我是道格・博蒙特。 I'm Doug Beaumont.
我受邀分享自己如何成为公教徒的经历。 I've been asked to share the story of how I became Catholic.
我并非生于公教会家庭，甚至年轻时也不认识基督 。事实上直到上大学前，我的信仰都尚未成形。 I was not a cradle Catholic or even a cradle Christian; I actually was an adult heading into college before I became a believer at all.
成为公教徒是我多年后才经历的事。 It was not for many years before I became a Catholic.
真正将我带入基督信仰的，是那些传福音者—— 他们不但明白所信为何，更知深信不疑的缘由。 So, what really got me started into Christianity was the evangelism done by people who not only knew what they believed but why they believed it.
高中毕业后受洗成为基督徒，便怀着渴慕进入大学，参加各类基督徒团契。 Right after high school, I became a Christian, and I began learning and going off to college, joining Christian groups and things like that.
因着护教学家的思想深深影响我的皈依历程，自己 也开始对这些为信仰辩护的学问产生浓厚兴趣。 Because my conversion had been so influenced by these apologists—these people who knew how to defend the faith—it became something of an interest for me as well.
整个大学岁月都沉醉于研习神学与护教学之中，这成为了我生命中极重要的志趣。 All through college, I studied theology and apologetics, and it really became an interest of mine.
正因如此，2000年我前往北卡罗来纳州，进入南方福音派神学院就读。 That is why, in the year 2000, I moved to North Carolina and started to attend Southern Evangelical Seminary.
这所学院由我的信仰楷模诺曼·盖斯勒创立，它不仅在神 学与宣教事工上造诣深厚，更专注于护教学与哲学实践。 It was a school started by one of my heroes of the faith, Norman Geisler, and it was a school that was dedicated not just to theology and missions work, but also to the practice of apologetics and philosophy.
到2004年，我已成为盖斯勒的助理——他数本 著作的致谢中可见我的名字，当时临近毕业之际。 By 2004, I was Norman Geisler's assistant; I actually have my name in a couple of his books, and I was ready to graduate.
2004年取得护教学硕士学位后，因学院增设圣经学院，我自此以教员身份开始任教。 I got a master's degree in apologetics in 2004 and actually started teaching at the school because we started a Bible college.
此后数年间，我在南方福音派神学院圣经学院担 任教授之职，这段探索与研习的岁月实在奇妙。 For the next several years, I was a professor at Southern Evangelical Seminary and Bible College, and it was an amazing time of discovery and study.
期间我奔赴全国各地研讨会讲道，亦有数篇著述付梓。 I was speaking coast to coast at various seminars and conferences, and I got published a couple of times.
就福音派事工而言，自己的生涯看似蒸蒸日上，当时可谓喜乐满怀。 So, things really seemed to be going well for me as far as the evangelical ministry world, and I just could not have been happier.
2008至2009年左右学院出现变故，情况始见转折。 All of that began to change in about 2008 or 2009 when some bad stuff started happening at the school.
当我们开创的教会发生内部纷争和分裂时，虽令人失望却不意外—— 我本深信人性堕落与罪恶，明晓再优秀的护教者亦难免陷于罪愆。 There was some infighting, some divisions over a church that we had started, and as disappointing as that was, it wasn't a huge shock because I believed in human depravity and sin, and I knew that just because you were a good apologist, that didn't make you immune from committing acts of sin and that sort of thing.
真正困扰我的，是教会应对当前局面时近乎全然的无能为力。 But what really bothered me was the church's almost complete inability to handle the situation.
这促使我开始深入探究长期思索的课题，尤其在南方福音派神学 院攻读博士学位期间——这个学位项目本就是我参与创立的。 What it started was my investigation into some issues that I had been considering for quite some time, and especially now because I was starting to work on my doctorate degree at Southern Evangelical Seminary—a degree program I actually helped start.
因此当我在撰写博士论文并面对教会难题时，也开始将目 光拓展至福音派之外，探寻教会还可能存有何种深意。 So, at about the same time that I was working on my PhD and struggling with these issues with the church, I was starting to look kind of farther and farther outside of evangelicalism to just see what else the church really had to offer.
虽然新教各宗派的歧异自幼便知，但因缺乏兴趣从未深入研究。 Of course, my whole life I had known that there were various divisions in Protestant Christianity, but they just weren't any divisions that I had ever especially looked into very much because I just wasn't really that interested.
我笃信唯独圣经，深信其中包蕴着我们所需知晓的一切真理。 I believed in sola scriptura; I believed that the Bible held all we needed to know.
我以为成为敬畏神且博学的基督徒之道，在于不 断研经、通晓释经学、掌握哲学与阐释方法。 As far as I was concerned, all one really needed to do to be a good, knowledgeable Christian was learn more and more about the Bible, but also learn hermeneutics, interpretation, philosophy, and a lot of the other things that went along with good Bible interpretation.
因周遭同道多持此见，自不以为其他传统有深究必要。 Because most of the people that I knew who thought that way believed the same way, other beliefs of Christians were not always a huge interest.
但深入攻读博士课程后，发现自己早年所受训练尚存护教层面的重大缺漏。 However, as I entered into my doctoral studies, I discovered that there were some apologetic issues that I had never quite had resolved for me in my years of education up until this point.
最核心的二难是：正典的形成根基，与指引正统释经的信经权威。 The two biggest ones were the canon of Scripture and the creeds that helped us interpret Scripture in an orthodox way.
关于正典的根本困惑在于：虽然受过全本护教训练，甚至为某些经卷特别辩护过，但 深悉圣经原是多元书卷的总集——不同时空的文献如何在末后被编织成神圣正典？ My issue with the canon was that although I had been trained to defend the Bible in general and even a couple of books in particular, I knew enough to know that the Bible was not a single book; it's really a library of books that are all put together into one bound volume.
某些论证特定经卷的方式难以推广适用，因此批评者能合理指出 某卷的难题——这些问题无法透过别卷的辩护策略得以解答。 The kinds of things you can do to defend some of the books in the Bible don't work for others, and so critics rightly can point out a problem in one book that doesn't necessarily get solved by the way you would defend another book.
这些问题最终指向核心质问：究竟为何是这些书卷被纳入正典？ All of this led back to the main question, which was: Why are these books in the Bible in the first place?
我曾受教于早期教会判定正典的标准之说，但实际应用时 总面临特例挑战——某些经卷并不完全符合既定标准。 Now, I had been taught that there were certain criteria that the early church used to determine which books belonged in the Bible and which did not, but there were always some issues with some of the books.
若当真严格按照那些标准，就会发现没有一卷确凿满足所有条件 ——此时教会采用的判定标准是否存在另一套未明言的规则？ None of the books seemed to have all of the criteria met, and if those criteria were actually what the church used to include the books they included, then it seemed like we might have a different list.
对坚信唯独圣经者而言，「认出哪些书卷属神默示而构成正 典」的能力至关重要——这正是识别神的启示范围的根基。 For someone who believed very strongly in sola scriptura, the idea that the Bible alone is God's revelation, the ability to identify that revelation by knowing which books were inspired and part of the canon and which were not was incredibly important.
我始终没有发现令人心服口服的解答方案。 I hadn't really found a good, rock-solid answer to that question.
另一个核心困扰关乎正统教义的判定——基督信仰有其 不可妥协的核心教义，但同时存在可存异的次要信条。 The other main issue that I had was the idea of orthodoxy; the idea that Christianity had a certain group of essential teachings that everybody had to agree on if they wanted to be Christian, but then another layer of non-essential teachings that were okay to disagree on.
但究竟哪些属基本要道，哪些是次要问题？这成为困扰我的难题。 My problem wasn't with that idea itself, but rather identifying which was which.
作为新教徒，我知道基督徒可能在数百个议题上观点相左——总 是听说判断标准在于是否影响救恩——但这标准如何客观应用？ Now, as a Protestant, I knew that there were hundreds of different things that Christians could disagree on, and I'd always been told that the way you tell the difference between an essential and a non-essential is by whether or not it would affect salvation.
譬如若不承认三位一体或耶稣的神性，你所信的便不 是圣经启示的耶稣——这样虚假的基督并不能救你。 So, for example, if you don't believe in the Trinity or you don't believe that Jesus is God, well then the Jesus you believe in isn't the Jesus of Scripture; it's another Jesus that can't save you.
因此，三位一体与道成肉身等教义显然是必须认信 的基本要道，惟有确信方能成为得救的真基督徒。 Belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation and things like that are definitely essentials that you have to believe in if you want to be a truly saved Christian.
但传统教导却称，对洗礼本质或圣餐奥义的理解不致影响是否得救。 However, I was taught that issues like baptism and what exactly communion is, and that sort of thing, you didn't get saved or not saved based on your belief in those things.
这些被归类为非基本要道，属于可以容纳不同见解的次要问题。 So, they were non-essentials; they were secondary issues that were okay to disagree on.
令我讶异的是，在另些宗派中，这些所谓次要问题却被视为基本信条。 However, it interested me to see that for some groups, some things that I had been taught were secondary and non-essential were considered essential.
例如公教徒指出，圣经明明记载耶稣亲口说「你们若不吃人子的肉，不 喝人子的血，就没有生命在你们里面」——这话见于约翰福音第六章。 For example, if you're Catholic, you recognize that right there in the Bible, Jesus says that if you don't eat His flesh and drink His blood, you don't have eternal life.
更有彼得明言「洗礼如今救你们」。 That's in John 6. You have Peter saying that baptism saves you.
至少从字面来看，洗礼与圣餐或许正是关乎救恩的要素。 So, on the surface at least, it seemed like baptism and communion might very well be essential issues.
这种二分法的根本困局在于：作为神学圭臬的圣经本 身，并未明确标注何为基本要道、何为次要分歧。 The main problem with this whole essentials and non-essentials idea is that the Bible itself, which is supposed to be our main resource for theology, doesn't label which things are essential and which ones are not.
主导这一理论体系的正是诺曼·盖斯勒本人——研究他的著 作时发现，他列举的基要与非基要教义清单总是自相矛盾。 Now, the champion of this whole program was Norm Geisler himself, and I discovered as I researched his writings that every time he published a list of the essentials and non-essentials, they were different.
几乎每本关于此议题的重要著作面世时，他就给出不同的基线清单。 He literally had a different list of essentials every single time he had a major publication come out on what are the essentials and non-essentials.
拜读他的著作后方醒悟：这套分法根本行不通。 So, I knew just from looking at his writings that this system clearly didn't work.
于是我开始从历史中寻索答案。 I started looking into history.
这在当时别具挑战，因南方福音派神学院研究院 未设教会史课程，我只能孤身踏上求索之旅。 Now, this was interesting because at that time, Southern Evangelical Seminary did not have any church history classes in their grad school, so I was kind of on my own.
当实际考察正典形成与正统教义确立的过程时，发 现始终由初期教会在这历史现场担当关键角色。 As I discovered how the canon really came to be and how orthodoxy really came to be decided, I started noticing that it was always the ancient church that was involved in that occurrence.
公元382年的罗马会议中，正是罗马教会最早确立了沿用至今的正典全书。 I found out that it was the Church at Rome, at the Council of Rome, that first determined the canon of Scripture that we have today.
而尼西亚与君士坦丁堡的两次大公会议制定了首部具有普世约 束力的信经——其中包括我所在学院认为非基要的诸多教义。 I discovered that it was the Church at Nicaea and Constantinople that created the very first ecumenical creed by which all Christians are to be bound, which by the way included a number of things that were not considered essential by my school.
至此，我对「唯独圣经」的信念开始剧烈动摇。 So, my faith, if you will, in sola scriptura really began to waver.
我无法理解福音派或一般新教徒如何解释正典确立过程——既接 受教会编定正典的历史事实，又不愿赋予教会裁决正典的权威。 I wasn't entirely sure how an evangelical or even just a regular Protestant Christian could completely justify the canon itself without asserting a level of authority to the church that created the canon that they did not want to give it.
即便用某种方式倒推出正典标准而不提编纂者身份，释经权 柄的问题仍悬而未决——谁能保证我所持的是正统解释？ Further, even if there was some way to kind of reverse-engineer the canon in such a way that we could ignore the fact that the church was actually the one who created it, there was the issue of interpretation.
辨认圣经的正统解释的标准若不存于教会权威，如何规避异端？「唯独圣经」教义开 始在我心中显现根本裂缝——当意识到它轰然倒塌时，方知自己信仰根基已然动摇。 How do I know when I have an orthodox interpretation of that Scripture and when I don't? Sola scriptura for me became a really big issue, and as the pieces of it started to kind of fall apart, I realized I was in a bit of trouble because I knew that sola scriptura was one of the main foundational pillars of Protestantism, and I wasn't sure what I was going to be able to do if I decided that sola scriptura didn't work.
第二个重击来自对「唯独信心」的省察——这正是新教另一支柱教义。 The next big blow to my Protestantism came as I read more and more about sola fide, the other major foundational pillar of Protestantism.
查考发现雅各书2章24节竟是圣经唯一明确出现「单因着信」表 述的经文，且此节直指『人称义是本于行为，而不单因着信』。 Sola fide said that we are saved by faith alone, and incredibly, I discovered that James 2:24 was the only verse in the Bible that contained the words justification by faith alone.
这对新教救恩论而言无异于投石击水——根基教义竟与圣经明文相悖。 And what it said was that we are not justified by faith alone.
尽管能找到诸多旁证引向「唯独信心」，然而圣经唯一明言的结 论却是否定性的——这迫使我反思：新教标榜的『唯独圣经』竟 导致首个核心教义直接与圣经文字冲突，这是何等的吊诡？ Now, this was a huge eye-opener for me because I knew a number of proof texts that kind of seemed to indirectly teach that justification was by faith alone, but I had never realized that the only verse in Scripture to use those words actually said that it wasn't. Now, I knew how to interpret that verse in a way that agreed with my evangelical theology, but it occurred to me that here I was, a Protestant who was doubting sola scriptura, but who had as a foundational— in fact, the primary one—of the very first major doctrines to come out of this alleged sola scriptura one that directly contradicted a verse of Scripture.
若公教会教导与圣经文字显见相左，福音派必然群起攻之。 I knew that if the Catholic Church taught anything that was directly contradicting the words of Scripture, we would have been all over that.
可新教却任由自身核心教义与雅各书明文南辕北辙——如此双标准，实在难以自圆其说。 We would have been attacking the Catholic Church left and right and just scoffing at them for how poorly they handled Scripture.
然而未曾见哪节经文真正直接抵触公教教义。 Yet, I had never seen a verse that actually contradicted Catholic teaching.
固然有些经文似乎与公教会训导相悖，但从未出现完全字面矛盾的情形。 Now, there were several verses that I believed taught against what the Catholic Church taught, but none of them were a direct verbal contradiction.
我终意识到：若某群体能神学性地曲解圣经文字 矛盾的问题，还有什么释经歪论是无法造就的？ What I came to realize was that if a group can take a direct verbal contradiction of Scripture and somehow spin it theologically to make it work, there's no stopping a hermeneutic that can get around a direct verbal contradiction.
于是自恃攻击公教会的『经文炮弹』宣告失效——这些弹药 根本是哑弹，因为对方的难题更深刻揭露我们的逻辑漏洞。 So, whatever scriptural ammunition that I thought I had against the Catholic Church was definitely not going to work; it was going to be a dud if it was fired because they had something on us that was far more of a problem than anything we had on them.
这些思考延续了好几年。 Now, this is several years down the line.
必须澄清——此时我并未考虑加入公教会。 I want to stress that at this point, I was not looking to become Catholic.
公教会作为一个实体，根本未曾进入我的考量范围。 The Catholic Church, as an entity, was not even really on the table.
甚至不愿将之纳入考察对象。 It wasn't something I even wanted to look at.
全然无意成为公教徒，当时仍觉其教条诡异而诸多不可接受。 I was not interested in becoming Catholic; I thought they were weird, and I didn't like a lot of their beliefs.
对此实在毫无兴趣。 It was just not something I was into.
而持续研读的福音派学者著作却不断显明福音派无力解答正 典与信经问题，甚至对「唯独信心」的诠释也漏洞频现。 I was still reading evangelical scholars that were convincing me that evangelicalism couldn't answer the question of the canon, or the creeds, or of sola fide.
请信我，仍在竭力保守原本的福音派信仰。 Believe me, I tried.
转而考察英国圣公会的传统，仍遭遇诸多无法跨越的障碍。 I tried looking outside of evangelicalism to Anglicanism, but I kept running up against problems that I couldn't seem to overcome.
终于不得不正视——若要破解这些难题，面前只剩下公教会这一解答路径。 Eventually, I saw the Catholic Church looming in my future if I was going to answer these questions.
必须溯源至古代教会——因历史铁证昭然：正典与信经由古代教会确 立，至今仍在团结全体正统基督徒——这是不容否认的客观事实。 I was going to have to look to the ancient church because, like it or not, historically speaking, it is just an objective fact that it was the ancient church that determined the canon, and it was the ancient church that determined the creeds that still unite all of orthodox Christianity.
无论如何辩驳，这都是不容撼动的史实。 There's just no getting around that.
同时须正视另一事实：在正典与信经成形时期，现代新教各宗派尚未诞生。 There's also no historical way of getting around the fact that there is no modern Protestant church that existed back when the canon and the creeds were determined.
因此若渴望归属于那裁定正典并确立信经的教会，就必须离弃新教。 So, if I wanted to be a part of the church that determined the canon and the creeds, I was going to have to leave Protestantism.
我深爱阅读阿奎那、奥古斯丁与教父们的著作。 I loved Thomas Aquinas; I loved reading Augustine, Chrysostom, and the early church fathers.
终意识到：若教父们来到当今之世，绝不会加入我所在的福音派教会。 I realized that if these guys were alive today, they wouldn't be attending my church.
可教会一方面颂扬他们奠定基督信仰的基要教义，却又断言他们误解了福音真谛。 The crazy thing was my church taught that these guys basically figured out Christianity, and yet somehow, they got the gospel wrong.
回到核心与次要教义的划分难题：若关涉救恩的福音信息并非基 要，那么根据这标准，那些塑造基督教神学的中世纪思想家乃至 早期教父，要么并非真基督徒，至少其属灵状态大可存疑。 So going back to the essentials versus the non-essentials: if what affects your salvation—if what you think about the message of the gospel—isn't essential, then what I had to affirm as an evangelical, an orthodox, if you will, evangelical was that the early church fathers and the medieval thinkers—those guys that shaped Christianity into what it is—weren't Christians, or they were at least very questionable Christians.
然而教会正统教义传承者的他们，怎可能在核心福音上全然错谬？ Because although they taught orthodoxy and all the things that we believed about the canon and the creeds, they had somehow gotten the gospel wrong.
压垮骆驼的最后一根稻草在于历史的真相：新教叙事描绘的图景是早期教会极 为纯正，后来逐步堕落，直到宗教改革予以洁净——但历史实情却远异于此。 The final nail in the coffin, if you will, was that as I studied more and more about history, I came to realize that the Protestant narrative of a church that started off very faithful, figured out the canon, figured out the creeds, and then kept going—only to have that church kind of corrupt at some point and need to be restored or reformed during the Reformation of the 16th century—really didn't make very much sense.
因新教所抵制的诸多公教与东正教传统，如圣体敬拜、教阶制度等，早在早期大公会 议中已然存在——甚至在罗马会议制定正典之前，早已是教会普遍持守的信仰实践。 The reason is that several of the things that Protestants objected to in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy were already settled before the first creed and before the Council of Rome, which was the first one to determine the canon.
例如教阶制度、敬奉马利亚、婴儿洗礼的救恩功效，以及圣餐中 基督真实临在的信仰——这些都深深根植于初期教会的土壤。 In other words, you already had the church hierarchy, you already had Marian veneration, you already had a belief in baptism as saving, even for infants, and you already had a belief in Jesus' real presence in the Eucharist.
因此，若断言教会在某节点后腐坏堕落，将难以在历史长河中给这条分界线找到容身之处。 So if you're going to say the church corrupted, drawing that line becomes very tricky.
因为如果将分界线画在正典与信经确立之后，那 此时已孕育了大多数你们所反感的公教元素。 Because if you draw it after the canon and the creeds, you've already got most of the things you don't like about Catholicism.
若将分界线提前到使徒世纪末期，那么教会确立正典与 信经的权柄将被质疑——而这正是新教所宣称的。」 If you draw it earlier, say, right after the death of the apostles, then the church loses its authority to determine the canon and the creeds—which it did.
如此将失去判别正典与基督信仰正统性的客观标准。 You are left without any kind of objective measure anymore of the canon or of Christian orthodoxy.
于是在2014年——历时五年的信仰求索后—— 我正式加入公教会，与基督奥体实现完整共融。 So, in 2014, five years after I began this study journey into the church, I was received into full communion with the Catholic Church.
之后自然需要另觅职事，重建社交网络与事工体系——感恩神的恩典，如今已得着更新。 After that, obviously, I had to find new work, had to find a lot of new friends, and had to rebuild my entire ministry network, which, praise be to God, has largely occurred.
一些昔日友人重回我生命中，另些虽因我的改变离 开，但我全无怨恨——体谅彼此的难处与挣扎。 I've won some friends back; I don't blame them necessarily for walking away from me as I became Catholic because it was a difficult time for all of us in different ways.
现今在天主教护教机构事奉，并在依纳爵出版社出版著作。) Ministry-wise, I've been picked up by Catholic Answers, and I've been published by Ignatius Press.
我的第十本书出自依纳爵之约，题为《福音派大迁徙》。 I have ten books; I have a book from Ignatius Press called Evangelical Exodus.
此书是与一众南方福音派神学院校友的皈依见证合集。 It's actually a compilation of stories from a bunch of my friends that came into the Catholic Church out of Southern Evangelical Seminary.
书末四个精彩章节深入探讨「唯独信心」、「唯独圣经」、正典与信经的议题。 And we've got four great chapters at the end that go through sola fide, sola scriptura, the canon, and the creeds.
最近推出的新书《同心合意》由「公教解答」出版，教 导公教徒如何以新教徒能理解的方式阐述公教信仰。 I just had a book come out from Catholic Answers called With One Accord, and it basically teaches Catholics how to explain Catholicism to Protestants in a way that Protestants will understand.
书中剖析公教与新教间最具争议的神学分歧，揭示背后 共通的信仰底质——消弭双方对彼此教义的陌生感。 It takes most of the most contentious theological differences that Catholics and Protestants have and shows how they actually have a common principle behind them, so that Catholicism isn't quite as weird as Protestants might think, and vice versa.
如今的事工重心转向搭建理解的桥梁，向人展现公教信仰内在的合理性与深度。 My ministry now is not so much about going out and getting the non-believers, but rather trying to build bridges, trying to show people how it is that Catholicism actually makes sense.
惟愿这样的服侍能结出属灵的果实。 I'm hoping that this ministry will bear fruit as I go forward in the world.
这便是我的皈依历程。 So, that is my story.
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愿神赐福与您！ God bless!