Christianity
Christianity is a religious tradition based on the spiritual and ethical teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians believe to be the Messiah, the Son of God, and God incarnate. As an Abrahamic faith, it shares the Old Testament with Judaism, from which it split in the first century CE, while the New Testament is distinctly Christian, recounting the life of Jesus and the ministries of his apostles. Interpretations of these scriptures differ between the tradition's three main branches: Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. Christianity is the world's largest religion, with about 2.3 billion adherents. In Europe, church attendance is down and secularism is on the rise. Overall Christian adherence is relatively stable in the Americas and is increasing in Sub-Saharan Africa. Christianity has played a major role in shaping Western civilization and continues to influence politics in diverse ways across the globe.
ESSAYS ON CHRISTIANITY:
Christianity
基督教
Christianity centers on the person of Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 4 BCE – 30 CE). The New Testament recounts his life and teachings, along with those of his early followers. Christianity began as a Jewish sect, and is indebted to Judaism’s ethical monotheism. For Christians, Jesus is the awaited Jewish messiah (the Christ) and the savior of all humanity. Salvation cannot be achieved by an individual's actions alone; it depends on God’s revelation and initiative. Jesus’ preaching and practice of peace and service to the disadvantaged have served as a model that has influenced subsequent Christian approaches to culture, society, and politics. According to the Gospels and the letters of the Apostle Paul, that model can be summed up in two commands: to love God with one's whole heart and soul, and to love one's neighbor as one's self. The main branches of Christianity—Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox—share this overall ethical orientation, while differing in their views of Jesus and his mission and of the Church and its role.
基督教以拿撒勒的耶稣（公元前4年-公元30年）这一人物为中心。新约《圣经》记录了他和其早期追随者的生平和学说。基督教兴起时是一个犹太教教派，承继了犹太教的伦理一神论。对基督徒来说，耶稣就是人们期待已久的犹太弥赛亚（基督）和所有人类的救主。救赎不能单单藉由个人的行动而获得，而是依赖上帝的启示和主张。耶稣关于和平及服务弱者的布道和实践作为榜样影响了后世基督徒在文化、社会和政治领域的处理方法。根据福音书和 保罗书信所言，这一榜样可归纳为两个要求：全心全意爱上帝、爱邻如己。罗马天主教、基督新教和正教等基督宗教主要分支共享这一伦理定位，但在对耶稣及其使命、教会及其职能的观点上有所不同。
Christian Beliefs
基督教信仰
Christian beliefs revolve around Jesus of Nazareth and his relationship with God and humanity. Those beliefs tend to vary widely around a central core. A basic Christian belief is that Jesus was God incarnate in human form, at once fully human and fully divine. He is the Son of God, the Messiah (or Christ) prophesied in the Jewish scriptures. The related doctrine of the Trinity, endorsed by most Christians, posits one God in three persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the savior who suffered and died for humanity and, through his victory over death in the resurrection, assured his followers of eternal life. Christians believe that God is present and active in the world through the work of the Holy Spirit. Most anticipate divine judgment and the prospect of either heaven or hell for each soul, as well as the Second Coming of Jesus, when humanity will undergo bodily resurrection from the dead and the Last Judgment.
各类基督教信仰以拿撒勒的耶稣及其与上帝和人类的关系为主要内容。各类信仰围绕这一核心，但相互之间差异很大。基督教基础信念是耶稣为上帝道成肉身，同时具有完全的人性和完全的神性。祂是圣子，也是犹太圣经中已有预言的弥赛亚（或基督）。与之相关的“三位一体”学说获得了大部分基督徒的认可，即设定上帝具有三重位格：圣父、圣子与圣灵。耶稣基督是救主，为人类受难殉死，后通过复活战胜死亡，由此令其追随者确信永生。基督徒相信，上帝通过圣灵作工而时刻存在并且活跃于世界。大多数基督徒期盼神圣的审判和每一灵魂或归天堂或归地狱的前景，以及耶稣的复临，那时人类将从死亡和末日审判中经历身体的复活。
Christian Practices
基督教实践
Christians are called to embody the teachings of Jesus and spread the Gospel (“Good News”) of God’s love for humanity through their efforts. This may take a wide variety of forms, including evangelization and service to one’s community. Sacraments are important religious elements of life, mediating grace from God to the believer. Different denominations vary on what constitutes a sacrament, but the most widely held are baptism, through which individuals are welcomed into the Christian community, and the Eucharist, the sharing of bread and wine in memory of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and some Protestants believe that the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ, while most Protestants believe it is symbolic. Other sacraments include the confession of sins for the sake of repentance and absolution and the anointing of the sick for those suffering from serious illness. Mass or other forms of weekly church worship generally occur on Sundays.
基督徒接受呼召，通过行动体现耶稣的教导及普传上帝对人类之爱的福音（直译为“好消息”），其形式多种多样，包括传福音与服务其社团。圣事（译注：圣事为新教用法，圣礼为天主教用法）将上帝的恩典传达给信众，是生活中重要的宗教元素。不同宗派有不同的圣事礼仪，但最为普及的是浸礼仪式（个体通过受浸获得基督教团体的接纳）和圣餐仪式（分享面包与酒以纪念耶稣受死与复活）。天主教徒、东正教徒和一些新教徒相信圣餐确实是基督的圣体和宝血，然而大部分新教徒认为这是象征性的。其它圣事包括为了悔罪和赦免而忏悔，以及为遭受重病之苦的病人施膏油礼。弥撒或其它形式的每周教会崇拜一般于周日举行。
Demographics of Christianity
基督教人口分布
Christianity is the world’s largest religion, comprising a third of the global population with some 2.3 billion adherents. It is the predominant religion in Europe, the Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Australia. While the rise of secularism in recent decades has led to a drop in Christian numbers in the developed world, particularly Europe, growth in the developing world has outweighed these losses. Roman Catholics account for over half of all Christians worldwide and the Roman Catholic Church is the dominant form of Christianity in Latin America, Western and Central Europe, and most of Central Africa. It is also the majority religion in the Philippines. Protestantism has about 600 million believers and is the main branch of Christianity in Northern Europe, North America, and Southern Africa. Eastern Orthodoxy is practiced by around 300 million adherents, dominating the religious landscape of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Russia.
基督教是世界最大宗教，拥有23亿信徒，占世界人口总数的1/3，在欧洲、美洲、撒哈拉以南非洲和澳洲占主导地位。尽管近几十年世俗化的兴起导致了发达世界、尤其是欧洲基督教人口的下降，但发展中世界基督教的增长使基督教人口总数得大于失。罗马天主教徒占有世界一半以上的基督教人口，在拉丁美洲、西欧和中欧、中非大部分地区占优势地位，也是菲律宾的主要宗教。新教大约有6亿信徒，是北欧、北美和南部非洲的主要基督教分支。东正教有3亿信徒，主导着东欧、巴尔干地区和俄罗斯宗教版图。
Christian Scripture
基督教经典
The Bible is the book of Christian scripture, comprised of the Old Testament, which is shared with Judaism, and the New Testament, which is unique to Christianity. The New Testament contains the late first century Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—the principal written sources about the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth; Acts, an account of the ministries of Jesus’ apostles; epistles attributed to the Apostle Paul and other leaders of early Christianity; and an apocalyptic prophecy in the Book of Revelation. In addition to scripture, papal encyclicals and other papal pronouncements are also important in Roman Catholicism; this was one of the principal complaints of leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose various successor denominations hold the Bible alone as the only source of sacred authority. While not scriptural, the writings of important Christian thinkers and saints such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas can also be sources of spiritual direction.
《圣经》是基督教经典之书，包括与犹太教共享的《旧约》和基督教独有的《新约》。《新约》包括公元一世纪晚期形成的玛窦（译注：玛窦为天主教思高本译法，《新约》和合本译为马太，本段括号内译名类同）福音、马尔谷（马可）福音、路加福音和若望（约翰）福音，这是拿撒勒的耶稣生平和教导的主要书面资料；《宗徒大事录》（《使徒行传》）记载了耶稣使徒的事工；书信集由若干早期基督教领袖撰写；以及《默示录》（《启示录》）中的末日预言。除《圣经》之外，在罗马天主教中，教宗通谕和其它教宗声明也很重要。这是新教改革运动领袖的主要指责之一，他们不同的后继宗派坚持独有《圣经》是神圣权力的唯一来源。虽然不是《圣经》，但奥古斯丁和托马斯•阿奎那等重要基督教思想家和圣徒的著述也是属灵指导的来源。
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Christianity and Religious Freedom in the Ancient Period (until 475 CE)
The time-span covered here ranges roughly from the 5th century BCE, with the compilation of the Pentateuch, or the first five books of what Christians call the Old Testament, to the end of the 5th century CE, and the collapse of the Roman Empire. The sources include the remaining books of the Old Testament, whose exact number is disputed among Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants, and the books of the New Testament, composed largely in the first century CE.
Christianity and Religious Freedom in the Medieval Period (476 – 1453 CE)
The Medieval period commenced with the decline of the Roman Empire as the result of the barbarian invasions. In the aftermath and over several centuries, the Christian church played a decisive role in constituting what became known as the respublica Christiana. It included, in ever shifting configurations, the Western and Eastern sectors of the former Roman Empire, namely, portions of Western Europe and Byzantium, which consisted of Asia Minor and most of the territories around the Mediterranean rim. Rome and Constantinople would eventually become, respectively, the seats of the two parts of the new empire.
Christianity and Religious Freedom in the Early Modern Period (1454 – 1750)
Though gradual and subject to numerous influences, the undoing of the idea of papal authority in Western Christianity marked the end of the Medieval era and the beginning of the Early Modern period. At this point, West and East completely parted company, and the West, under the impact of the Protestant Reformation, pursued a radically distinctive path with portentous implications for the development of religious freedom.
Christianity and Religious Freedom in the Modern Period (1751 – 2011)
Against a background of growing official support for control of religion, church bodies began to speak out with renewed resolution in favor of a universal right to freedom of conscience and religion, in some cases going so far as to denounce altogether the resort to force in resolving international conflicts. Such were the declarations, for example, of the Orthodox Church in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, calling for “tolerance towards other religious faiths as a corollary of absolute respect towards human freedom,” for “safeguard[ing] the possibility for the members of every religious and cultural minority to maintain their distinctiveness and particularity,” and for the “utter condemnation” of “war and armed conflict.”
THEMES
Christianity on Wealth and Poverty
基督教关于富裕和贫穷的观念
On issues of wealth and poverty, Christianity places individual ethics within the context of the community: the well-off have an obligation to the disadvantaged. Summed up in Jesus’ advice to the young rich man to sell all he had and distribute it to the poor (Mark 10), this injunction has been alternatively pursued and neglected through Christian history. During its early centuries house churches throughout the Mediterranean helped to serve the needs of the poor. Institutionalized as the official religion in the Roman Empire and its successor states from the fourth century onward, Christian churches maintained and expanded their social services network. The overriding concern of church leaders and their political patrons, however, was the maintenance of social and political order – viewed as an ethical good in its own right. With some exceptions, the vast inequalities of wealth and power in Christian societies occasioned little criticism. This dominant attitude outlived the Catholic-Orthodox split in the eleventh century and the sixteenth century Reformation. The advance of industrialization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked a turning point. The Protestant social gospel and Catholic social teaching at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as the liberation theology of the 1960s and 1970s, elevated social justice as a salient, if not universal, Christian concern in practice.
在财富与贫穷的问题上，基督教将个人伦理置于群体处境中：富人有义务帮助穷人。这集中体现于耶稣给予富裕年轻人的建议，要他们倾其所有，广施钱财给穷人（马可福音第10章）。在整个基督教历史中，这一指令有实施也有忽略。在早期几个世纪，整个地中海的家庭教会都致力于帮助穷人。从公元四世纪基督教被定为罗马帝国的国教到其后的几代统治者，基督教会维持并扩张了其社会服务网络。然而，教会领袖及其政治庇护者认为，最重要的是维持社会和政治秩序。这被看做是其自身的道德品质。除了少数例外，对基督教社会中的大量财富和权力的不平等，几乎不存在什么批评。这一主导性的观点跨越了11世纪天主教-东正教的分裂及16世纪的宗教改革。19-20世纪的工业化进程是一个转折点。19、20世纪之交的基督教福音派和天主教社会伦理，以及1960-70年代的解放神学，都将社会公义看做基督教实践的一个重要（如果不是普遍的）关注。
Christianity on Peace and Violence
基督教关于和平和暴力的观念
On questions of peace and war, Christian ethics has sought to combine Jesus’ radical message with the responsible exercise of power in society and the polity. With the exception of principled pacifists most identified with the Quaker and Mennonite traditions, who take Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount injunction to “turn the other cheek” quite literally, Christian leaders and theologians have tended to sanction the use of violence in self-defense. The theory of just war, first developed systematically by St. Augustine (354-430 CE) is a shared point of orientation across the major Christian denominations. It accepts the use of force when four basic conditions are met: the cause is just (self-defense and the protection of innocent human life); the means are proportional; the authority using force is legitimate; and there is a high probability of success. The same logic of self-defense and the protection of innocent life has historically been used to support the death penalty, although the Roman Catholic Church and some other leading denominations now condemn it as unjust and unnecessary under modern conditions.
在战争与和平的问题上，基督教伦理一直试图将耶稣的激进信息与在社会和政治组织中负责任地行使权力结合起来。除了一些比较守律令的和平主义者（他们大多被认为被认为是贵格会和门诺派传统，机械地理解了耶稣在《登山宝训》中“有人打你的左脸，把右脸也给他打”的训示），基督教领袖和神学家倾向于认为在自卫中使用暴力是正当的。正义战争的理论首先由圣奥古斯丁（公元354-430年）系统地阐述，并成为众多基督教宗派共同的观点。这个观点承认，使用武力需满足四个基本条件：理由正义（自卫和保护无辜者的生命）；方法适当；使用武力的权威具有合法性；有很高的成功概率。历史上，自卫和保护无辜者生命的相同逻辑被用来支持死刑，尽管如今罗马天主教会和其他的一些宗派谴责死刑在现代环境下是非正义和非必要的。
Christianity on Justice and Injustice
基督教关于正义和非正义的观念
The Christian approach to state power and questions of justice and injustice is complex. Christianity began as an anti-political movement – a call to join a holy community apart from the world in anticipation of the coming Kingdom of God. “My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus reportedly told his executioner, Pontius Pilate (John 18:36). With the conversion of Constantine (ca. 312) and the patronage of the Roman Empire, the church found itself allied with and dependent on secular rulers—the dominant arrangement into the modern era in Roman, Protestant, and Orthodox Christianity. The church’s overriding concern throughout this period was its own independence in organizational and spiritual matters. While popes and bishops sometimes condemned corrupt rulers as unjust, they even more rarely criticized wider inequities in state and society. While Protestants were most open to democratic ideas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in the United Kingdom and the fledgling United States, the Catholic and Orthodox churches roundly condemned the French Revolution and socialist movements as a break with a divinely constituted and hierarchical social order. Only with Vatican II (1962-1965) did the Roman Catholic Church embrace democracy as the most just form of government.
关于国家权力以及正义/非正义问题，基督教的态度是复杂的。基督教初始时以一种反政治运动的面目出现——呼召加入一个脱离此世的神圣群体，并期待天国的到来。耶稣对他的执刑官彼拉多说，“我的国不属这世界”（约翰福音 18:36）。随着君士坦丁的皈依（公元325年）以及罗马帝国的保护，基督教会发现自身与世俗的统治者结盟并依赖于他们。这一主导模式延伸到现代的天主教、基督新教及东正教中。在此一时期，基督教会主要关注的是其在组织和灵性事务上的独立。教宗和主教偶尔或许会批评腐败的君主为非正义的，但对于政府和社会中更广泛的不平等则几乎不见他们的声音。在18-19世纪，特别是在英国及刚成立的美国，新教徒抱持民主的观念；天主教和东正教则严厉批评法国大革命和社会主义运动，认为它们是对神圣确立的等级社会秩序的背离。直到梵二会议（1962-65）之后，罗马天主教才认为民主制是最正义的政府形式。
Christianity on Health and Illness
基督教关于健康和疾病的观念
The history of Christianity has seen a running debate about proper attitudes towards suffering, pain, and death, and how best to confront human illness and frailty. The fact that Jesus suffered and died on the cross is viewed by some as a positive valuation of suffering. In this view, Christians are to endure pain and hardship like their savior, sure in their eternal reward. Others emphasize Jesus’ own healing ministry, his reaching out to the blind, the sick, and the lame. In a much-cited panorama of the Last Judgment, Jesus called on his followers to show the same compassion to others (Matthew 25). Efforts to link these two strands in Christian reflection and experience—Jesus’ willingness to suffer and die and his call to heal—have traditionally been expressed in an acknowledgement of the inevitability of suffering combined with a determination to alleviate it, whenever possible, through the medical arts. The experience of suffering can have a redemptive dimension; it can bring us closer to a God, who suffered with and for us on the cross. At the same time, Christians are called to embrace science and its biomedical applications in order to prevent and alleviate unnecessary suffering, whenever possible, while also respecting the sanctity of human life.
在基督教的历史中，人们一直在讨论什么是对待苦难、疼痛和死亡的正确态度，以及什么是克服人类疾病和软弱的最好方式。耶稣曾经受难并被钉于十字架，这被很多人看做是对苦难的肯定。根据这一观点，基督徒应该像他们的救主一样忍受痛苦和困苦，当然他们会得到永恒的回报。另外一些人则强调耶稣的治病事工，包括他对盲者、病者和跛足者的医治。在经常提到的最后的审判图景中，耶稣呼召其门徒，要怜悯众人（马太福音第25章）。人们努力将基督教的思想和经历中的这两个方面联系起来——耶稣受难、牺牲的愿望与他对医治的呼召。这通常被解释为：苦痛是无可避免的；但只要有可能，就一定要通过医疗手段驱除它。苦难的经历具有救赎的意义；它使我们与神更加接近，因为神与我们一同受苦并为我们死在十字架上。同时，为了防止和消除不必要的病痛，基督徒也被鼓励在可能的条件下可从事科学和使用生物医学。
Christianity on the Religious Other
基督教关于宗教他者的观念
Christianity’s approach to the religious Other is shaped both by its origins in Judaism and by its insistence on Jesus’ divinity and the Gospel injunction to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). The church began as a Jewish sect, and centuries of Christian anti-Semitism rested on the view that the Jews had rejected their own Messiah. Since the Enlightenment and after the Holocaust, most churches have repudiated anti-Semitism and affirmed the Jewish people’s covenantal relationship with God. Differences with Judaism—as well as Islam and other faiths—have historically revolved around two core Christian teachings: the Trinity (God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and the Incarnation (Jesus as God). Christian proponents of interreligious dialogue, a growing movement since the 1960s and the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church (1962-1965), have tended to deemphasize these doctrinal features of Christianity and focused instead on shared ethical commitments to peace, justice, and human dignity across the world’s traditional religions. Another current, linked with evangelicalism, emphasizes the central role of Jesus as the way to the Father and dismisses dialogue unless it is intended to win souls for Christ.
基督教对于宗教他者的态度受两个方面影响：一是其犹太教的根源；二是其对耶稣神性的坚持以及福音中的指令——“使万民做我的门徒”（马太福音 29:19）。基督教起先是一个犹太教派。数世纪间基督教的反犹主义主要基于这样一种观念，即他们认为犹太人抛弃了自己的弥赛亚。自启蒙时代始到大屠杀之后，大部分的教会已经抛弃了反犹主义的观点，并承认犹太人与神之间的契约关系。同犹太教、伊斯兰教和其他宗教的不同，历史上主要围绕两大基督教核心教义：三位一体（神同时是父、子、灵）和道成肉身（耶稣是神）。作为1960年代以来及梵二会议之后一种日益兴起的运动，基督教提倡宗教间的对话，倾向于淡化基督教的这些教义特征，转而集中于世界各大宗教在和平、正义及人类尊严问题上共同道德的原则。另一种趋向，主要与福音派教会相联系，则强调耶稣是父的道；他们拒绝对话，除非是为了赢取对基督的信仰。
Christianity on Defamation of Religion
Though the tradition’s attitude toward blasphemy has eased over the past century,
Christianity has a long history of restricting speech that defames the faith. Perhaps the
most notable example of this is the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the “List of Prohibited
Books” maintained by the Roman Catholic Church from 1559 until 1966; the Index
at various times included works by scientists like Nicolaus Copernicus, philosophers
like Immanuel Kant, theologians like Desiderius Erasmus, Catholic mystics, and many
others whose views were not in keeping with Church teachings. Because Christianity is
most prevalent in the West, where most governments are largely secular and guarantees
of free speech are strong, Christians have generally accepted that they will be exposed
to expressions with which they disagree and which may even directly criticize their
faith. However, individual pastors, particularly among conservative Protestant denominations, will
occasionally tell their congregations not to read certain books to which they take offense,
such as the 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code.
