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The Natural Ethic

自然倫理

奧多路奮著（Oliver O’Donovan），孔祥烱譯

Moral Disagreements	（A）道德爭論
To begin with the most trivial of observations: ethical judgements are controversial. Why are they so?	首先考慮最通俗的觀察：道德判斷是有爭議性的。為什麼？
In the first place, controversies arise about matters of fact. Some people think that marijuana does, and some people think that it does not, damage the body and mind of those who smoke it. Which of these beliefs is true will make a considerable difference to our moral judgement on the smoking of marijuana. There is a respectable philosophical tradition which supposes that all moral controversy is due, in the last analysis, to the want of hard information. The utilitarians of the nineteenth century, for example, who are enjoying something of a revival today, thought that moral judgement was essentially a matter of accurate prediction: if one could know exactly what consequences would follow from each of the alternative courses of action, one would be in no doubt as to which to follow. In such a theory there is no such thing as a genuinely moral disagreement. Values as such are not up for discussion—they are supposed to be uncontroversial, or perhaps, more aggressively, non-negotiable. Within the community of reason, only the facts can be a matter of legitimate doubt or dispute.	[1] 首先是對事實的爭議。有些人認為大麻損害吸食者的身體和思想，但有些人卻認為不會。哪一個意見是真的將會大大影響我們對吸食大麻的道德判斷。有一個受尊重的哲學傳統認為，歸根到底，所有道德爭議都因為缺乏真實的資料。例如，十九世紀的功利主義者今天正享受一個復興，他們認為道德判斷基本上是一種準確的預測：如果一個人能確實地知道每一個行動帶來的後果，他就一定知道如何行動。根據這樣的理論，真正的道德爭議是不存在的。我們不需要討論價值，因為它們都應該是無需爭議的，甚至是不可商討的。在理性的群體內，只有事實可以是合法的懷疑或爭議。
But the most profound and terrifying moral controversies resist this kind of rationalization.	但最深遠和最可怕的道德爭議不能應用這種合理化的解決方法。
Which is why a second tradition of philosophical thought has represented moral disagreement as a function of inscrutable personal commitment. If clashes of moral conviction cannot be resolved by factual information, it appears that moral conviction is not susceptible to rational arbitration at all. There is a place for reason, of course: reason clarifies what the alternatives are, reason can tell us what will be involved if we hold to a certain judgement consistently. But when reason has fulfilled its office, we have simply to make our choice. Reason is the handmaid of personal decisions which go beyond reason; and there is no way that rational argument can demand anything of a man other than that he be true to himself. Moral disagreements are irresoluble, and we have to live with them.	[2] 這就是為什麼第二個哲學思想的傳統認為道德爭論源於不可測透的個人承諾。如果道德信念的衝突不能被事實資料所解決，則道德信念不能以理性的仲裁所改變。當然理性是有用的，理性澄清有哪一些選擇，理性也可以告訴我們，如果我們一貫地作某種判斷，後果將是如何。當理性完成它的責任後，我們只需要做我們的選擇。個人決定是超越理性的，而理性是個人抉擇的婢女，理性的辯說只能要求一個人忠於自己，不能再作什麼。道德爭論是不可解決的，我們只可以接受它。
There are certain kinds of decisions which this description fits very well. ‘There’s no accounting for tastes’, and most of us can think of decisions which we have made, for which there is, quite literally, no accounting—not because they were irrational, but because they transcended rational considerations. An example might be the decision to follow this or that career—a ‘vocation’, we call it, meaning that God has summoned us personally to it—or the decision to marry the partner we did. On these decisions we could receive advice of a kind, but not moral counsel, for nobody else could put himself in our shoes and tell us whether we loved Elvira enough to marry her, or whether we enjoyed study enough to become a professional academic. But then these decisions were not ‘moral’ decisions in the normal sense. John cannot form a good opinion about whether Philip should marry Ann, but he can form an opinion about whether Philip should marry a divorcee. Moral judgements, unlike personal choices, belong to the public domain of reason. We evaluate other people’s moral stances and we expect them to evaluate ours. We argue about them, even get angry about them, all of which presupposes some public criterion of right and wrong. This second account of moral disagreement is as inadequate as the first.	有些抉擇非常吻合這樣的描述。「口味是不能解釋的，」我們大多數人都能夠想到自己一些抉擇的確是不能解釋的；不是因為抉擇缺乏理性，而是因為它們超越了理性考慮。一個例子可能是決定自己的職業（我們稱它為「職份」，意思就是神呼召個人去承擔的），或決定和哪個人結婚。在這些決定中，我們可能獲得一些建議（不是道德性輔導，因為沒有人會有我們的經驗），告訴我們是否深愛埃維拉到一個地步可以足夠娶她，或許喜歡研究到一個地步可以成為一個專業學者。不過，這些抉擇並非普通的抉擇。約翰不能清楚菲利應否與安娜結婚，但他可以對菲利應否與已離婚的安娜結婚有意見。道德判斷與個人選擇不同，它屬於大眾的理性領域內。我們會對別人的道德立場作評價，我們也預料他們會對我們的道德立場作評價。我們爭辯它們，甚至會發怒，這一切都假設正確和錯誤有公共標準。這對第二類道德爭論的描述與第一類一樣，都是不足夠的。
The Natural Ethic	（B）自然倫理
There is a third traditional account which claims our attention. It was the accepted view of mediaeval Christianity, which got it from Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, and in consequence it has had little favour in Protestant cultures. But recently there has been a revived interest in it. It is sometimes called ‘natural teleology’; but I shall refer to it simply as ‘the natural ethic’.	[3] 還有值得我們注意的第三類傳統的描述。這是中世紀天主教公認的看法，它源於柏拉圖和亞里士多德的哲學，因此不受更正教文化歡迎。但最近對它重新出現了興趣。它有時被稱為「自然目的論」，但我將它稱為「自然倫理」。
It is possible to agree entirely on the facts of the case, and yet disagree about how it should be described. ‘The government acted to protect the dairy industry’, we imagine someone saying, ‘by disposing of surplus dairy produce’. While another person may say: ‘So much food was wasted!’ The descriptions differ, because they make use of different categories. But that is because they presuppose different views of what the world actually contains. Two men look on milk: one sees it as ‘produce’, a sort of artefact of the dairy ‘industry’; the other sees it as ‘food’. But the one, in seeing it as food, cannot prevent himself thinking that it has a purpose: food is for nourishment. And that in turn commits him to seeing it as a ‘waste’ when it is thrown into the sea. The other, seeing it as produce, is equally bound to infer that milk has no natural purpose, since the purpose of produce is simply the purpose that its producer has had for it. Indeed, in describing milk as ‘produce’, he declares that ‘food’ does not really exist, not at any rate as a natural kind of thing. In his context of thought ‘food’ could only describe a use to which human agents might decide to put this or that product or this or that raw material. To call upon a traditional Greek distinction: one sees food as a category that exists ‘in nature’, the other as a category that exists only ‘in convention’.	對某一個案例，我們可能完全同意事件的事實，但卻不同意如何描述它。我們可以想像有人說：「政府採取行動，通過丟棄剩餘的牛奶來保護乳品行業。」而另一個人可能會說：「浪費了那麼多食物！」描述有所不同，因為它們使用不同的分類，他們用不同的觀點看世界的事物。兩個男人看牛奶，一個看到它是「物產」，是乳品行業的製品；另一個看到它是「食物」。看到食物的人自然認為它有一個目的，食品是為營養，結果他看到牛奶被倒進大海就認為這是浪費。另一個人看它是「物產」，必然同樣作推斷認為除了生產者給牛奶的目的外，牛奶沒有自然的目的；事實上，當他形容牛奶是「物產」的時候，他也宣布「食物」其實不存在，至少不是自然類的東西。在他的思想中，「食物」只能用來形容人如何決定物產和原料的用途。照希臘傳統的區別：一個人看食品為「自然界中」的一類，另一個人只看它為「常規中」的一類。
The natural ethic offers us this account of moral disagreement: that when men look on the world as a whole they see different things. On the bare facts they may agree; but the structure of reality behind the facts they see quite differently, and this affects the way they describe and understand the facts. Is there such a thing as ‘food’, or only market produce? Is there rule and obedience, or only a social contract? Is there free gift, or only subtler forms of exchange? Are there natural ties, or only voluntary associations? At this metaphysical level many of the most profound and painful moral disagreements arise.	天然倫理提供了下面的道德分歧：當人們看世界為一個整體，他們看到不同的東西。他們可能會對事實有同意；但他們對事實背後的現實結構的看法完全不同，這就影響他們描述和理解事實。真的有「食物」嗎，抑或只有市場物產？真的有規則和服從，抑或只有社會契約？真的有免費的禮物嗎，抑或只有微妙的交易？真的有天然的連結嗎，抑或只有自願的聯繫？在這形而上學水平上，許多最深刻和痛苦的道德分歧會出現。
It is my purpose in this essay to make a case for the natural ethic, mindful of the fact that I am in the presence of both science and theology, both of which have, for their own reasons, wished to deny it.	我這篇文章的目的是辯護自然倫理，要知道的是我正處於科學和神學之間，而兩者都為自己的原因想否認自然倫理。
Voluntarism and Nominalism	（C）意識論和唯名論
Philosophers of science often stress that the Western scientific enterprise was born, at the end of the Middle Ages, in an intellectual milieu marked by two parallel movements in philosophy, ‘voluntarism’ and ‘nominalism’.	科學哲學家經常強調，在中世紀末期，西方科學誕生在一個特殊的知識環境，就是出現兩個平行的哲學運動：意識論和唯名論。
‘Voluntarism’ was the belief that good and evil are determined, not by God’s intellect but by his will. A sharp distinction was made between fact and value. Nature, as the expression of God’s mind, was value-free; questions of good and evil turned on what it was God’s will from time to time to command. If you are a voluntarist you can no longer say that God has made soya beans for our nourishment; you can only say that God made soya beans on the one hand, and now he commands that soya beans should feed us on the other, rather as he commanded the ravens to feed Elijah. Another way of expressing it would be that God’s purposes are to be known only in his providential work in directing history, not in his creational work which precedes history.	意識論相信善惡已被決定，不是由於神的智力，而是由於祂的意志。事實與價值有明顯的分別。自然是神思想的表達，是無價值的；善惡的問題由神的意志支配。一個意識論者不能說，神為我們的營養造大豆；而說，一方面，神創造了大豆，另一方面，祂現在命令大豆養活我們，就像祂命令烏鴉養活以利亞一樣。另一種表達方式就是：神的意志只可以從祂引導歷史的保守性工作看到，不能從祂在歷史前創造的工作看到。
From the philosophy of voluntarism science is held to have learned its detached approach to nature, as something to be ‘put to the question’, observed and understood, without love or obedience. Values may be imposed upon the natural order by technology, but not discerned within it. For the purposes of scientific thought natural teleology is rejected.	因着意識論的哲學，科學會對自然有分裂的看法；自然是要被詢問的東西，需要被觀察和理解，對它沒有愛或服從。技術可能將價值強加給自然秩序，但沒有在自然中察覺價值。在科學思想的宗旨中，自然目的論被拒絕。
‘Nominalism’ on the other hand was the contention that ‘kinds’ of things do not have any real existence in nature, but are simply interpretations that the mind imposes on particular phenomena. The particular is real, the universal is a construct of the mind. God made me and you and the table, but it is man’s mind, and not God’s making, that classes the two of us as human and the table as inanimate. This philosophy made possible the pursuit of economy of explanation. If kinds are conventional, and not natural, it is up to us how many of them we choose to retain in our understanding of the world. We may force as wide a range of phenomena into as limited a repertoire of categories as we feel we can get away with.	另一方面，唯名論認為對自然事物的「分類」沒有任何實際存在，它們不過是以頭腦去解釋而強加於特定的現象。「特定」是真實的，「普遍」卻是頭腦的建構。神造了我和你和枱，但卻是人的頭腦將我和你分類為人，而將枱分類為死物，不是神的工作。這哲學容許追求簡化的解釋。如果種類是習用的而不是自然的，那麼我們就可以選擇將多少保留在我們對世界的認識；我們可以強行將很廣泛的現象編進很少的種類裏面。
From this follows what has sometimes been called the ‘fragmentation’ of reality under the discipline of scientific investigation. A science limits the area of its interest to the range of phenomena which appear to be susceptible to its patterns of thinking. Two different sciences may cover the same ground, and each give what seems to be a complete description of it, and yet the descriptions do not coincide. Philosophies of science have often accounted for this by some theory of ‘aspects’ of reality: some of us may be familiar with the elaborate system propounded by Herman Dooyeweerd under the heading of ‘sphere sovereignty’. But this is to reflect back onto nature what is really a fragmentation in knowledge. The Western world has chosen to know the universe in parts rather than as a whole, and in economy rather than in diversity; and this deliberate policy, while it has yielded an extraordinary degree of technical mastery, has bred its own kinds of confusion. Ethical confusion is endemic to this mode of knowledge, for if there is no agreed way of describing what we see, there can be no agreed way of responding to it.	跟着就是在科學調查中出現現實的「破碎化」。一門科學限制其範圍在它的思維模式所研究的現象。兩門不同的科學可能在範圍有重疊，而每一門都好像對它有一個完整的描述，但描述卻不一致。科學哲學往往解釋關乎現實的理論；有些人可能熟悉杜伊維（Herman Dooyeweerd）所建議名為「領域的主權」的複雜系統，但是，這其實就是將知識的破碎化反映回自然。西方世界選擇知道宇宙一部分，而不是整體；知道簡化的而不是多樣的；這種特意的政策取得了對技術高度的掌握，但也孕育了混亂。這種知識的特產就是道德的混亂，因為如果對現象沒有一致的描述，就不可能有一致的應對。
Science and the Natural Ethic	（D）科學和自然倫理
This, then, is why it is often said that the natural ethic received its death-wound at the end of the Middle Ages from that infant Hercules, the scientific revolution, then lying in its cradle. The first principle of the natural ethic is that reality is given to us, not simply in discrete, isolated phenomena, but in kinds. Things have a natural meaning. It is not a matter of interpretation to say that the table is an inanimate artefact while you and I are human beings; it is a matter of correctly discerning what is the case. The second principle is that these given kinds themselves are not isolated from each other, but relate to each other in a given pattern within the order of things. To know what that thing is is to know what kind of thing it is, and to know what kind of thing it is is to know how it fits into the whole, that is to say, what it is for. Things have a natural purpose. In understanding the natural purpose of a thing, we attend to its claims on us, and so are able to deliberate on our response to that claim. But with both these principles the philosophical revolution of the late Middle Ages tried to dispense.	這就是為何通常說自然倫理在中世紀結束時受了致死的傷，被當時仍然在搖籃裏的科學革命所傷。自然倫理的第一個原則是：我們知道的現實，不僅僅是離散的、孤立的現象，而是多種類的。事物有一種自然的意義。說枱為死物而我和你是人並非一種解釋；它是分辨實際的情況。第二個原則是：這些種類並非孤立的，而是照着事物秩序的一個模式相互關聯的。要知道那一個事物是什麼，就要知道那事物是哪一種類；要知道那種類是什麼，就要知道它怎樣和整體配合，也就是它的目的是什麼。事物有一個自然的目的；要明白一件事物的目的，我們要明白它對我們的要求，我們就可以對這要求作回應。有了這兩個原則，中世紀晚期的哲學革命就開始了。
It tried, but did it succeed? Science today, fully integrated into a worldview which accepts as an almost unquestionable premise the theory of evolution, can be seen to have done no more than substitute one species of teleology for another.... Some kinds of scientific description simply cannot be done nonteleologically. Biological and zoological descriptions are classic examples. How would you describe the digestive organs without saying that they were for digestion, or the tail of a horse without saying that it was for protection from flies? It was these sciences that espoused evolutionary thinking earliest and most determinedly, for they needed some teleological principle to make sense of their own work.	它開始了，但成功了嗎？今天的科學完全融入了一個不容置疑地接受進化論的世界觀，一種目的論被另外一種目的論代替。但有些科學的描述根本不能用非目的論做到，生物學和動物學的描述就是典型的例子。如果不說消化器官是為着消化的，不說馬尾巴是為着保護馬不受蒼蠅困擾的，那麼怎可以作描述呢？正是這些科學最早和最堅決地採納進化論思想，因為它們需要一些目的性原則，去解釋自己的工作。
And then, too, while attempting to make all kinds relative, did scientific thought not absolutize to an extraordinary degree the categories of observer and observed? One form of this absolutism was ‘humanism’, which set mankind, the observer, over against all nature, the observed. But as the scope of science has extended to include humanity itself, humanism has been superseded by the same absolutism in new and more alarming forms. The observing and manipulating mind itself becomes something set absolutely over against the world. So far from abolishing metaphysics, the scientific approach to reality has only exchanged one set of metaphysical suppositions for other and more questionable ones.	除了試圖使所有事都相對化外，科學思想豈不是將觀察者和被觀察的這兩類極度絕對化嗎？絕對主義的一種形式就是「人本主義」，它將人類（觀察者）駕凌在自然（被觀察的）之上。但是，隨着科學的範圍擴大到包括人類本身，人本主義已被更令人震驚的絕對主義所取代。作觀察和操縱的頭腦駕凌在世界之上成為絕對者。科學的方法取消了形而上學，形而上學被更有疑問的理性所替代。
But if the philosophical programme that gave birth to science was incapable of consistent fulfillment, we are relieved of a nagging anxiety. If scientific knowledge were a way of knowing the world that could be carried through consistently, we would have to choose between this kind of deliberately fragmented knowledge and the perception of the world as an integrated whole that our faith demands of us. The intellectual dividedness, which all of us who have learned to know in both ways have experienced, would then be a wound beyond healing. But if it turns out that scientific objectivism is bound to serve some other way of knowing the world, then there is a possibility that it can be made to serve the Christian way.	但是，如果產生科學的哲學無法一致的履行任務，我們就不需過份焦慮。如果科學知識是認識世界的一致方式，我們就必須在破碎化的知識、和以世界為整體的觀念（就是我們信仰所要求的）中選擇一個。；那麼知識的分裂就是一個不能治愈的傷口。但是，如果科學的客觀主義被限制去以其他方式認識世界，那麼它仍然可以用基督教的方式去服務。
Once we see that the description of things with fluid categories and without teleology will never be a final description, then we can allow the usefulness of such description as a kind of thought-experiment to achieve a greater clarity of knowledge-in-detail. If we decide, as men of faith, that milk is not simply dairy-produce but food, then we can consider it also, though in a hypothetical and provisional way, as dairy-produce. Provided we know that this is an experimental distortion of thought, not the essence of the thing, we can gain knowledge by looking through the distorting lens. It remains to us then to reintegrate what we see through the lens into the total pattern of understanding; and that, I suppose, is why it is thought proper for us, as representatives of so many disciplines, to discuss the questions of ethics, not in our separate disciplines, but together.	我們若能認識：用不穩定的類別和非目的論對事物描述並不是最終的答案，那麼我們就可以用這些描述來獲得清晰的知識。如果我們這些有信仰的人決定牛奶不單是物產，也是食物，那麼我們就可以將它作為乳品食物物產。若我們明白這只是實驗性地將思想扭曲，而不是事物的本質，我們就可以透過扭曲的透鏡獲取知識。我們就可以通過透鏡使知識合成一個整體；我們這些多學科的代表就可以討論倫理的問題，不是在我們的獨立學科，而是聯合在一起。
History—Revelation and Eschatology	（E）歷史—啟示與末世論
Thinkers who understand the development of Western thought in this way, whether they welcome it or deplore it, are inclined to ascribe a good deal of the credit for it to Christianity.	了解西方思想發展的思想家，無論是歡迎它的或拒絕它的，都傾向將好處歸因於基督教。
It is true that for more than a millennium of Christian life and thought the late-Platonic unity of fact and value remained unchallenged in the Western church (as it still does in the Eastern); but that, it is said, only shows how slow Christianity was to emancipate itself from Hellenic tutelage and enter into its Jewish heritage. The sundering of act and value was already implicit in the Old Testament conception which we call ‘salvation history’, the idea that meaning and worth were not to be found in the stabilities of nature but in the dynamisms of history. This conception reappears in Christianity in two forms. On the one hand it underlies the notion of a historical revelation of the meaning of the universe in the incarnation of the Son of God. On the other hand it underlies the belief that all history is to reach its goal at the final intervention of God and the establishment of his kingdom.	不錯的，經過一千年的基督徒的生活和思想，西方教會仍然沒有挑戰柏拉圖主義後期將事實與價值等同的理論（雖然在東方教會仍被挑戰）；但有人說這顯示基督教只能緩慢地從希臘的教訓解脫，進入猶太的傳統。其實行動和價值的分離已隱含在舊約「救恩歷史」的概念中，就是意義和價值不能穩定的自然中找到，而在轉變的歷史中找到。這個概念用兩種形式重新出現在基督教。一方面是神的兒子道成肉身對宇宙的意義的歷史啟示，另一方面是對歷史終結的信仰，就是神在最後干預，並建立祂的國度。
The voluntarist-nominalist movement of the fourteenth century has more to its credit than the fostering of scientific thought. It was the philosophical inspiration also for the Reformers. It gave them the tools to attack the Thomist epistemology which allowed that in principle (and in fairness to St. Thomas one should stress the phrase ‘in principle’), natural man might perceive natural values and natural meanings without the aid of revelation. To this the Reformers reacted with a powerful and authentically Christian stress on the decisiveness of revelation. But revelation for them was really a Christological matter: to question the need of revelation was to question the need of Christ. The meaning of the world, the ‘Logos’, came down at Christmas; the man without Christmas is a man without meaning. The bestowal of meaning is part of God’s saving work in history, for in nature man can discern no meaning.	十四世紀的意識論和唯名論運動除了培養科學思想外，還有其他作用。它的哲學成支持宗教改革者，給他們工具去攻擊托馬斯主義的認識論，這理論原則上允許（公平地說，阿奎那只提到原則）天然的人可以認識自然的價值和意義，不需要啟示幫助。改革者對這說法有強烈和絕純基督徒的反應，強調啟示的決定性。啟示對他們是一個基督論的問題：質疑啟示的必須性就是質疑基督的必須性；帶意義給世界的「道」在聖誕節降臨，一個人沒有聖誕節就是沒有意義。神在歷史中拯救的工作帶來意義，天然的人自己不能分辨任何意義。
What the Christian doctrine of revelation does for natural meaning, its eschatological expectation does for natural purpose. Within Christianity one cannot think or speak about the meaning of the world without speaking also of its destined transformation. The problem of evil is met, not by asserting a profound cosmological order in the present, but by confident announcement of God’s purposes for the future. He who has come to earth as the meaning, has come also as the Purpose or Fulfillment. To understand the first coming of Christ it is necessary to expect the second coming.	基督教啟示的教義為自然帶來意義，同樣，基督教末世的期望為自然帶來目標。在基督教內，思考或談論世界的意義的時候，也必須講到世界注定了的更新。對邪惡問題的解釋，不是堅持現在有一個深奧的宇宙秩序，而是確信地宣佈神未來的目的。那已經來到地球作為意義的，也來成為目的或成全。要明白基督第一次來臨，就必須盼望第二次來臨。
There are, of course, notoriously, two ways of living in expectation. We can believe in the value of intermediate transformation, ‘preparing the way of the Lord’, and so commit ourselves to a life of activity; or we can feel that the ultimate transformation renders all penultimate change irrelevant, and so resign ourselves to a life of hopeful suffering. But what these two attitudes in common is far more important than what differentiates them. They both take a negative view of the status quo. There is no natural purpose to which we can respond in love and obedience. The destiny of nature has to be imposed on it, either by our activity or by God’s. The purpose of the world is outside it, in that new Jerusalem which is to descend from heaven prepared as a bride for the bridegroom.	當然，生活在盼望中有兩個方法。我們可以相信居間更新的價值，「為主預備道路」，就是委身活一個充滿活動的生命。或者我們可以感覺最終的更新使所有其他改變缺乏意義，結果撤退至一個帶着盼望而受苦的生命。兩種態度有重要的共同點就是對現狀帶有消極態度。沒有自然的目的是我們可以用愛和服從作反應的，自然的命運已注定了，無論是由於我們或由於神的行動，世界的目的是那從天上降臨作為基督的新娘的新耶路撒冷。
This description of the Christian impact on the natural ethic would meet with fairly wide acceptance, among those who deplore it as well as among those who welcome it. Yet I am bound to think that there is much of importance that it leaves out.	這樣形容基督教對自然倫理的影響會遇到相當廣泛的接受，不論是歡迎它或拒絕它的人。不過我覺得有重要的事遺漏了。
To take the point about revelation first. Revelation in history is certainly the lynchpin of Christian epistemology. But epistemology is not the same thing as ontology, however often the Protestant world may have confused the two. ‘Nature’ may be contrasted with ‘revelation’ as an epistemological programme; or it may be contrasted with ‘history’ to make an ontological distinction. The important epistemological points that the Reformation had to make must not be allowed to shelter a destructive and semi-Christian ontology. It is one thing to say that until the Word became incarnate, man could discern no meaning in nature; quite another to say that until the Word became incarnate nature had no meaning.	第一點是關於啟示。歷史的啟示無疑是基督教認識論的關鍵。但是，認識論和本體論不一樣，雖然更正教世界可能混淆了這兩個。在認識論的說法中，「自然」可以對比「啟示」；在本體論的說法中，「自然」可以對比「歷史」。改革時代的認識論不能收容有破壞性的半基督教本體論。但是，認為道成了肉身之前，人不能分辨自然的意義；這不等於說道成了肉身之前，自然沒有意義。
Revelation is the solution to man’s blindness, not to nature’s emptiness. True, man’s blindness is itself part of a disruption within nature, which we call the fall. But the very fact that nature can be called disrupted and disordered shows that it cannot be inherently meaningless. In its earliest days the church was puzzled to find some within its midst believing that the world was made by an evil divinity, hostile to the God of redemption. In rejecting this speculation it made a sharp and necessary distinction between the idea that the world was simply chaotic and, what it understood the gospel to teach, that the world was an ordered creation tragically spoiled. Protestantism, in making the epistemological issue supreme over the ontological, has often tended to upset the balance that the Fathers struck.	啟示解決人的盲目，不是解決自然的空虛。人的盲目不錯是自然混亂的一部份，我們稱之為墮落。但是，自然被稱為混亂和無序表明它不是無內在意義。在初期，教會所困惑的是一些在他們中間的人相信世界是由邪惡的神所造，敵對救贖的神。為了拒絕這種猜測，它尖銳地和必要地區別兩個觀點，一方面，世界是混亂的，另一方面，根據福音的教導，世界是一個有秩序的創造，但悲劇性地被破壞。更正教為要使知識論高過本體論，往往傾向於打破教父訂立的平衡。
Christian eschatology, too, to take up the second point, has to be seen in the light of the doctrine of creation. Christianity is an eschatological faith, having as its central theme the experience and hope of redemption from evil. But this redemption is not to be understood dualistically as the triumph of a good redeemer-god over an evil creator-god. It is because God is the creator of nature that he does, and will, redeem nature from its state of corruption. He who is the Saviour of the world is also the ‘Logos’, ‘through whom all things were made’. He is the Second Adam, restoring that which the First Adam lost. Creation and redemption are not in hostile antithesis, but in complementarity, each providing the context in which we understand the other.	第二點遺漏的是基督教末世論，它應該藉創造的教義看到。基督教是一個末世論的信仰，它的中心主題是從邪惡中被救贖的經驗和盼望。但是，救贖不應該有二元論的理解，而認為它是良好的救贖神勝過邪惡的創造神。因為神就是自然的創作者，祂會把自然從敗壞的狀態中救贖出來。那位世界的救主也是「道」，而「世界都是藉着祂造的」。祂是第二個亞當，恢復第一個亞當所損失的。創造和救贖不是敵對的命題，卻是互補的，各自提供對背景的了解。
Balance Between Nature and History	（F）自然與歷史之間的平衡
When thought fails to keep the Christian balance between meaning given in the natural order and meaning revealed in the course of history, it is at the mercy either of a static naturalism or an indeterminate belief in progress.	當思想自然秩序而來的意義、和從歷史啟示而來的意義不能保持基督教的平衡的時候，它就被一個靜態的自然主義、或被一個對進步的模糊信仰所控制。
There are ‘natural ethics’ with which Christianity can have nothing to do.	基督徒必須要拒絕某一類「自然倫理觀」。
The respect for given orders can easily become a form of idolatry. The family, the state, the animal world, the mountains, the stars in heaven, man himself, can all command our love and allegiance in a way that allows no understanding of their proper place in the scheme of things. We love what is, only because we mistake it for something that it is not. We suppose that our tribe is the whole or the chief of mankind, we suppose that the planets fashion our destinies, we suppose that man is the master of all things. Much has been honoured as ‘natural’ that is purely conventional, the product of certain passing historical circumstances, and in this way great oppression has been laid on the souls of men.	對秩序的崇敬很容易會成為一種偶像崇拜。家庭、國家、動物世界、山脈、天上的星、人自己都可以掌握我們的愛和效忠，使我們不理解它們在整個世界中正當的地位。我們對它有愛，單單因為我們誤認它的實質。我們以為我們的部落是人類的全部或主要部份，我們以為行星決定我們的命運，我們以為人是萬物的主人。很多我們尊敬為「天賦的」，實際上純粹是平常的，只不過是歷史的過度產品，這就對很多人帶來巨大的壓迫。
But not even a natural ethic that was entirely obedient to the revealed doctrine of creation could suffice as a complete moral guide in itself. The natural order makes claims upon us, which we must recognise and attend to; but the claims are generic, and in some situations we confront more than one of them. It may seem to us that seal have to be conserved; but so does the family and community life of Newfoundland seal-hunters. Man, too, is a creature with his own natural meaning and purpose, and part of that purpose is to exercise authority over the rest of nature. While we must certainly insist that his authority cannot be properly exercised unless he has a real understanding and love for nature, nevertheless he does have real discretion and a capacity to make choices which are not given inherently in the structure of nature itself.	但是，即使有一個自然的倫理完全服從創造的教義，也不能足夠作為一個完整的道德指南。自然秩序對我們有要求，我們必須承認和對應；但要求是一般性的，而且我們有時面對多過一個要求。我們可能以為海豹已被保存，但紐芬蘭的海豹獵人的家庭和社區生活亦被保存。同樣，人有自己所認為自然的意義和目的，一個目的就是在自然使用權力。雖然我們必須堅持，除非他對自然有真正的理解和熱愛，否則他的權力不能適當行使，不過人的確有真正的自由和才幹去選擇，而自然的結構是沒有選擇的。
And to these considerations we must add one more: in our actual situation in salvation history, we are dealing as fallen men with a fallen nature. Both we and nature come under the judgement of the God who created us, and that judgement is reflected in an ascetic series of duties and vocations which stand in a paradoxical relation to natural goals and functions. Thus we are required to ‘hate’ our father and our mother, our wife, children, brothers and sisters, and even our own life, in order to be Christ’s disciples. Allowing for the element of rhetoric in this, we must still recognize a demand which falls quite outside the scope of the natural order, and, because the natural order itself is in rebellion against God, runs counter to it. Again, there is the possibility of a calling to singleness, ‘making ourselves eunuchs’, as Jesus puts it, for the kingdom of heaven’s sake; and here too we have to recognise an eschatological demand which runs counter to the course which nature indicates.	除此之外，我們還要考慮：在救贖歷史中，我們正處理有墮落本性的已墮落的人類。我們和自然都要被創造的神審判，這審判反映在修行者的職務和職業，和自然的目標和功用有矛盾的關係。例如，我們作為基督的門徒，需要「恨」我們的父親、母親、妻子、兒女、兄弟姐妹，甚至自己的生命。雖然這是修辭的說法，我們必須承認這要求屬於自然秩序的範圍以外；由於自然秩序本身反抗神，這要求就和自然秩序相反。同樣，如耶穌所說，一個人可能被呼召去獨身；這又是一個末世性違反自然的要求。
We cannot allow ourselves, then, to champion an ethic in which everything is given in nature, nothing is to be revealed in history. But then neither can we take the other route, abandoning altogether the given values in favour of a solely eschatological outlook.	因此，我們不能讓自己擁護一種單獨基於自然事物而來、沒有加上歷史啟示的倫理，但是，我們也不能採取另一個路線，完全放棄承受而來的價值，只單獨擁護末世觀。
The Reformers avoided the consequences of their formal abandonment of natural value because they held so strongly to the decisive revelation of God in past history, which, including as it did the Scriptures as well as the Christ himself, in effect allowed them to have their cake and eat it. They still recognized given natural values, though not under that description, because they recognised Christ. But when belief in a determinative past revelation was abandoned, the real implications of forsaking nature began to be apparent. The result was an open-ended belief in progress.	改革者避免了放棄自然價值的後果，因為他們強力接受神在歷史中決定性的啟示，就是聖經和基督的啟示，這實際上使他們有蛋糕也可以吃。他們還認識到被賜與的自然價值，因為他們認識基督。但是，當過去的啟示帶來的信念被放棄時，拋棄自然的真正意義開始明顯，結果就過份開放地接受進步。
Belief in progress can be thought of as ‘salvation history’ without salvation. There is a general optimism, but no understanding of history as the restoring of what was lost, the recovery of things as they were always supposed to be. Value and meaning now arise from the very fact of transformation itself; there is no other criterion, other than the simple fact of change, by which we can judge good and evil. ‘Progressive’ and ‘reactionary’ become the standard terms of praise and blame. Despite its optimism, it is to the doctrine of progress that we must ascribe a large part of the anxiety and comfortlessness of our times. For when the future is known only as the negation of what is, and not as the more profound affirmation of its true structure, then it is simply alien to us. We cannot view it with hope, for hope requires some point of identification between the thing hoped for and the one who hopes for it. The only ways of facing the future are with fear or with the wild, self-destructive excitement which can grip a man when he stands on the edge of an unplumbed abyss....	信仰「進步」可以被認為是沒有救恩的「救恩歷史」。有普遍的樂觀態度，卻沒有對歷史的認識，沒有重獲失去的東西。更新的事實產生了現在的價值和意義；我們要判斷善惡，除了基於改變的事實外，沒有其他標準。「進步」和「反動」成為讚揚和指責的標準詞語。儘管有樂觀，但「進步」的教義帶來今天大部份焦慮和不舒適。我們只知道未來是現在的反面，但不知道真實結構如何。我們不能以希望看未來，因為希望需要將所希望的事和希望的人聯繫；就像一個人站在深淵的邊緣，面對未來只有兩種感覺，不是恐懼，就是自我毀滅瘋狂性刺激。
Tensions in Evangelical Ethics	（G）基督教倫理的張力
This has some bearing on a disagreement which has disturbed our own small circles in recent years, between those who urge upon us a ‘kingdom’ ethic and those who support a ‘creation’ ethic. Neither kingdom nor creation can be known independently of each other. He who is called the King of kings is also called the Second Adam: nature and history in him are not divided. We would be foolish to allow ourselves to be polarised in this way, and even more foolish to conceive of such a polarisation in terms of Left and Right, as though the very profound philosophical issue involved could be summed up in a political cliche.	這對我們自己的小圈子近年來的爭論有影響，就是在「國度」倫理與「創造」倫理之間的爭論。其實國度和創造並非彼此獨立；稱為萬王之王者也被稱為第二個亞當：在祂裏面，自然和歷史是不可分割的。如果我們容讓自己出現這樣的兩極分化就是愚蠢的，更愚蠢的是分化成為左派和右派，以為這深刻的哲學問題可以用政治的腔調來解決。
However, we may suggest in conclusion that there may be a legitimate division of interest among us that might appear to line us up in naturalist and historicist camps. We have to proclaim the gospel in different cultural and philosophical contexts. Many of us have deep sympathy with the problems of the Third World, tyrannical regimes, oppressive family and tribal structures, maldistribution of resources, and so on, and, speaking authentically to the static naturalisms which have produced and aggravated such problems, will talk eschatologically of transformation, and even, with a daring but possible expropriation of language, of ‘revolution’.	不過，在結論上，我們可以建議，我們在興趣上可能有合法的分歧，使我們表面上分成自然主義者和歷史主義者兩個陣營。我們要在不同的文化和哲學背景中傳揚福音。我們很多人都深切同情第三世界的問題，如殘暴的政權、壓制性的家庭和部落結構、資源分配不均等等；當我們真誠地與靜態自然主義（就是使這些問題產生和加劇的理論）對話時，就會以末世性的話講及更新，甚至用大膽的語言講及「革命」。
Others of us are concerned chiefly with the problems of the Western world, the abuses of technology, the threat to the family, the dominance of financial power, and so on, and find themselves needing constantly to point to the data of created nature. No doubt there is a temptation here: it is easy for the one group to think of the other as ‘conservative’ or ‘radical’. But whenever we do this we exclude one side of the nature-history balance, and condemn our own stance to being less Christian for lack of that balance. I hope that ... we can make the mental and spiritual effort required of us to think beyond the issues that are all-important to ourselves at the moment and to learn to appreciate each other’s proper concerns. As we do so we will approach nearer the point where we can grasp the Christian metaphysic in its wholeness and realize its significance for ethics.	我們有些人關注西方世界的問題，如技術的濫用、對家庭的威脅、經濟力量的控制等等，發覺自己需要不斷地指出自然是被造的。當然這裏有一種引誘：一個群體批評其他群體為「保守」或「激進」是很容易的；但每當我們這樣做，我們是排斥自然和歷史的平衡的其中一方，結果就失去平衡，等於譴責我們自己的立場為失去基督化。我希望我們可以用精神和靈性的努力，去超越自己在當前認為重要的問題，學習彼此欣賞其他人所關注的。這樣做，我們將有能力把握基督教形而上學的整體，並明白它對倫理學的重要性。

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SOURCE: Oliver O’Donovan (1994): “The Natural Ethic,” in Readings in Christian ethics, volume 1: Theory and Method, ed. David K. Clark and Robert V. Rakestraw (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker), 73-82.

From Oliver O’Donovan (1978): “The Natural Ethic,” in Essays in Evangelical Social Ethics, ed. David Wright (Exeter: Paternoster), 19-31.

Moral Disagreements. 1

（A）道德爭論... 1

The Natural Ethic. 3

（B）自然倫理... 3

Voluntarism and Nominalism.. 5

（C）意識論和唯名論... 5

Science and the Natural Ethic. 7

（D）科學和自然倫理... 7

History—Revelation and Eschatology. 10

（E）歷史—啟示與末世論... 10

Balance Between Nature and History. 13

（F）自然與歷史之間的平衡... 13

Tensions in Evangelical Ethics. 16

（G）基督教倫理的張力... 16