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On Sin
论原罪
奥古斯丁(354-430年)是西方神学史上最重要的思想家之一。本文(题目为译者所加)节选自其名著《上帝之城》(The City of
God)。
I have already said, in previous Books, that God had two purposes in
deriving all men from one man. His first purpose was to give unity to the human
race by the likeness of nature. His second purpose was to bind mankind by the
bond of peace, through blood relationship, into one harmonious whole. I have
said further that no member of this race would ever have died had not the first
two (Adam and Eve) --- one created from nothing and the second from the first
--- merited this death by disobedience. The sin which they committed was so
great that it impaired all human nature --- in this sense, that the nature has
been transmitted to posterity with a propensity to sin and a necessity to
die....
When a man lives "according to man--- and not "according to God--- he is
like the Devil....
When man lives according to himself, that is to say, according to human
ways and not according to God "ss will, then surely he lives according to
falsehood. Man himself, of course, is not a lie, since God who is his Author and
creator could not be the Author and Creator of a lie. Rather, man has been so
constituted in truth that he was meant to live not according to himself but to
Him who made him --- that is, he was meant to do the will of God rather than his
own. It is a lie not to live as a man was created to live.
Man indeed desires happiness even when he does so live as to make happiness
impossible.... The happiness of man can come not from himself but only from God,
and that to live according to oneself is to sin, and to sin is to lose
God....
Moreover, our first parents (Adam and Eve) only fell openly into the sin of
disobedience because, secretly, they had begun to be guilty. Actually, their bad
deedcould not have been done had not bad will preceded it; what is more, the
root of their bad will was nothing else than pride. For,"pride is the beginning
of all sin.--- And what is pride but an appetite for inordinate exaltation? Now,
exaltation is inordinate when the soul cuts itself off from the very Source
(God) to which it should keep close and somehow makes itself and becomes an end
to itself. This takes place when the soul becomes inordinately pleased with
itself, and such self-pleasing occurs when the soul falls away from the
unchangeable Good which ought to please the soul far more than the soul can
please itself. Now, this falling a way is the soul "s own doing, for, if the
will had merely remained firm in the love of that higher immutable Good which
lighted its mind into knowledge and warmed its will into love, it would not have
turned away in search of satisfaction in itself and, by so doing, have lost that
light and warmth. And thus Eve would not have believed that the serpent "s lie
was true, nor would Adam have preferred the will of his wife to the will of
God....
This life of ours --- if a life so full of such great ills can properly be
called a life --- bears witness to the fact that, from its very start, the race
of mortal men has been a race condemned. Think, first, of that dreadful abyss of
ignorance from which all error flows and so engulfs the sons of Adam in a
darksome pool that no one can escape without the toll of toils and tears and
fears. Then, take our very love for all those things that prove so vain and
poisonous and breed so many heartaches, troubles, griefs, and fears; such insane
joys in discord, strife, and war; such wrath and plots of enemies, deceivers,
sycophants; such fraud and theft and robbery; such perfidy and pride, envy and
ambition, homicide and murder, cruelty and savagery, lawlessness and lust; all
the shameless passions of the impure --- fornication and adultery, incest and
unnatural sins, rape and countless other uncleannesses too nasty to be
mentioned; the sins against religion --- sacrilege and heresy, blasphemy and
perjury; the iniquities against our neighbors --- calumnies and cheating, lies
and false witness, violence to persons and property; the injustices of the
courts and the innumerable other miseries and maladies that fill the world, yet
escape attention.
It is true that it is wicked men who do such things, but the source of all
such sins is that radical canker (sinfulness) in the mind and will that is
innate in every son of Adam....
Yet, for all this blight of ignorance and folly, fallen man has not been
left without some ministries of Providence, nor has God, in His anger, shut up
His mercies. There are still within the reach of man himself, if only he will
pay the price of toil and trouble, the twin resources of law and education. With
the one, he
can make war on human passion; with the other, he can keep the light of
learning lit even in the darkness of our native ignorance....
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