原书及其作者：牛津通识读本系列丛书，或者“A Very Short Introduction series”，一个非常高质量的学科入门读本系列。16到17世纪左右，这段宗教改革的故事从近乎偏执于原教旨的圣经解读出发，最终却落在了催生多元社会的终点上。
Chapter 2 Salvation
P42
‘Justification’ is the theologians’ description for how sinful men and women become acceptable in the eyes of God and consequently qualify to share eternal life with him in heaven. The Reformation was, first and foremost, a protracted argument about the rules and mechanisms of salvation.
宗教改革归根结底是由神学争论而起的，尤其就是关于基督世界里“救赎”（salvation）的概念。
这个概念的基本原理是，人类背负着原罪，但在基督自我牺牲之后，天堂的大门又向人类重新打开了。那么要怎么做才能通过什么样的机制升入天堂、教堂该在其中扮演什么角色…这些地方就产生了激烈的分歧。
Justification and faith
P43
The teaching was summed up in an adage of the German theologian Gabriel Biel (d. 1495): facere quod in se est (‘do what is in you’). But could people ever feel truly certain that they, like Boy Scouts, had done their best? One theory holds there was a widespread and morbid ‘salvation anxiety’ in late medieval society, manifested in an intense, hyperactive, performance of piety.
天主教认为，升入天堂是上帝给予每一个人的恩典，人只需要通过行善来表示自己确认和回应这样的邀请即可。
但这产生了一个问题，做多少的善行才够？这就产生了一种需要表演虔诚的焦虑感和对信仰生活的缺乏控制感。
P44
Luther liberated himself from a spiral of anxiety and self-loathing when he decided that the righteousness justifying a Christian before God was not achieved, but imputed – that is, as a result of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, God chose to accept individuals as righteous, even though they remained entirely sinful. The whole sum of the Old and New Testaments, the Law, and the Gospel, was encapsulated in this insight. The paradoxical point of God’s commandments was to be impossible to fulfil, to convince humans of their own worthlessness, so they could receive the ‘good news’ that God would accept them anyway if they simply trusted, had faith in, his promises.
当这种不稳定达到某个临界点时，路德的理论应运而生，主张基督徒值得被上帝接受的正义性（the righteousness justifying a Christian before God）是完全靠上帝和基督所赋予的。只要一个教众相信这一承诺，他就已经得到了救赎，即“因信称义”。
P44-45
Could common folk, without theological training, understand what Luther was proposing? It would be patronizing to insist they could not, and also difficult to account for the enthusiasm with which the message was received, even if, for many, the ‘liberation’ promised by the gospel was a social and political rather than psychological or spiritual one.
当时的平民能否理解如此抽象的主张是值得怀疑的，但是也很难说他们完全不予理解。他们热切的拥抱这种理念，即使他们更多的是从世俗的、符合自己社会需求的方面来理解路德提出的这种“福音”概念。
P45
We can, however, only fully make sense of this reception if we remember that Luther was a late medieval Catholic, not a ‘Protestant’, and that the early Reformation was a movement within early 16th-century Catholicism rather than an attack on it from outside.
如果联想到后续新教和天主教的种种激烈冲突，这种迅速传播的欣喜接受有时会显得有点反直觉。但是须知放在当时的背景下，路德与其说天生就是一个横空出世、格格不入的新教徒，不如说他的起点仍是一个普通天主教徒在在提出他的内部意见。
真正和时人异质的思想往往很难得到共鸣，但路德的宗教改革和当时罗马教廷的天主教并不是从一开始就水火不容的，路德早期的理论提出，更像是无可无不可的一种单点改良，但却对酝酿已久的社会不稳定状态而言恰到好处、正中靶心。
Predestination
P46
God wills, and therefore is cause of, the salvation of those to whom he has made his offer of grace. But what of a less palatable corollary: does God positively will the damnation of the souls who descend to hell? Luther skirted around ‘double predestination’, but Calvin, logical and comprehensive as ever, did not.
教众是否讲求因信称义是新教和天主教的主要分界线，但是因信称义引出了一个问题，即人的自由意志能否掌控自己的终极归宿，这一点在新教内部成为了一个持续的分歧点。
P47
Though it was not possible to know certainly who was saved and who was damned, Calvinist believers were encouraged to seek for signs of ‘assurance’ in themselves: piety, sobriety, and upright living were likely markers of elect status (God allowing good fruit to be produced by healthy trees), whereas drunkards and fornicators were letting the cat of their eternal destiny out of the bag of their worthless earthly existence. Calvinism thus reinforced social solidarities – it shored up the identity of the ‘respectable’ against the disreputable (though we should be wary of translating this too narrowly into socioeconomic terms: there were poor Calvinists as well as middle-class ones). By dividing both this world and the next into ‘them and us’ – with the ‘them’ certainly outnumbering the faithful few – Calvinism stiffened the resolve of rebel minorities in France and the Netherlands, and of exiles and immigrants in many other places.
加尔文主义在这个问题上把世界划分成注定虔诚并且终将永生的信徒，和一切注定不信者的二元对立。这样，人被划分为“我们”和“他们”，而“我们”是高贵、道德，却人单力薄的。
这种观点稳固了社会，因为声名狼藉或者品行败坏者和“正经”社会人产生了对立；（‘respectable’ against the disreputable）也坚定了在一些信奉加尔文主义而本身是所在社会的少数分子的人的坚持，或者说顽固。
P48
Too intellectual, and too morally austere, ever to become a significant popular movement, its presence serves as a reminder against viewing Catholicism as a ‘monolith’, and of the curious directions reformation could take.
这一段的主语是詹森主义（Jansenism），十七世纪天主教内部一种道德死板的宿命论思想流派。
宿命论和其对于人类意志、善良的消极看法，并不只是新教所特有。天主教内部本身也是充满变数的，宗教改革本身有历史的必然性，但是最终定格为最后的样子，却不尽是一种必然，这场运动也是有可能朝着奇怪的方向发展的。
The authority of scripture
P48
Heaven can sometimes wait. Intertwined with Reformation debates about the order and causes of salvation were disagreements about where a Christian could find dependable guidance on how to live a life pleasing to God in the meantime. This was, in an authoritarian age, principally an argument about authority. Catholics appealed to the authority of the Church; Protestants to that of the bible.
除了抽象的终极救赎，宗教改革的争议还在于一个合格基督徒的一切日常生活范式该以什么为权威标准——教会还是圣经？天主教将这种权威诉诸教会社区，新教诉诸圣经内容。
P50
A further misconception, still regularly wheeled out, is that reformers wanted people to read the bible in order to interpret its meaning for themselves. Reformers believed there was a ‘plain truth’ of scripture, evident to all right-thinking people, but they took no chances. Luther’s German bible, like others of the age, was hedged about with prefaces and marginal glosses to direct the reader. Scripture-reading Christians in the 16th century who made up their own minds about such matters as the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, or infant baptism were condemned by Protestant and Catholic authorities alike.
即使是新教发行的白话圣经，也并不只是有待读者自行解读的圣经白文，而是带有很多注记和导引。一些与流行解读相悖的纯民间解读几乎是被天主教和新教一致谴责的。
P50-51
The Word was to be heard as well as read, so Protestantism was not the sole preserve of the literate. Preaching in the Middle Ages was widespread and popular, but left largely in the hands of the specialists, the friars. By contrast, ‘preacher’ was almost a synonym for a Protestant minister. …… we should not underestimate the ability of skilled preachers to move and captivate an audience. Those who read from a text were frowned upon: a preacher worth his salt spoke extemporaneously for the full period measured by turning the hour-glass on the pulpit rim. In the battle for souls, the Church of the Catholic Reformation similarly understood the value and importance of preaching: the Jesuits were skilled exponents, and elaborately carved pulpits graced many Baroque churches.
天主教和新教都理解布道（preach）的重要作用，圣经不只是纸上的文字，也是牧师的即兴解读和教众的耳濡目染。
Sacraments
P51
In the catechism attached to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, a sacrament was described as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’. Catholics might have found definition broadly acceptable, though they would have gibbed at that word ‘sign’: to them, sacraments were the ordinary and instrumental channels of God’s grace to humanity.
在对圣礼的理解上可以很容易看出天主教和宗教改革者的理论分歧。天主教认为宗教的精髓是通过参与和进行一系列行为沟通到每个信徒的心里的，比如牧师向会众布道，参加和领受圣礼；
相比之下，宗教改革者则强调“只要你相信自己信教那你就是正确的”，自我肯定，除了原教旨不接受其他权威，简化仪式并且不迷信人举行的仪式存在神性，认为外在的社区行为或者社会建构只是一种自我正确性的标志。
P51
Reformation debates over the sacraments, though they may seem arcane to us, were protracted and bitter because to grasp sacramental theology correctly was to understand God’s intentions for mankind. They also reveal the extent to which the Reformation was a ‘ritual process’, deeply concerned with the symbolic ordering of society for collective as well as individual salvation. And they were bound up, inextricably, with the spiritual authority of the clergy.
如何举行圣礼（Sacraments）和哪些生活仪式属于必不可少的圣礼，是宗教改革年代的一大争议中心。因为圣礼在宗教中的地位相当核心，无论是从神学理论来说还是宗教的社会建构角度来说。
宗教改革因神学理论之争而起，成为了人心思变的表达突破口，除了改革时弊、被上层人物参杂进政治游戏，也是当时一切社会面貌和生活仪式的一场大变。
P53
The more consistently biblical lay theology of the anabaptists, making baptism a voluntary profession of faith by adults, not only diminished the sacral power of the clergy. It deconstructed the Church as a universal social institution, making membership ‘opt-in’, sectarian, and minoritarian (in the way it has become, ironically enough, for all the mainstream churches in modern Western Europe).
各个圣礼都面临不同程度的改变和争议。比如在洗礼的问题上（Baptize），路德宗和加尔文主义一致反对再洗礼派（Anabaptist）的主张，再洗礼派主张受洗应该是由已经成年信徒自愿决定进行的，而不是在婴儿时施行。
再洗礼派的主张实际上更符合圣经文本，但是动摇了教会作为一个“无所不在（universal）”的社会组织的根本，让基督徒身份和教会会众身份成为了个人的自由选择项。
P53
The authority of the clergy was equally at stake in the changes to penitential practice. Hearing confessions provided medieval parish priests with an opportunity for individual regulation and pastoral oversight of parishioners, for testing religious knowledge and dishing out spiritual advice. Reformed Protestantism abandoned the practice, though Calvinist ministers sometimes wistfully felt they had thrown out the baby with the bathwater, and optimistically encouraged lay people to come to them for private ‘conferring’.
“忏悔”是一项可以重复进行的圣礼，除了常常被指控的社会控制、方便神职人员滥用职权两大缺点之外，这项仪式也是一个教区里的牧师维护社区以及为教区居民提供精神引导的渠道。
新教完全摒弃了这一实践，加尔文主义者则有时会感到这种完全摒弃多少有点因噎废食。后期，随着宗教改革的发展，天主教忏悔仪式的弊端很大程度上被改善。
P54
The ceremony of the mass, at which the eucharist was performed, was a sacrifice; in fact, an ongoing re-enactment in time of Christ’s sacrifice of himself upon the cross, and thus an immensely powerful ‘work’ which could be directed towards particular specified ends, such as the relief of souls in purgatory. …… The most sacred of all rituals for Catholics was the most offensive to Protestants. Christ’s sacrifice was a once-for-all event, and the idea that it could be replayed through the agency of a priest was the blackest blasphemy. …… The communion was a pledge of fidelity from God, a powerful token like a wedding ring, but not an actual epiphany. It was also a commemorative event, designed to recall that Last Supper in Jerusalem, and so plain bread, rather than special wafers, was distributed to the communicants, along with the wine that – for fear of spilling the sacred species – had been withheld from the medieval laity.
分圣餐也是争议的白炽化焦点之一，这一段的文本很有意思。分圣餐仪式被所有的基督徒所重视，但是围绕着仪式原理的神学理论却产生了无休无止的激烈争吵，后续在许多地点则继续导致了路德宗和新教的分化。
P57
Taking communion was a powerful spiritual experience for participants, but it was at the same time, throughout the Protestant and Catholic worlds, a deeply social act. The right to receive was a symbolic assertion of adult membership of the community, and it was dependent upon being ‘in charity’ with one’s neighbours.
领圣餐除了是一种宗教仪式之外，也在很大程度上是一种社会活动，象征着社区纽带的维系，既是约束社区居民与邻为善的要求之源，也是社区秩序的展示平台。
Apocalypse soon
P59
The identification became a staple of Reformation thinking, still adhered to in some dark corners of the Protestant world, in Ulster and the United States. The history of the world came to be interpreted as an apocalyptic struggle between the forces of light and darkness, Protestantism and Catholicism, into which events like the French Wars of Religion, or the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, were easily slotted. Set-backs in the face of the Counter-Reformation were explicable: Antichrist was allowed his head for a while, but final victory was assured. Protestant apocalyptic fervour reached its peak with the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618.
圣经《启示录》中的一系列情节（the biblical book of Revelation, or in Greek, Apocalypse），审判日、世界末日、耶稣再临、新天地诞生，描述了一个善恶二元对立力量在某个时间点决战的预言。
许多宗教改革年代的人确实相信自己处在背水一战的境地，面对着泼天的阴谋，这种末世狂热（apocalyptic fervour）在许多事件上使问题激化。
参考文献
Marshall, P. (2009). The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-923131-7