及抱负，使我们联想到下列一连串问题：

多年来，我们在中国的兄弟姊妹潜心努力，追寻如何能够在社会主义下把基督的训诲身体力行。他们不断聚集祈祷，甚至把圣经逐章逐句凭记忆抄写下来，互相传阅。到今天，他们能在国内宣扬主的福音，使身在海外的我们，兴奋万分，感谢上主的眷顾。正如基督教三自爱国运动委员会今年三月一日发表「告全国主内兄弟姊妹书」中说的：「亲爱的主内弟兄姊妹们：我们在基督里向你们问安，我们今天又能这样公开称呼你们，不能不感谢神和归荣耀于神，我们虽经过了大风大浪，主用祂的杖和祂的竿，带领我们经过死荫的幽谷也没有遭害，使我们深深地领会到，主的应许是永不落空的，同时，使我们想到主对约书亚说的话，『我必不撇下你，也不丢弃你』(书－5)，应验了在我们当中。」

但是，在我们深受鼓舞之余，在未来艰钜漫长的路途中，等待着解答的还有无数的问题。首先，共产主义与教会的教诲的最终理想，虽然都是要建立起一个正义和平的世界，可是，在达到这个理想的过程中，共产主义坚持群众的利益要走在个人自由选择之前，并且为得到完善的结果可以不计代价。这一点与教会的精神有没有冲突呢？个人良心的选择，在对国家和对上主之间产生矛盾的时候又怎样？人性的本质是精神抑或物质？两者的关系如何？是物质决定精神抑或精神决定物质？人的本质决定现象抑或现象决定人的本质？过去教会在中国的工作和列强欺压中国的历史确实纠缠不清，但即使我们今天不会重蹈覆辙，我们仍要解答出，怎样才使同胞不再把它当做一个西方的宗教？又怎样才可以使一个现在的中国人觉得教会的训导，包括对神、对罪等的观念有切身的意义？从教会在中国过去三十年看似寂寂无闻的经历中，我们对基督信仰和共产主义得到了什么启示？三十年来教会凭着遍布中国境内的基督徒基层团体，不断萌芽长大，海外的教会对他们有什么借镜的地方？一个基督徒的使命，与他的实际生活环境不能分开，故此，生活在完全不同环境下的我们，怎能洞察国内同胞在社会主义下的生活体验？在有限的认识下，对国内教会的成长我们能作出什么贡献？当然，身为天主教徒的我们，在反映中国基督教内兄弟姊妹的经验之余，还得面对一个更复杂的问题，就是如何可以同时尊重教会近二千年的传统？……这些都是要寻找答案的问题。我们认为，在我们追寻真理的路上，必须努力保持中肯的态度。正如Concilium杂志去年六月份的前序所说的，我们要避免过激的观点，既不可过份天真乐观，认为上主完美的天国就会在未来的中国出现；也不可轻率盲从，一口咬定过去三十年中国的革命一无是处。毕竟，信仰提示我们，上主是历史的主宰，祂的慈爱常伴随着我们。我们深信，在祂认为适当的时间和环境下，祂必会把祂钟爱的中国子民引领回祂的怀抱去。

　

附录

解放后仍有宗教存在吗？

－－访问丁光训主教－－

侯活．海曼著　　汤汉、陈尹莹合译

　

（本文原载于一九七九年夏天「新中国」杂志。该杂志为中美友谊社出版。作者海氏在第二次世界大战期间，加入美军在中国服役。在一九七八年，他以退伍军人代表旅行团领袖的身份，返入中国。)

对于西方人来说，丁光训主教大概是今天中国最着名的基督教领袖之一，他曾是一九七八年三月在北京所举行的人民政治协商会议的代表，也被选为全国人民代表大会的会员。此外，他是南京神学院的院长(亦是南京大学新成立的宗教研究所的主任)。他的妻子是南京大学的英语教授。

我有一位担当过基督教男青年会学生秘书的朋友，他于一九四六年在上海已经认识丁主教。当我赴中国时，地拍我介绍给丁主教。现在丁主教夫妇很高兴地准许我带同其他旅行团团友，在他们上海的寓所内与他们共同消磨一个黄昏。我们经过一块园地，进入他们那古老英国式的美丽房子，通过一条小走廊，那朴素而镶了墙板的会客室就在右边。室内简单地陈设了一张沙发椅、数张椅子及一张咖啡桌子。我们一共是八位美国人，其中有基督教徒、犹太教徒，也有并无加入任何宗教的人仕。隶属美国基督教全国协会的巴牧师(REV.ROBERT RUE PARSONAGE)可说是我们中的「专业人仕」，他代表全体向我们的主人家提出一连串问题。下面的访问以问答方式进行，我把我们的谈话重新整理，灌成录音带。当我首先问及丁主教能否录音时，他眨一眨眼回答说：「当然可以！我肯定这不会对我不利。」

问：据我们所知，毛泽东认为：任何宗教、任何不以唯物主义为基础的运动，如非无用， 就是与社会生产背道而驰。今天有关宗教的法律，究竟是基于对宗教信仰者的纯粹容忍抑或尊重呢？

答：当我的内子与我于一九五一年返回中国时，这一些问题曾不断徘徊在我们的脑海中。一九四不年以前，我俩一直住在中国。之后，我俩同赴外国，至一九五一年后期才返回来。当时我们从日内瓦返回，因为我们都是该处普世学生基督徒联会的职员。普世基督教协进会的学生基督徒联会及圣公会的同事和朋友们都反对我们回来。记得一位主教曾对我说，由于我与西方人和海外基督徒工作的联系这么密切，一旦返回共产中国， 必会招致危害。另一位好友写信请我不要回去，并警告我说，即使我不被斩首，也会被关入集中营多年。但我仍决定了回来，因为和我的同胞同甘共苦更为重要。自返中国后，我一直在教堂工作，我并未被斩首，也未被关入集中营。事实上，据我所知并没有集中营这回事。我不是说，共产中国对基督信仰或任何宗教有好感。共产党员本身虽反对宗教，仍准许中国人民依其所需去信仰。但是，我们不能把这种政策解释为国家对宗教的保护与鼓励。我们的国家绝不推行宗教，也没有任何宗教在中国被立为国教。所有宗教一律平等。但我能瞭解为何他们仍坚持宗教自由的政策。其实十分简单，因为要在我国建设社会主义是一件重大的工作。共产党希望联合我们社会中各类人民，参与共同目标；这就是所谓「联合阵线」。

问：这政策有何重要及如何实施？

答：共产党员的数目，在中国人口中只是一个十分细小的数字，(在九亿多人口中) 约占三十万人口强。而大多数老百姓并不是共产党员，他们都渴望中国能享受更丰美的生活。就在这条「联合阵线」上，我们大家设法去异求同。当我们在外国时，我们曾担心，将来在新中国内，共产党员会竭力教我们认为宇宙间并没有神的存在，也不应该信神等 等。但我过去廿五年多的经验却告诉我，共产党员是最先尊重人民宗教信念者之一。 我们联合反抗帝国主义者的侵略，并肩努力建立社会主义。除了这些把我们团结一致的基本政冶观念之外，我们不但可以相信不同宗教，而且我们的宗教信念真正受到尊重。

问：去年三月曾举行人民协商大会，请问阁下可否告诉我们一点有关这方面的事情？这个大会曾否涉及宗教在中国的问题？

答：在人民政治协商会议中，我们的成员包括佛教徒、回教徒、天主教徒及基督教徒。据我们所知，在中国并没有犹太教徒；假如有的话，他们的代表也会被包括在内。这会议是一个特别为宗教团体而设的部门。在这部门内，中国的佛教、回教、天主教及基督教，以及西藏和内蒙的喇嘛教领袖均有代表出席，一起研究共同问题，申诉不满。在过去数十年中，宗教自由在中国若干地方，确实受到四人帮的压制，比如：在中国西北部回教徒占大多数的地区，曾有些干部认为回教应被消灭，要迫使回教徒相反自己的信仰去喂猪。在四人帮统治下，所有政策都应雷厉风行，所有中国人都应立即接受共产主义。所以，任何末充份表现自己为共产党员或纯粹社会主义，四人帮视他们为不良份子或中产阶级，需要遭受斗争。他们认为在共产主义之内，不能有宗教存在。故此宗教事务局、回教徒及其他人仕便首当其冲。可是，这些事情现在都能在上述会议中提出，且大部份问题正在谋求解决。

问：目前这里基督徒的宗教生活如何？

答：基督教徒虽只占全国人口的千份之一，却始终保持一定的影响力。昔日基督徒因为与西方势力有联系，在中国是特权阶级。在美国，一所教堂提示给人的，只不过是一些神圣超凡的观念。但在中国却不一样，我认为教堂使很多中国人记起西方人的侵略及不平等条约。这就是今天的中国基督徒不太理会能否在教堂举行聚会的部份理由。一九四九年的南京，只有五佰名基督教信徒，却有三十五所教堂。自从南京成为当日中国首都后，更获得美国及英国差会的基金支援。解放后，中国基督教徒瞭解没有理由支持这三十五所教堂，遂于一九五八年把总数削减为四间。外国报章便立即大做新闻，说中国共产党迫害中国基督徒，报导教堂如何被充公。其实，共产党并没有作过任何事情，只是从文革开始，我们连那四间教堂也没有使用而已。兴建教堂完全是西方的神学及礼仪观念。它们是为了提醒教徒于礼拜天早上十一时去教堂崇拜。但是我们的工厂采取轮班制度，每周工作七天，每天轮流有若干工人休息。基督信仰在中国是新的宗教，特别在解放后，中国基督徒甚愿拋弃西方习俗。在中国各处，很少基督徒于主日早上在教堂聚会；这听起来好像十分不虔诚，却是事实。可是，南京的基督徒大约每周一次，在任何借到的地方举行小团体聚会。

问：闻说你会称中国的基督教已进入「无分宗派的」(Post-Denominational) 阶段。请问这名词有何意义？有组织的教会在新中国要坦当甚么角色？

答：我确曾说过今日中国基督教已进入「无分宗派的」阶段或更好说是「非制度化的」(Deinstitutionalized) 教会。以往，即使我们对美国内战一无所知，祖国内仍一向存在着北方浸信会及南方浸信会、长老会、路德会、圣公会及七日复临会，甚至还有四方福音差会。但是从一九五八年至一九六○年，这些派别已模糊不清。据我所知，很多圣公会(尤其有主教制度的圣公会)及一些路德会，仍然对教会传承持有强烈意识。但大部份中国基督教徒已不理会这些传承与宗派。他们可说已踏入 「无分宗派的」阶段。解放前，中国老百姓十分贫穷，需倚赖教会及福音组织开办学校、大学、医院和孤儿院。现在我们再没有维持这些健康、教育和慈善机构的需要，因为政府能为更多的老百姓提供同样的服务，甚至效果更佳。在一九六○年代，基督教男青年会的踪迹及基督教戒酒会的作用，经已消失净尽，它们成了多余及不必有的组织。此外，在唐山地震后，国家开设了很多孤儿院。我们实在不能与国家相比，也没有这种需要。所以，基督教会在中国要成为「非制度化的」教会，逐步把组织当作负坦般摆脱。中国基督教会也是「非神职化的」(Declericalized) 教会。我们中很少信徒至今仍被雇任为秘书处的牧师。每一位基督徒都是平信徒。连以前曾担当牧师职责者，也以平信徒身份参与基督徒团契，因为在我们的脑海中，劳动占有很崇高的地位，故此很多牧师要求负起劳心或劳力的工作，获取与一般人民相同的薪酬。加入基督徒团契是「非职业化的」信仰。其实，本质依旧，形式不同而已。在今日的中国，为信仰福音的中国人，基督信仰主要变成对现实世界有实际功用和密切关系的信仰，而分享这种世界观的人，团结一致。

问：中国从未采用或产生任何一种闻名于世的宗教。这是否由于中国人民的宗教性格完全不同所使然？

答：我的朋友们和我都觉得，中国人民并非如同印度和巴基斯坦人民一样，是宗教狂热者。我们常常需要输入宗教。本地唯一的宗教就是道教，而道教其实并不存在。之后便是孔教，很多人曾试图把它变成宗教，但它主要仍是一种伦理系统，无法变成一种宗教或神学。

问：今天神学院教育情况如何？你以为它应走什么路线？

答：目前中国不可能再收容过百青年人，把他们安置在象牙宝塔中，过五年生活，把我们从西方神学系统和制度学得的东西灌输给他们。我们的神学教育应大事修改，对象也不是为培育出一些高级知识份子，好去告诉别人该如何做。这在今日的中国并不适宜。我们至今尚有学生进入神学院，在指定地方研读两周或一年。我们仍在尝试的阶段。我们也打发一些宣教师到西南地区的基督徒团体去，他们每次都逗留一段时期。主要问题还是我们尚未厘订我们的目标及主要工作。某些西防教会团体正在努力尝试向中国传播福音。我们也知道，每周有二百六十小时的宗教广播节目，分别从日本、菲律宾及香港发射到中国。但我怀疑这些广播能否收到预期的效果。三十年前，基督徒的数目之所以较为庞大，就是因为当时人民缺乏食物及可以从教会取得帮助。他们至今仍被称为「米饭基督徒」。在农村地区，至今还存留着原始宗教的标记，一些石头象征神明，而迷信者竟向着这些东西膜拜。

问：信仰既建基于传播福音，则在传播不受到鼓励时，信仰会变成什么样子呢？

答：照我所知，今日很少中国基督徒想到自己蒙召去传播福音。我们大多数都觉得，我们们的基督信仰是这般西化，简直超过我们所能接受的程度。在四十年代，我们所有的神学教育都用英语灌输，全国性的教会领袖会议都用英语举行，金钱由外国输入，外国宣教士直接或间接教导我们该如何做。在中国人的脑海中，基督宗教至今仍是「洋教」。所以谈得太多传播福音，为我们起码就没有益处，因为这样做便等于推销洋货。

问：请问可否告诉我们有关三自运动？基督教徒如何能保持自己的信仰，又同时能完完全全地成为新中国的一份子？

答：三自运动(于一九五一年在政府宗教事务局领遵下成立)，是中国基督教徒所推动的一种运动，目的是要使我们的宗教获得真正的独立。换言之，我们要使中国的基督教会成为本国化，如同英国教会是英国化一样。我们不应该是美国、英国和加拿大宣教会的属会，故中国教会该当自治、自养及自传。

问：既然国家已能解决人民的基本需要，我们明白为何某些基督教组织不再需要存在。在西方，我们希望知道，今天中国的宗教人仕是否也视宗教为「服务人民」的途径？

答：有两类中国基督徒。其中一类认为他们应该只管信奉基督宗教，而基督信仰与服务人民没有任何关系。这并非说，他们反对服务中国人民；只是说，基督信仰与他们的实际生活并无关系而已。另一类中国基督徒别认为，他们在社会所作所为应反映基督的训导，服务人民就是实践对神的信仰。你们在美国基督教会也有这两类人。我较同意第二类的看法。话虽如此，我并非想把马克斯主义宗教化，也不是想把宗教马克斯化。总之，我不以为两者可以融合一起。