David Bentley Hart on Reason, Faith, and Diversity in Religious Thought (Ep. 184)

David Bentley Hart is an American writer, philosopher, religious-study scholar, critic, and theologian.

大卫·本特利·哈特是一位美国作家、哲学家、宗教研究学者、评论家和神学家。

He has authored over 1,000 essays, reviews, and papers, not to mention 19 books, including a very well-known translation of the New Testament.

他撰写了 1,000 多篇论文、评论和论文，更不用说 19 本书了，其中包括非常著名的新约圣经译本。

The topics he writes on include Christian metaphysics, Orthodox Christianity, philosophy of mind, Indian and East Asian religions, Asian languages, classics, literature, music, and more.

他写作的主题包括基督教形而上学、东正教、心灵哲学、印度和东亚宗教、亚洲语言、古典、文学、音乐等。

David, welcome.

大卫，欢迎。

But Orthodoxy has been around for a while.

但东正教已经存在了一段时间。

It’s part of an indurated culture, grounded originally in the Eastern Greco-Roman world, and has a huge apparatus of philosophy and theology and, I think, over the centuries has learned to be patient.

它是一种固化文化的一部分，最初植根于东方希腊罗马世界，拥有庞大的哲学和神学机构，我认为，几个世纪以来它已经学会了耐心。

The Protestant millenarianism you speak of always seems to have been born out of historical crisis in a sense.

你所说的新教千禧年主义在某种意义上似乎总是从历史危机中诞生的。

The rise of the nation-state, the fragmentation of the Western Church — it’s always as much an effective history as a flight from history.

民族国家的崛起，西方教会的分裂——这既是一段有效的历史，又是对历史的逃避。

Whereas, I think it’s fair to say that Orthodoxy has created for itself a parallel world just outside the flow of history.

然而，我认为可以公平地说，东正教为自己创造了一个在历史潮流之外的平行世界。

It puts much more of an emphasis on the spiritual life, mysticism, that sort of thing.

它更加强调精神生活、神秘主义等。

And as such, whereas it still uses the recognizable language of the imminent return of Christ, it’s not at the center of the spiritual life.

因此，虽然它仍然使用基督即将再来的可识别语言，但它并不是精神生活的中心。

It’s often been the case that Orthodoxy has been so, let’s say, disenchanted with the millenarian expectation that it’s become a prop of the state, and you can see it today in Russia, in which you have a church institution.

通常情况下，东正教对千禧年期望不再抱有幻想，认为它已成为国家的支柱，今天在俄罗斯也可以看到这一点，那里有一个教会机构。

Now, this isn’t to speak of the faithful themselves, but the institutional authority of the state — of the institution, rather, of the church more or less being nothing but a propaganda wing of an authoritarian and terrorist government.

现在，这不是指信徒本身，而是指国家的机构权威——更确切地说，教会的机构权威或多或少只是一个独裁和恐怖主义政府的宣传部门。

So, it’s had both its good and its bad consequences over the centuries.

因此，几个世纪以来，它既有好处，也有坏处。

At its best, as I say, it encourages a true spiritual life that can teach one to be detached from ambitions and expectations and the violent projects of the ego.

正如我所说，最好的情况是，它鼓励一种真正的精神生活，可以教导人们摆脱野心、期望以及自我的暴力计划。

But at its worst, it can become a passive participant in precisely those sorts of projects and those sorts of evils.

但在最坏的情况下，它可能成为此类项目和此类罪恶的被动参与者。

With Heidegger, it’s a very ambiguous figure, of course, but he certainly was — putting aside his own incredible moral defects.

当然，对于海德格尔来说，这是一个非常模糊的人物，但他确实是——抛开他自己令人难以置信的道德缺陷。

For those who don’t know, he was a member, for a while, of the Nazi Party, as much out of cowardice as anything else, but I think out of — early on, at least — some degree of sympathy.

对于那些不知道的人来说，他曾一度是纳粹党的成员，这既是出于怯懦，也是出于其他原因，但我认为是出于“——至少在早期——”某种程度的同情。

But when he wasn’t being evil, he was a very reflective philosopher on how we have arrived at what he considered an age of nihilism, an age that values the will to power over physical environment above all other things, without any sense of the mystery of being, the piety of not trying to grasp and control and reduce all of reality to instrumentality and utility.

但当他不作恶时，他是一位非常善于反思的哲学家，思考我们如何到达他所认为的虚无主义时代，这个时代将控制物质环境的权力意志看得高于一切，没有任何存在的神秘感，也没有试图掌握和控制所有现实并将其简化为工具性和实用性的虔诚。

He tells a very powerful story about the genealogy of Western nihilism, how we arrived at what he calls the age of technology, in which everything is simply a project of the will, and the whole of the world is nothing but a reserve of resources to be exploited for the purpose of acquisition and for the purposes of the will.

他讲述了一个关于西方虚无主义谱系的非常有力的故事，讲述了我们如何到达他所说的技术时代，在这个时代，一切都只是意志的一个项目，整个世界只不过是为了获取和意志目的而开发的资源储备。

Now, I don’t agree with the whole story, but as I say, it makes one think about the genealogy of the way we see the world and see the world as desacralized and disenchanted.

现在，我不同意整个故事，但正如我所说，它让人思考我们看待世界的方式的谱系，并将世界视为非神圣和失望的。

Much of the appeal, I suppose, of Eastern Orthodoxy to me in my youth was precisely that it was a Christian tradition that emphasized precisely the sense of the cosmic mystery of Christ and the cosmic mystery of the revelation of God in all things, and put this great emphasis on the notion that the heart of Christian thought is the idea of deification, of union with God, of the whole creation renewed in some unimaginable ways, so that — a very popular image goes — so that the whole universe is like a burning bush shining with the glory of God, but not consumed.

我想，在我年轻时，东正教对我的大部分吸引力恰恰在于它是一种基督教传统，它精确地强调了基督的宇宙奥秘感和上帝在万物中启示的宇宙奥秘，并强调基督教思想的核心是神化、与上帝联合、以某种难以想象的方式更新的整个创造的观念，因此，“这是一个非常流行的形象”。 ——整个宇宙就像燃烧的荆棘，闪烁着上帝的荣耀，但却没有被烧毁。

I would say that if there’s any connection there — and since no one’s ever asked me this before, I’m not sure there is — but if there is, then you can see how someone who takes seriously the genealogy of nihilism that someone like Heidegger unfolds might be drawn to, among Christian traditions, a very robust depiction of a glorified reality in which the entire cosmos participates in the sacred mystery.

我想说的是，如果这两者之间有什么联系的话——因为以前没有人问过我这个问题，所以我不确定是否有联系——但如果有的话，那么你就会看到，那些认真对待海德格尔等人所揭示的虚无主义谱系的人，可能会被基督教传统中对一个荣耀现实的强烈描述所吸引，在这个现实中，整个宇宙都参与了神圣的神秘。

Also, there was no theology then of predestination.

而且，当时还没有预定论的神学。

This is often also regarded as .

这通常也被视为。

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There was in Western Catholicism, albeit it’s a doctrine without a strict definition, it remains on the books, but it’s unlike Calvinism.

西方天主教有，虽然没有严格的定义，但仍保留在书本上，但与加尔文主义不同。

Roman Catholicism doesn’t insist that it knows what predestination means.

罗马天主教并不坚持认为它知道预定意味着什么。

I suppose, then, the greatest difference would be the theology of grace.

那么，我想最大的区别就是恩典神学。

In the West, it became more and more the case that grace was treated as antithetical to nature.

在西方，恩典越来越被视为与自然相对立的。

Grace was a principle over against nature.

恩典是反对自然的原则。

It was therefore given according to a purely predilective, predestining will of God.

因此，它是根据上帝纯粹的预先决定的旨意而给予的。

Whereas in the East, that opposition between grace and nature simply never took root.

而在东方，恩典与自然之间的对立从未扎根。

Grace was just a word for the way God deals with creatures, and it was seen as more continuous with nature: that we’re always already naturally oriented to union with God, and that it’s an unnatural impediment that separates us from God rather than a failure to receive a super-elevating grace.

恩典只是上帝对待受造物的方式的一个词，它被认为与自然更加连续：我们总是自然地倾向于与上帝联合，这是一种非自然的障碍，使我们与上帝分离，而不是未能接受超级提升的恩典。

How do I put this?

我该怎么说呢？

In Western tradition, grace became a very extraordinary gift, whereas in the East it remained an ordinary reality from which we were extraordinarily separated by a tragic history that had to be overcome.

在西方传统中，恩典成为一种非常非凡的礼物，而在东方，它仍然是一个普通的现实，我们与必须克服的悲剧历史截然不同。

I don’t think so, no. Those sorts of differences, those accidental differences, are the things that Orthodox polemicists like to focus on.

我不这么认为，不。这类差异，那些偶然的差异，是正统辩论家喜欢关注的事情。

Every little difference becomes a difference of incredible magnitude for those who are looking for reasons to dislike the other camp.

对于那些寻找理由不喜欢另一个阵营的人来说，每一个微小的差异都会变成令人难以置信的巨大差异。

But no, I don’t think there’s any significant theological difference there, and the Slavic tradition, as I say, is highly contrapuntal.

但不，我不认为那里有任何显着的神学差异，而且正如我所说，斯拉夫传统是高度对位的。

You know Rachmaninoff’s church music?

你知道拉赫玛尼诺夫的教堂音乐吗？

The result is that many who come into the church come with presuppositions formed in a very radically different tradition.

结果是，许多进入教会的人都带着一种完全不同的传统所形成的预设。

Fundamentalist evangelicalism is a much narrower understanding of how much speculation is possible.

原教旨主义福音派对猜测的可能性的理解要狭隘得多。

They’re not really prepared to look at a 2,000-year history and see all the varieties — this is the Patristic period, here’s the scholastic, and the Russian religious philosophers of the 19th century were very different — and be able to recognize that a huge variety of views is .

他们并没有真正准备好审视 2000 年的历史并看到所有的多样性——“这是教父时期，这里是经院时期，而 19 世纪的俄罗斯宗教哲学家非常不同”——并且能够认识到观点的巨大多样性。

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Instead, they tend to think in terms of a faith statement of the sort that an evangelical church would have.

相反，他们倾向于根据福音派教会所拥有的那种信仰声明来思考。

To be honest, that’s become such a dominant faction in so much American Orthodoxy that much of American Orthodoxy is intellectually and temperamentally and socially and culturally just American evangelicalism plus saints and incense.

老实说，这已经成为美国东正教中的一个主导派别，以至于美国东正教的大部分在智力、气质、社会和文化上都是美国福音派加上圣人和香火。

The only way in which the Orthodox communities have successfully resisted this is also the degrees to which many of them have remained redoubts of ethnic identity, and that’s not much better.

东正教社区成功抵制这种情况的唯一方式也是他们中的许多人在某种程度上仍然对种族身份感到怀疑，而这也好不到哪儿去。

I would say, on the whole, the jury is still out.

我想说，总的来说，陪审团还没有定论。

I think Orthodoxy in America may very well just be another American religion at the end of the day.

我认为美国的东正教最终很可能只是另一种美国宗教。

Another generation or two, and the only distinctions will be in liturgical form.

再过一两代，唯一的区别将是礼拜形式。

I don’t know if there’s any causal relationship between the kind of Christianity because, of course, Western democratic institutions tended to go hand in hand with some degree of laicization, some degree of secularization.

我不知道这种基督教之间是否存在任何因果关系，因为当然，西方民主制度往往与某种程度的世俗化、某种程度的世俗化齐头并进。

The whole point of the French Revolution would be the overthrow of the ancien régime, which is both state and church, and you’re dealing with absolutist Gallican Church, in a sense, that’s a way of government.

法国大革命的全部意义在于推翻旧政权，即国家和教会，而你面对的是专制主义的高卢教会，从某种意义上说，这是一种政府方式。

My suspicion is this is mostly historical accident.

我怀疑这主要是历史意外。

The cultural tendencies towards reaction in the East mostly just have to do with the material conditions and the political histories and the relative material isolation from the huge period of Western European expansion of wealth, expansion of power, and ferment of social change and new ideas.

东方的反动文化倾向大多与物质条件和政治历史以及与西欧财富扩张、权力扩张、社会变革和新思想发酵的巨大时期的相对物质隔离有关。

It was simply the case that after the Middle Ages, early modernity, Western Europe was the center of economic and political power in the Western world.

事实很简单，中世纪之后、现代早期，西欧是西方世界的经济和政治权力中心。

Trying to draw causal ties between what are very complex social histories, I just think is a mistake.

我认为试图在非常复杂的社会历史之间建立因果关系是一个错误。

There’s no way of saying one way or the other.

没有办法说一种方式或另一种方式。

Greek democracy flourished in the modern age for a while after Greek independence in the early 19th century, and Greece remains Orthodox, too.

19世纪初希腊独立后，希腊民主制度在现代繁荣了一段时间，希腊也仍然信奉东正教。

Even more than Poland, it is committed to a set of real democratic norms.

它甚至比波兰更致力于一套真正的民主规范。

In Poland, there are stronger reactionary forces at present than there are in Greece.

目前波兰的反动势力比希腊还要强大。

After all, this is something of the Abrahamic religions: They’re so supersessionist in the way they proceed.

毕竟，这是亚伯拉罕宗教的一些特点：他们的行事方式是如此的超越主义。

Even within the history of Judaism before Christianity, it’s one covenant superseding another.

即使在基督教之前的犹太教历史中，这也是一个圣约取代另一个圣约。

Then Christians claim that they’ve superseded the covenant in some sense.

然后基督徒声称他们在某种意义上已经取代了圣约。

Then Islam is a supersession of the revelation with yet another revelation.

那么伊斯兰教就是用另一种启示来取代这个启示。

This seems to be just part and parcel of the whole Western Abrahamic or the whole Abrahamic religious tradition.

这似乎只是整个西方亚伯拉罕或整个亚伯拉罕宗教传统的重要组成部分。

I suppose I would say that Mormonism is just another example of the claim of a new revelation.

我想我会说摩门教只是声称新启示的另一个例子。

So, is it reason or is it faith that determines when an argument from reason or an argument from faith is appropriate?

那么，是理性还是信仰决定了理性论证或信仰论证何时合适？

But what is faith?

但什么是信仰呢？

When you create a division between faith and reason, you’re assuming that faith is taking things simply on the authority of another blindly.

当你在信仰和理性之间划分界限时，你就假设信仰只是盲目地根据他人的权威行事。

That’s never actually been the definition that any religion — whether you’re talking in the West, or when you’re talking about Pistis in Greek, or śraddhā in Sanskrit, or any number of other words for faith, it usually means a rational commitment to a certain path for which you have reasons.

实际上，这从来都不是任何宗教的定义——无论你在西方谈论宗教，还是在谈论希腊语中的 Pistis，或梵语中的 śraddhā，或任何其他表示信仰的词语时，它通常意味着对某条道路的理性承诺，并且你有理由这样做。

Those reasons in themselves don’t necessarily arrive at a QED.

这些原因本身并不一定会导致 QED。

But as you advance on this path, you’re hoping, at least, things become clearer and clearer, and you’ll understand better whether you really believe it or not.

但当你在这条路上前进时，你至少希望事情会变得越来越清晰，无论你是否真的相信，你都会更好地理解。

You have to commit yourself to the path in order to find a way.

你必须全身心投入这条道路才能找到出路。

The American philosopher William James spoke of the will to believe, and he’s often misunderstood as if all he was saying was it’s okay to choose arbitrarily to believe something.

美国哲学家威廉·詹姆斯谈到了相信的意愿，但他经常被误解，好像他所说的只是可以任意选择相信某事。

That’s not what he said.

他不是这么说的。

What he said was, if you’re in the fog, say, and you encounter two paths, and you have a sense that one is more likely to lead to safety and the other to the edge of a cliff, you take that path.

他说的是，如果你在雾中，比如说，你遇到两条路，并且你有一种感觉，一条更有可能通向安全，另一条更有可能通向悬崖边缘，你就会走那条路。

But you don’t take it so credulously that you’ll walk off the edge of a cliff if you come to the cliff.

但你也不要轻信到一旦走到悬崖边就会走下悬崖的边缘。

The act of faith is a way of engaging the mind, engaging reason so it can explore.

信仰的行为是一种吸引心灵、吸引理性以便进行探索的方式。

If you don’t start with some trust of the possibility of discovering the truth, then you never will seek the truth to begin with.

如果你一开始不相信发现真相的可能性，那么你永远不会一开始就寻求真相。

That search requires a combination of a degree of rational judgment and a degree of trust, and you hope that the two prove to be in harmony.

这种搜索需要一定程度的理性判断和一定程度的信任的结合，你希望两者能够和谐相处。

If they’re not, though, if you reach a point where your faith and your reason come into conflict, then trust your reason.

但如果不是，如果你的信仰和理性发生冲突，那就相信你的理性。

Always trust your reason because otherwise, faith is just epistemic nihilism.

永远相信你的理性，否则，信仰只是认知虚无主义。

It’s meaningless.

这是没有意义的。

It’s just a brute exertion of the will, at which point it’s subrational and becomes contemptible.

这只是意志力的野蛮运用，到了这种程度，它就变得不理性并且变得可鄙了。

Always trust reason, but make sure that reason is tempered.

永远相信理性，但要确保理性是经过调和的。

It’s not petty rationalism, but it’s a reason that really can see things in broad perspective and understand in a variety of modalities.

这不是狭隘的理性主义，而是真正能够以宽广的视角看待事物、以多种方式理解事物的理性。

Don’t treat reason as if it’s a math equation.

不要将理性视为数学方程式。

The question is, within a tradition — that’s when things become a bit more stochastic.

问题是，在传统中——那就是事情变得更加随机的时候。

If I don’t start from the premise that when I speak of God, that there’s an absolute source and end to all things, then I’m not really interested in the question of religion at all.

如果我不从这样的前提出发：当我谈到上帝时，万物都有绝对的源头和终结，那么我对宗教问题根本就不感兴趣。

But if I believe that may be true, if I have a sense of it, or if reason tells me it’s so — that it doesn’t make sense to believe in a pure physicalism or materialism — then where faith is engaged is in trying to make rational judgments about who can point you towards a deeper understanding and relationship.

但如果我相信这可能是真的，如果我有这种感觉，或者理性告诉我，相信纯粹的物理主义或唯物主义是没有意义的，那么信仰的作用就是尝试做出理性的判断，看看谁能引导你走向更深入的理解和关系。

I don’t think that’s Bayesian so much as it’s not a leap of faith in the vulgar sense.

我不认为这是贝叶斯主义，因为它不是庸俗意义上的信仰飞跃。

But it is a venture of faith in the sense that you can’t start with perfect wisdom and knowledge.

但这是一次信仰冒险，因为你不能从完美的智慧和知识开始。

You are making rational judgments.

你正在做出理性的判断。

Again, rationality is not a single, univocal thing.

再次强调，理性并不是单一的、明确的事物。

It can also have to do with intuitions, like moral intuitions.

它还可能与直觉有关，例如道德直觉。

If you come up against a doctrine or a teaching or something that is repugnant to your moral reasoning, then that is significant.

如果你遇到了与你的道德推理相抵触的教义、教导或其他东西，那么这就很重要了。

It would be deplorable of you to choose to believe it, despite the counsels of your moral reasoning, unless you had really good reasons to think you’d been mistaken.

尽管有道德推理的劝告，你还是选择相信它，这将是可悲的，除非你有充分的理由认为自己错了。

The versions that you find in Vedanta and bhakti and other things that we call Hinduism, or also in Sikhism or Jainism, in which the Jiva, something that is a soul passes over — even that’s not psychological self, but nonetheless, that’s a more substantial sense of the meaning of reincarnation.

你在吠檀多和巴克提以及其他我们称之为印度教的东西中找到的版本，或者在锡克教或耆那教中，其中灵魂（Jiva），一种灵魂的东西被超越了 ——即使那不是心理自我，但尽管如此，这是对轮回意义的更实质性的理解。

Within those systems, yes, they make perfect sense.

是的，在这些系统中它们非常有意义。

But again, people tend to think they know what these terms mean.

但同样，人们往往认为他们知道这些术语的含义。

When you actually look at the traditions, they have to be qualified and modified and explained at length because you can’t step out of an entire world of presuppositions and beliefs and concepts and just take one thing like that — Punabbhava, again becoming; I’m just choosing to use the Buddhist term — and think you understand what’s going on, as if you could just transpose it into, say, “Oh, I’m a Presbyterian, and I know what this means,” because you can’t do that.

当你真正审视这些传统时，它们必须得到详细的限定、修改和解释，因为你无法走出整个预设、信仰和概念的世界，而只是采取这样的一件事： —— Punabbhava，再次成为；我只是选择使用佛教术语“-”，并认为你明白发生了什么，就好像你可以将其转换为，“哦，我是长老会教徒，我知道这意味着什么”，因为你不能这样做。

At the same time, I think also that you’re dealing with a moment of transition in which it’s very hard to separate the psychological from the objective.

与此同时，我也认为你正在面临一个转变的时刻，在这个时刻，很难将心理与目标分开。

I wouldn’t dismiss them.

我不会解雇他们。

Many of them, as I say, are quite compelling, but how much you can learn from them, there I have to —

正如我所说，其中许多都非常引人注目，但你能从中学到多少，我必须 ——

You can say the same about everyone’s testimony.

你可以对每个人的证词说同样的话。

There are judgments you have to make at times.

有时你必须做出判断。

Just, no one’s testimony should be taken as an absolute authority.

只是，任何人的证言都不应被视为绝对权威。

No one, because no one is free from psychological limitations.

没有人，因为没有人能够摆脱心理限制。

Even if he or she is perfectly sincere, that in itself doesn’t prove anything.

即使他或她完全真诚，这本身并不能证明什么。

You can make judgments on character.

你可以根据性格做出判断。

You can make judgments about coherence.

你可以对连贯性做出判断。

These are, again, relative judgments.

这些又是相对的判断。

They’re not absolute.

它们不是绝对的。

I think that when the story becomes .

我认为当故事变成。

.

。

.

。

I don’t know why you keep bringing up Mormonism.

我不知道你为什么老提摩门教。

I have absolutely no connections.

我完全没有任何联系。

I’ve never written about it.

我从来没有写过这件事。

My only connection — I’ve met a few nice Mormons.

我唯一的联系 —— 我遇到了一些不错的摩门教徒。

I’ve read the Book of Mormon once.

我读过一次摩尔门经。

I didn’t find it particularly well written, but neither, for that matter, is most of the New Testament.

我觉得它写得不是特别好，但就这一点而言，新约的大部分内容都不是。

I think it’s based on historical claims that are objectively false, that there are these ancient civilizations in the Americas that just didn’t exist.

我认为这是基于客观上错误的历史主张，即美洲并不存在这些古代文明。

I think the story of the genesis of the Book of Mormon is a bit more incredible than, say, somebody in the first century writing down what his theology is based on, as in the case of Paul, obviously a person whose life was turned upside down by some kind of experience.

我认为《摩尔门经》起源的故事比在一世纪的某个人写下他的神学基础的故事更令人难以置信，就像保罗的例子一样，他的生活显然因某种经历而发生了翻天覆地的变化。

Maybe he was a psychotic, I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem that way when you read it.

也许他是个精神病患者，我不知道，但当你读到它时，似乎并非如此。

There’s some powerful spiritual apprehension that he has discovered about the love of God and the grace of God, and over many decades of a self-sacrificing life, leading ultimately to his death, he lays that out.

他发现了一些关于上帝的爱和上帝的恩典的强大的精神忧虑，并且在数十年的自我牺牲生活中，最终导致了他的死亡，他阐述了这一点。

Well, that’s compelling to me in a way that other sorts of claims that seem more incredible aren’t.

嗯，这对我来说很有吸引力，而其他看起来更令人难以置信的说法则不然。

I don’t know if this has always been the case.

我不知道是否一直都是这样。

There have been apocalyptic moments in American history before.

美国历史上曾经出现过世界末日的时刻。

We had a Civil War, for instance.

例如，我们经历过内战。

But at the present, it seems like both extremes speak in such strident tones of moral indignation that it is tempting to think that they’re speaking out of a dogmatic impulse rather than a rational one, that there is a religious intonation, in the worst sense, in our politics on all sides.

但目前看来，两个极端都以如此尖锐的道德义愤语气说话，以至于很容易让人认为他们的言论是出于教条冲动而不是理性冲动，从最坏的意义上来说，我们的政治中各方都存在宗教语气。

Whereas my ideal of what would be a brighter future for Christianity would be the final eclipse of that kind of conflation of Christianity with the interests of a particular civilization or culture or nation.

然而，我对基督教更光明未来的理想是，基督教与特定文明、文化或国家利益的这种融合最终黯然失色。

I believe that’s a perfidious corruption.

我认为这是一种背信弃义的腐败行为。

So, bright in what way?

那么，亮在哪方面呢？

I would say that in many ways, the brightest future for Christianity may consist in the death of many of its institutions and of much of its cultural power.

我想说，从很多方面来说，基督教最光明的未来可能在于它的许多机构和文化力量的消亡。

This seems like a minor and a silly question, but it is true.

这似乎是一个小问题，也是一个愚蠢的问题，但这是事实。

They did a remake for AMC of The Prisoner some years ago.

几年前，他们为 AMC 翻拍了《囚徒》。

In the original, of course, Number Six — he escapes.

当然，在原著中，第六号——他逃脱了。

Now, his escape isn’t absolute because he goes back home, and it turns out still to be, in some sense, the village.

现在，他的逃离并不是绝对的，因为他回到了家乡，从某种意义上说，家乡仍然是村庄。

He is still the prisoner of himself, but he destroys the village, right?

他仍然是自己的囚徒，但他却毁掉了村庄，对吗？

Whereas the new version simply says that, in a sense, maybe there is no truth at all.

而新版本只是简单地说，从某种意义上说，也许根本没有真相。

There is no right side or wrong side.

没有正确的一面或错误的一面。

There’s just the need for therapy to help us deal with the sense of alienation or discontent.

我们只需要治疗来帮助我们应对疏离感或不满情绪。

Of those two options, I prefer the former.

在这两个选择中，我更喜欢前者。

There are so many different schools that we’ve simply stuck together and called gnostic that when you actually look at them, the details, much of what we call gnosticism is just actually Pauline or Johannine Christianity in the New Testament, restated with an overlay of fabulism.

有很多不同的流派，我们只是简单地结合在一起并称为诺斯替教，当你真正观察它们时，细节，我们所谓的诺斯替主义的大部分实际上只是新约中的保罗或约翰基督教，用寓言的覆盖来重述。

I think, to be honest, there’s been a vogue of gnosticism in popular culture — not where you’d expect it, but there have been lots of films.

我认为，说实话，流行文化中盛行诺斯替主义——虽然不是你想象的那样，但已经有很多电影了。

I’m afraid he’s been around too long.

我担心他已经存在太久了。

You really have to say what’s the best vintage Dylan?

你真的必须说迪伦最好的复古风格是什么？

What’s the best middle-period Dylan?

迪伦中期最好的作品是什么？

What’s the best revival middle-period Dylan?

中期迪伦最好的复兴作品是什么？

What’s the best late period?

最好的后期是什么时候？

If I had to choose one to be played while my corpse is being marched in its coffin down Bourbon Street or something, I would go with “Blind Willie McTell.”

如果我必须选择一个在我的尸体被装在棺材里沿波旁街或其他地方行进时播放的歌曲，我会选择“盲人威利麦克特尔”。

Now, after doing that, of course, I had to say, well, then again .

当然，在这样做之后，我不得不说，好吧，再说一遍。

.

。

.

。

When I looked at it again, the treatment of Nepalese refugees in Bhutan was anything but admirable and all that, but at the time I was making a joke about what constitutes national greatness.

当我再看一遍时，尼泊尔难民在不丹所受到的待遇一点也不令人钦佩之类的，但当时我正在开玩笑什么是国家伟大。

The notion that you have a country that didn’t have any television in it up until a decade ago and only needed one stoplight in the whole country, and then they removed it because it offended their aesthetic sense.

有一种观念认为，一个国家直到十年前还没有任何电视，整个国家只需要一个红绿灯，然后他们将其移除，因为它冒犯了他们的审美意识。

It just seemed like a funny column at the time, but if you mean if I’m really willing to go to the mat defending Bhutan against all its critics, no, no, that was a satire.

当时这看起来像是一个有趣的专栏，但如果你的意思是如果我真的愿意站出来捍卫不丹免受所有批评者的攻击，不，不，那是讽刺。

I think she also just doesn’t know the period very well.

我认为她也不太了解这个时期。

She’s a classicist in one sense, but late antiquity and certainly Second Temple Judaism and late antique Christianity are just not in her wheelhouse, and there are just so many things that she gets wrong.

从某种意义上说，她是一位古典主义者，但古代晚期，当然还有第二圣殿犹太教和晚期古代基督教都不在她的掌控范围内，而且她犯了很多错误。

I just think it reads exceedingly badly.

我只是觉得它读起来非常糟糕。

I agree with Luke Timothy Johnson, who, with all the goodwill in the world, just described it as a mess.

我同意卢克·蒂莫西·约翰逊（Luke Timothy Johnson）的观点，尽管他满怀善意，但还是将其描述为一团糟。

Now you see, the King James is an exception only because it’s based on the Tyndale translation.

现在你看，《钦定本》是一个例外，只是因为它是基于廷代尔的译本。

It wasn’t really a committee project.

这实际上并不是一个委员会项目。

The committee simply dotted the i’s, crossed the t’s, fixed a few things, did some good.

委员会只是简单地画上i，划掉t，修正一些事情，做一些好事。

That was first and foremost the work of an individual genius.

这首先是一个天才个人的作品。

Even then, the King James should not be used for theology.

即便如此，《钦定本》也不应该被用于神学。

It’s great literature, it’s great liturgy, it’s better than many later translations.

这是伟大的文学，这是伟大的礼拜仪式，比许多后来的翻译都要好。

Far more accurate, say, than a piece of rubbish like the New International Version, but a lot of its translation is based on later Christian doctrine rather than on what the Greek actually says.

比方说，它比新国际版这样的垃圾要准确得多，但它的很多翻译都是基于后来的基督教教义，而不是希腊语实际所说的内容。

At least, especially when you’re dealing, say, with the Pauline literature, which is very early.

至少，尤其是当你处理，比如说，波琳文学时，这是非常早期的。

In the gospels, two are drawn from earlier strata of Christian literature.

在福音书中，有两个来自基督教文学的早期阶层。

Some of the later stuff, like Second Peter — there you’re already well into a period of hardening factions.

后来的一些作品，比如《彼得后书》——在那里你已经进入了一个派系强化的时期。

I think the thing that I came away with is that every attempt to ground absolute doctrine, fixity of dogma in the text is an absurd project because it’s simply not there.

我认为我得出的结论是，每一次试图在文本中建立绝对教义和教条固定性的尝试都是一个荒谬的项目，因为它根本不存在。

It is not that kind of book.

它不是那种书。

It is not an index of propositional content.

它不是命题内容的索引。

It was like the wind really can be called pneuma without it necessarily meaning something drastically different from spirit when we’re speaking of intelligence or mind.

就好像风确实可以被称为“气”，但当我们谈论智慧或思想时，它不一定意味着与精神截然不同的东西。

Also, because when you actually get to the way it’s used in the New Testament mysteriously, say by Paul, it’s not clear that he makes the distinction that later tradition — in fact he clearly doesn’t — that the divine spirit and human spirit are absolutely separate realities.

而且，因为当你真正了解它在新约中神秘的使用方式时，保罗说，你并不清楚他是否区分了后来的传统——“事实上他显然没有这样做”——神圣的精神和人类的精神是绝对独立的现实。

They’re not.

他们不是。

In Paul, they often are one and the same, or only slightly differentiated, or differentiated within a prior unity.

在保罗看来，它们常常是同一的，或者只是略有不同，或者在先前的统一体中有所不同。

You see this picked up in very early theology, like someone like Irenaeus, for whom the human spirit is just the divine spirit.

你会看到这一点在非常早期的神学中得到体现，就像爱任纽这样的人一样，对他来说，人类的精神就是神圣的精神。

There’s no difference, really, to speak of between human and divine spirit.

人类精神和神灵之间确实没有什么区别。

Then the way later translations dealt with this was again and again to make decisions.

那么后来的翻译处理这个问题的方式就是一次又一次地做出决定。

“Here spirit means the Holy Spirit, which we understand as — in later Nicene terms — as one of the coequal persons of the Trinity.

“这里的灵意指圣灵，我们将其理解为‘——‘用后来的尼西亚术语’——‘三位一体中同等的位格之一。

Here spirit means human spirit.

这里的灵指的是人的精神。

Here .

在这里。

.

。

.”

”。

The translations capitalize it or add “holy” to it.

翻译将其大写或添加“神圣”。

When you go back to the Greek, it’s simply not there.

当你回到希腊语时，你会发现它根本不存在。

It’s not talking in that clear and precise way with all those distinctions in place.

它并没有以清晰、准确的方式谈论所有这些区别。

It’s a much more mysterious word, and it’s very difficult to put it in context from verse to verse to verse.

这是一个更加神秘的词，很难将它逐节地放在上下文中。

And in some places, you know that the plural meanings are intended.

在某些地方，您知道复数含义是有意的。

I had to use footnotes.

我不得不使用脚注。

I love the music, the great composers of the 20th century.

我热爱音乐，热爱20世纪伟大的作曲家。

There was some rubbish.

有一些垃圾。

You couldn’t pay me to listen Stockhausen.

你不能付钱让我听斯托克豪森的音乐。

And there are all these wonderful composers that get overlooked because of the decline of the cultural centrality.

由于文化中心地位的下降，所有这些出色的作曲家都被忽视了。

Figures like Nikos Skalkottas and others in Greece, or Weinberg in Russia, Henze in Germany.

像希腊的尼科斯·斯卡尔科塔斯（Nikos Skalkottas）和其他人，或者俄罗斯的温伯格（Weinberg），德国的亨策（Henze）这样的人物。

No, I don’t have a single favorite composer.

不，我没有一个最喜欢的作曲家。

Messiaen might be one I love.

梅西安可能是我喜欢的人之一。

They’re just too many.

他们太多了。

There, you’re dealing with a repertoire that’s been recorded so many times that the virtues of different recordings .

在那里，您要处理的曲目已经被录制了很多次，以至于无法了解不同录音的优点。

.

。

.

。

We have to choose something a bit more recherché.

我们必须选择一些更熟悉的东西。

Everything after they got over the ponderous, overly romantic style of Toscanini and Furtwängler and all that.

在他们克服了托斯卡尼尼和富特文格勒的沉闷、过于浪漫的风格之后的一切。

Karajan made it more genuinely classical, and then the original-instruments approach where they actually used .

卡拉扬让它变得更加真正的古典，然后是他们实际使用的原始乐器方法。

.

。

.

。

I’m trying to think — the British conductor who did those wonderful recordings —

我试着去想 —— 录制了那些精彩录音的英国指挥家 ——

Except for the things I got early in school.

除了我在学校早期得到的东西。

You go to French class and Spanish class, and you speak it before you really immerse yourself in the grammar.

你去上法语课和西班牙语课，在你真正沉浸在语法中之前你就会说它。

But my approach to most languages is like the approach I had to Latin and Greek as a kid.

但我对大多数语言的态度就像我小时候对拉丁语和希腊语的态度一样。

I learned the grammar first.

我先学了语法。

Whatever the case, I have a talent for languages, but I still envy those who can just somehow absorb it without having to master the grammar first and then speak it like a native.

无论如何，我有语言天赋，但我仍然羡慕那些能够以某种方式吸收它而不必先掌握语法然后像母语一样说它的人。

I knew a fellow like that at Cambridge who now, still alive, has like 32 languages.

我在剑桥认识一个这样的人，他现在还活着，掌握了大约 32 种语言。

I studied and I don’t consider myself a master of, but I can read now, among Asian languages, Sanskrit, Pali, classical Chinese, although I find it so gnomic at times, it’s hard to be sure that you’ve got the meaning right.

我学过，我不认为自己是大师，但我现在可以阅读，在亚洲语言中，梵文、巴利文、文言文，虽然我有时觉得它很精辟，但很难确定你的意思是正确的。

It’s amazing how many really variant readings you can get at the same, say, in a Chinese poem by Li Bai.

令人惊讶的是，你可以在同一个地方获得如此多的真正不同的解读，比如李白的一首中国诗。

The same line comes out completely differently.

同一条线出来的结果完全不同。

I’m still working at my Japanese.

我仍在学习日语。

I know some Britannic Celtic languages, kind of.

我懂一些不列颠凯尔特语。

I don’t know if I’m forgetting anything or not.

我不知道我是否忘记了什么。

When I was an undergraduate, I thought I might be doing Native American studies.

当我还是一名本科生时，我想我可能会做美洲原住民研究。

I worked on spoken Cheyenne — Tsisinstsistots, to be precise, but that’s pretty rusty.

准确地说，我研究了夏安语口语——Tsisinstsistots，但这还很生疏。

For instance, I don’t write much theology anymore, but when I do, even if it’s Christian theology, I’m quite happy to draw on Vedantic sources from India if they illuminate a question for me.

例如，我不再写太多神学了，但当我写的时候，即使是基督教神学，我也很乐意借鉴印度的吠檀多来源，如果它们能为我阐明一个问题的话。

I think we do have to rethink what exactly it is we’re talking about when we talk about religion.

我认为当我们谈论宗教时，我们确实必须重新思考我们到底在谈论什么。

The other thing, I guess, because I published that book a couple years ago, That All Shall Be Saved, is Christians radically need to rethink, and go back to the original text, and go back to the first century and rethink this grotesque notion of an eternal hell.

我想另一件事是，因为我几年前出版了那本书《所有人都将被拯救》，基督徒迫切需要重新思考，回到原始文本，回到第一世纪，重新思考永恒地狱的怪诞概念。