《認識神》Knowing God ，原著序Foreward
作者: 巴刻( J.I.Packer) 譯者: 林來慰，福音證主協會
正如小醜們不自量力，渴想串演《漢姆雷德》(Hamlet)；我也一直想有系統的寫一本關於神的書。然而，這一本卻不如理想。它的厚度或許令人以為我在嘗試寫那麽一本書，但任何人若那麽想，必會失望。充其量，它只是一串珠子：一連串大題目的小研究，大部份在《福音雜志》 ( Evangelical Magazine)上最先發表。它們原本是零散的信息，現在匯集成書，因為它們好像都融合成一個信息：關於神和我們的生活，書中題材的取舍和處理方法是符合實際目的。
As
clowns yearn to play Hamlet, so I have wanted to write a treatise on God. This
book, however, is not it. Its length might suggest that it is trying to be, but
anyone who takes it that way will be disappointed. It is at best a string of
beads: a series of small studies of great subjects, most of which first
appeared in the Evangelical Magazine. They were conceived as separate messages,
but are now presented together because they seem to coalesce into a single
message about God and our living. It is their practical purpose that explains
both the selection and omission of topics and the manner of treatment.
在《基督教神學序言》( A Preface to Christian Theology)一書中，約翰·麥基(john Mackay) 把兩種對基督教事物不同的態度，作了個比喻：有些人坐在西班牙式房子的高高露台上，瀏覽下面過路的旅客。“台上人”可以聽見旅客的談話，也可以和他們聊天。他們或批評旅客走路的姿態，或討論道路的問題，諸如道路怎麽會存在？它通到那裏去？沿途在不同地方會看見什麽？……等等。但他們始終是旁觀者；他們的問題只是理論而已。相反，旅客們面對的問題，雖然也有理論的成份，大致上卻很實際—— “往那裏去”和“如何上路”的問題，不但需要明白了解，還要抉擇和行動。台上人和旅客們或許忖思相同事物，他們的問題卻不同。因此(舉例說)若談到邪惡，台上人的問題是：在神的主權和恩慈中，如何在理論上解釋罪惡的存在？旅客們的問題卻是如何駕馭邪惡，使惡變善？又再舉例：若談到罪惡，台上人就問：種族的罪惡和個人的敗壞是否真有其事？至於旅客們，既從自己裏面認識罪，就問：有得救的盼望嗎？或以“神性”( Godhead)為例；台上人間神怎麽會有三位？三位如何成為一體？成為一體的三位又如何有位格？旅客們卻想知道：如何好好的尊崇、敬愛、以及信靠那位已合力把他們從罪惡帶進榮耀的三一神。例子不勝枚舉。本書是為旅客們而寫的，所針對的也是旅客的問題。
In A
Preface to Christian Theology, John Mackay illustrated two kinds of interest in
Christian things by picturing persons sitting on the high front balcony of a
Spanish house watching travellers go by on the road below. The ‘balconeers’ can
overhear the travellers’ talk and chat with them; they may comment critically
on the way that the travellers walk; or they may discuss questions about the
road, how it can exist at all or lead anywhere, what might be seen from
different points along it, and so forth; but they are onlookers, and their
theoretical angle, are essentially practical – problems of the
‘which-way-to-go’ and ‘how-to-make-it’ type, problems which call not merely for
comprehension but for decision and action too. Balconeers and travellers may
think over the same area, yet their problems differ. Thus (for instance) in
relation to evil, the balconeer’s problem is to find a theoretical explanation
of how evil can consist with God’s sovereignty and goodness, but the
traveller’s problem is how to master evil and bring good out of it. Or agian,
in relation to sin, the balconer asks whether racial sinfulness and personal
perversity are really credible, while the traveller, knowing sin from within,
asks what hope there is of deliverance. Or take the problem of the Godhead;
while the balconeer is asking how one God can conceivably be three, what sort
of unity three could have, and how three who make one can be persons, the
traveller wants to know how to show proper honour, love and trust towards the
three persons who are now together at work to bring him out of sin to glory.
And so we might go on. Now this is a book for travellers, and it is with
travellers’ questions that it deals.
寫本書的信念是：對神無知——無知於他的作為和與他相交的方法——是今天大多數教會的軟弱的根由。這種情形，似乎由兩種不幸的趨勢造成：
The
conviction behind the book is that ignorance of God – ignorance both of his
ways and of the practice of communion with him – lies at the root of much of
the church’s weakness today. Two unhappy trends seem to have produced this
state of affairs.
第一：基督徒的思想己順從了現代精神——這種精神是產生人類偉大的思想，而只容納有關神的渺小思想。現代人應付神的方法，若不幹脆否定他，也敬而遠之；可笑的是，現代基督徒忙著在不敬虔的世界中維持宗教活動，到頭來也把神拒於千裏之外。明眼人有見及此，倒想從教會中引退，不屑同流合汙，寧可自行尋求神。這也不能全怪他們，因為教會中人既把望遠鏡倒轉來看神，以致把神看成侏儒，自己也就不過是侏儒基督徒；明眼人很自然不會就此滿足。再者，對現代人來說，有關死亡、永恒、審判、靈魂之偉大、今生的抉擇有永存的效果等思想，都屬無稽；可悲的是，基督教會不但沒有大聲疾呼，提醒世界所遺忘的事，竟一同把這些事不了了之。對基督徒生活來說，推崇現代精神，無疑等於自殺。
Trend
one is that Christian minds have been conformed to the modern spirit: the
spirit, that is, that spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room for only
small thoughts of God. The modern way with God is to set him at a distance, if
not to deny him altogether; and the irony is that modern Christians,
preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in an irreligious world, have
themselves allowed God to become remote. Clear-sighted persons, seeing this,
are tempted to withdraw from the churches in something like disgust to pursue a
quest for God on their own. Nor can one wholly blame them, for churchmen who
look at God, so to speak, through the wrong end of the telescope, so reducing
him to pigmy Christians, and clear-sighted people naturally want something
better than this. Furthermore, thoughts of death, eternity, judgment, the
greatness of the soul, and the abiding consequences of temporal decisions are
all ‘out’ for moderns, and it is a melancholy fact that the Christian church,
instead of raising its voice to remind the world of what is being forgotten,
has formed a habit of playing down these themes in just the same way. But these
capitulations to be modern spirit are really suicidal so far as Christian life
is concerned.
第二：基督徒思想己給現代懷疑主義迷惑了。三個多世紀以來，文藝復興中自然主義的酵母，在西方思想中如癌蔓延。十七世紀的亞米紐斯學者與自然神論者，和十六世紀的蘇西尼學者一樣，都否定改革派神學所說的：神若非直接的就是完全的控制他的宇宙；一直以來，人都用神學、哲學和科學去維護上述否定。結果，聖經和基督教歷史上很多劃時代的事件，都猛受炮火圍攻。信仰的基要事實，備受質疑。神在西奈山與以色列相遇嗎？耶穌不過是一個很屬靈的人嗎？福音書的神跡真發生過嗎？福音書中的耶穌大致上豈非構想的人物嗎？——諸如此類。還有，對屬天啟示和基督徒的始源兩事的懷疑，也繁衍了更廣泛的懷疑，而摒棄真理統一的觀念，隨之摒棄人類知識統一的希望。因此，現在普遍的假定是：我的宗教感悟，與我對身外事物的科學知識無關，因為神並不在世界的“那邊”，只在思維“裏面”。在第二世紀諾斯底神智學曾想鯨吞基督教，目前刻劃時代的是對神的懷疑和混淆，比什麽都更糟！
Trend
two is that Christian minds have been confused by the modern scepticism. For
more than three centuries the naturalistic leaven in the Renaissance outlook
has been working like a cancer in Western thought. Seventeenth-century
Arminians and Deists, like sixteenth-century Socinians, came to deny, as
against Reformation theology, that God’s control of his world was either direct
or complete, and theology, philosophy and science have for the most part
combined to maintain that denial ever since. As a result, the Bible has come
under heavy fire, and many landmarks in historical Christianity with it. The
foundation-facts of faith are called in question. Did God meet Israel at Sinai?
Was Jesus more than a very spiritual man? Did the gospel miracles really
happen? Is not the Jesus of the gospels largely an imaginary figure? – and so
on. Nor is this all. Scepticism about both divine revelation and Christian
origins has bred a wider scepticism which abandons all idea of a unity of
truth, and with it any hope of unified human knowledge; so that it is now
commonly assumed that my religious apprehensions have nothing to do with my
scientific knowledge of things external to myself, since God is not ‘out there’
in the world, but only ‘down here’ in the psyche. The uncertainty and confusion
about God which marks our day is worse than anything since Gnostic theosophy
tried to swallow Christianity in the second century.
今天常有人說，神學比從前更堅牢；從學術上的專門知識和出版書籍的質量來看，這或許是真的。但在教會持守福音的真實性這基本工作上，神學長久以來卻十分脆弱而別扭。九十年前，司布真目覬浸信會人士對聖經、救贖和人類命運等教義立場搖幌，就以“走下坡”去形容其危機。他今天若觀察基督教對神的觀念，我想他或會呼之曰“突然下降”吧！
It is
often said today that theology is stronger than it has ever been, and in terms
of academic expertise and the quantity and quality of books published this is
probably true; but it is a long time since theology has been so weak and clumsy
at its basic task of holding the church to the realities of the gospel. Ninety
years ago C.H. Spurgeon described the wobblings he then saw among the Baptists
on Scripture, atonement and human destiny as ‘the down-grade’; could he survey
Protestant thinking about God at the present time, I guess he would speak of
‘the nose-dive’!
“你們要站在路上察看，尋訪遠古的路徑，看哪一條是美善的路，就走在其中；這樣，你們心裏就必得安息。”（耶六1 6）這也是本書發出的邀請。除非間接地，本書並不批判新路，而是直接重提古道，因為善道終究是善道。我不要求讀者以為我已透撤知道書中所說的。魯益師曾說：“像我這樣想象力遠勝於服從力的人，應受公平的懲罰；我們往往幻想一些超乎實際所能攀及的情景。如果把幻想的描述出來，就會使別人和自己相信已臻此境”——那是自欺欺人（參《四愛》第一二八頁，泉源出版社）。所有培靈書刊的讀者和作者，若能斟酌魯氏的話，必大有裨益。然而，“經上記著說：‘我因信，所以如此說話。’我們既有同樣的信心，也就信，所以也說話。”（林後四1 3）——如果這本書能夠幫助任何人，正如我在默想字裏行間時有所得著，這勞苦就大有價值。
‘Stand
at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way
is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls‘ (Jeremiah 6:16).
Such is the invitation which this book issues. It is not a critique of new
paths, except indirectly, but rather a straightforward recall to old ones, one
the ground that ‘the good way’ is still what it used to be. I do not ask my
readers to suppose that I know very well what I am talking about. ‘Those like
myself’, wrote C.S. Lewis, ‘whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are
subject to a just penalty; we easily imagine conditions far higher than any we
have really reached. If we describe what we have imagined we may make others,
and make ourselves, believe that we have really been there’ – and so fool both
them and ourselves (The Four Loves, Fontana ed., p.128). All readers and
writers of devotional literature do well to weigh Lewis’s words. Yet ‘It is
written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” With that same spirit of faith
we also believe and therefore speak‘ (2 Corinthians 4:13) – and if what is
written here helps anyone in the way that the meditations behind the writing
helped me, the work will have been abundantly worth while.
原著者 巴刻 (J.I. Packer)序於
一九七二年七月
布裏斯托三一學院( Trinity College,
Bristol)
