第三单元，堕落的灵魂与本性的邪恶
本单元目的 ： 如果没有发现我们彻底堕落的光景，就没能真正重新调整我们的眼光和方向，也就无法寻获内心转化的清晰路径。
We must see the soul and the person in its ruined condition, with its malformed and dysfunctional mind, feelings, body, and social relations, before we can understand that it must be delivered and reformed and how that can be done. One of the greatest obstacles to effective spiritual formation in Christ today is simple failure to understand and acknowledge the reality of the human situation（75页， 2段）
1. 我们先要了解和拥有这个神学概念 ：个人灵魂在神眼中拥有的重要价值
If we were insignificant, our ruin would not be horrifying. G. K. Chesterton somewhere says that the hardest thing to accept in the Christian religion is the great value it places upon the individual soul. （52页，5段 － 53页，1段）
i。C.S. Lewis 对个人价值的观察，值得我们深思 － 他说得合乎中道。
“To remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. . . . There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations— these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit— immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” (52页,4段)
ii. 说明了，为什么即使人处于堕落状况，他在神眼中仍是价值崇高，值得拯救的；也说明了，那些未蒙启迪或不愿去明白的人，察觉不到他现在和将来会是多么可怖，需要被拯救。 （53页，2段）
2. 现在的教育，不能解决人性的邪恶；教育只是沦为一种社会的运作和手段。
Those who are supposed to know are lost in speculations about “causes,” while the real sources of our failures lie in choice and the factors at work in it. Choice is where sin dwells. （53页，3段）
i。我们只懂得施肥，而否认杂草和害虫的存在
We are like farmers who diligently plant crops but cannot admit the existence of weeds and insects and can only think to pour on more fertilizer. （53页，4段）
3. 灵魂的堕落情况
3.1。在教会里灵魂堕落的情况
i。罪恶阻碍属基督的人作祂的子民，罪恶会造成极大的影响。
The extent to which sin, in a form everyone plainly recognizes as such, undermines even the efforts of Christ’s own people to be his people. That is its power. （55页，2段）
ii。值得我们反思的教会处境： 今天许多圣经中的美德，我们不能期望或假设可以在“标准”的基督徒群体中找到。
The presence of vanity, egotism, hostility, fear, indifference, and downright meanness can be counted on among professing Christians. Their opposites cannot be counted on or simply assumed in the “standard” Christian group; and the rare individual who exemplifies them— genuine purity and humility, death to selfishness, freedom from rage and depression, and so on— will stand out in the group with all the obtrusiveness of a sore thumb. （56页，2段）
3.2。教会以外灵魂堕落的情况，实在比教会里面的坏得多。 可悲的，是很少人愿意面对自己以及别人内心深处的实况。 （57页，2段）
i。不能逃避罪惡的事實。 现在人常说，从培养个人自尊着手，其实是于事无补的。
The initial move toward Christlikeness cannot be toward self-esteem, because of confusion about what self-esteem means, and because, realistically, I’m not okay and you’re not okay. We’re all in serious trouble. That must be our starting point. Self-esteem in such a situation will only breed self-deception and frustration （57页，5段）
ii。神之所以为神，挫败了人的自尊心。 （61页，4段）
4。 灵魂的堕落
4.1. 问题核心 ：不怕神，否认神，这个事实
i。使徒保罗对症下药，指出了问题的核心 － “他们眼中不怕神”，否认神。
(Romans 3: 10-18) The very last statement from this collection of Old Testament diagnoses of the human condition goes to the core of the matter: “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” （60页，1段）
ii。当人的心灵（意志）偏离神，他的灵魂就开始堕落。人性的邪恶就是他把自己当作神。
The slide into pervasive soul corruption begins with the heart (or will) deflecting the mind from God.
iii。把自己当作神和否认这事实，是一股影响着世界历史的庞大力量。 使我们把那明显的事实和真理，视若无睹。
BUT IN TAKING ONESELF in practice (or humanity taking itself in practice) as God, the great world-historical force of denial comes into play. It is this that accounts for the perpetual human blindness to the obvious. We can never understand human affairs at any level without taking it into account. （62页，2段）
iv。否定事实（回避，或欺骗自己），是远离了神的人唯一可以继续生存下去所必需拥有的特征。
In a world apart from God, the power of denial is absolutely essential if life is to proceed. The will or spirit cannot— psychologically cannot— sustain itself for any length of time in the face of what it clearly acknowledges to be the case. Therefore it must deny and evade and delude itself. Paul’s brilliant and inspired insight into the root of human evil—“ There is no fear of God before their eyes” （63页，2段）
v。心思脱离了事实，必然的结果就是欲望，随着思想倒进了这堆垃圾中。
the mind is now uprooted from reality. It is committed to the truth of a falsehood. “Garbage in, garbage out” is an old story, and then the strong desires,garbage out” is an old story, and then the strong desires, or “lusts” (epithumiais), plunge right into the garbage along with thought. （63页， 3段）
4.2. 欲望；感官享受占据了中心位置 Sensuality becomes central
The human body becomes the primary area of pleasure for the person who does not live honestly and interactively with God (63页,4段)
i。感官刺激不能满足我们。 自我满足的渴望，使人放纵无度。
it turns out that sensuality cannot be satisfied. It is not self-limiting. That is partly because the effect of engaging in the practices of sensuality is to deaden feeling （64页，3段）
ii。作者这种分析，让我们读起罗马三:10-18， 罗马一：29-31，弗四：17－19， 提后三：1-5，更能具体明白这种情况的形成和其根本的问题。
Underneath it all is the radical evil of the human heart— a heart that would make me God in place of God. （67页，2段）
4.3 失丧 (Lost) ：失去了其原本的定位，比如找不到锁头的钥匙。 To be lost means to be out of place, to be omitted.
i。堕落的灵魂，就是失丧了的灵魂 （67页，3段）
ii。这课题的混乱，是因为我们按照失丧的结果来思考 (比如说：你失丧，所以你下地狱）。
Considerable confusion on this topic has resulted from trying to think of being lost in terms of its outcome. Theologically, that outcome is hell— a most uncomfortable notion. Certainly, if you are lost in any sense there is little likelihood of your arriving where you want to be. 失丧的光景与失丧的结果是有分别的。我们不是因为去错了地方而迷失，我们是因为迷失儿去错了地方。 （67页，4段）
iii。罪没有使我们失去价值，而是因我们选择罪恶我们失丧了。
Sin does not make a person worthless; choosing a path of sin makes a person “lost.”
iv。失丧的人是错解了自己在神面前是怎样的人。
Lost persons, in Christian terms, are precisely the ones who mistake their own person for God. They falsely identify, and cannot recognize, what is closest to them— themselves. （68页，4段）
v。他们误以为自己的神就是随从自己的心意，这是唯一的合理途径。 自己就是宇宙的中心。
John Calvin said that “the surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves.” Yet self-obedience seems the only reasonable path for nearly everyone: “So blindly do we all rush in the direction of self-love, that every one thinks he has a good reason for exalting himself and despising all others in comparison.” （70页，3段）
vi。地狱：彻底失丧的人没法渴望得着神，不想要祂作神，他们最终会选择地狱作为归属。
Thus no one chooses in the abstract to go to hell or even to be the kind of person who belongs there. But their orientation toward self leads them to become the kind of person for whom away-from-God is the only place for which they are suited. It is a place they would, in the end, choose for themselves, rather than come to humble themselves before God and accept who he is. （70页，5段）
vii。失丧是人性和堕落灵魂的事实状况，有如人患上致命疾病，处在这状况，你也许还不知道。
Lostness is a factual condition of the self, of the ruined soul. You either have it or not, just as you either have or do not have a certain physical disease that can kill you. If you have that condition of lostness, you may not know it. （72页，2段）
5. 面对事实，找到出路
i。必须承认我们的灵魂已经堕落，才能寻到一条新路径，它自然会引导我们走向“灵命重塑”之路径，活出基督的样式
The ruined soul must be willing to hear of and recognize its own ruin before it can find how to enter a different path, the path of eternal life that naturally leads into spiritual formation in Christlikeness.
Spiritual formation is not something that may, or may not, be added to the gift of eternal life as an option. Rather, it is the path that the eternal kind of life “from above” naturally takes. It is the path one must be on if his or hers is to be an eternal kind of life. （73页，3-4段）
ii。痛悔回改，是必要的。 只有这样，我们才能走向对的方向，才能实现生命的转化。
There is little hope for genuine change in one who is without remorse, without the anguish of regret. （74页，2段）
