For better or for worse, believers and non-believers are unlikely to fully agree about the relationship between faith and humility. Indeed, some non-believers may insist that there is an inherent conflict between the two. Faith can make the believer appear stubbornly dogmatic, impervious to reasoned argument and willfully blind to the truth. People of faith sometimes seem to claim to have a direct pipeline to God. And having a pipeline to God too often frees them to ignore the protestations of the rest of us mortals. And that doesn’t look like humility, at least not to outsiders. To them, it reeks of the kind of arrogance that leads to Crusades, Inquisitions, and Jihad!

毫无疑问，虔诚的信徒看问题的方式不同。他们可能会抗议说，正是那些拒绝信仰，把自己凌驾于神之上的人充满了罪恶的骄傲和傲慢!事实上，在他们眼中，信仰实际上是一种谦卑——在上帝面前的谦卑。

There is something right about this last thought, at least as an analysis of faith’s self-understanding. But here it’s important to distinguish what might be calledgenuine信仰来自那种轻松愉快的、习惯性的、常常未经检验的信仰，它要求人们除了定期去教堂、在传教士的布道中点头同意、或口头上做几句仪式式的祈祷外，别无他事。

In talking aboutgenuinefaith, I’m thinking of the faith of an Abraham. Genuine faith requires to make a journey like his. That was a journey of self-surrender. God promises Abraham and his wife Sarah a son, when they’re like a hundred years old. Miraculously, he gives them a son. Yay for God, right? I mean God keeps his promises! But then, in the midst of Abraham and Sarah’s joy at the miracle that God has delivered, God turns around and commands Abraham to take his son—the very son that he himself had promised Abraham, the very son who was supposed to be the father of nations—up the mountain and sacrifice, that is, kill, him.

"冲洗!你怎么能一会儿答应给我生个儿子，一会儿又把他带走?你是在逗我玩吗?你到底是上帝，还是伪装的魔鬼，想骗我?”至少我是这么想的。

但亚伯拉罕不是这样回答的。他服从。他服从是出于一种深深的、坚定的、不可动摇的信仰。把亚伯拉罕作为信仰的榜样，我并不是说，为了拥有真正的信仰，你必须愿意杀死自己的孩子。圣经也不是，我不这么认为。毕竟，亚伯拉罕最终没有杀死艾萨克——多亏了天使的介入。对亚伯拉罕信仰内容的一些解释是，他相信上帝会以撒“归还”给他，即使他，亚伯拉罕，按照上帝的命令完成了献祭。例如，克尔凯郭尔谈到，亚伯拉罕希望“凭借荒谬的力量”把以撒追回来。这是亚伯拉罕对上帝不可战胜，但理性上毫无根据的信任的标志。但这只是对这个故事的一种解读。 However exactly you see the exact content of Abraham's faith, many agree that you don't have genuine faith unless you are willing and able to make a journey like Abraham’s.

So ask yourself, could you yourself make Abraham's journey? Would you not be filled with pain and anguish, with hesitation and doubt, with “fear and trembling,” as Kierkegaard puts it? I know that I could not, that Iwould不去旅行。我也不能完全理解亚伯拉罕是如何使自己顺服，而不是逃跑，或因犹豫和怀疑而瘫痪。

但这正是问题的关键所在。信仰在某种程度上是那些缺乏信仰的人所无法理解的。若不是你已经在他那里有了信心的飞跃，你就必为亚伯拉罕的顺服感到惊奇和困惑。当别人经历痛苦、怀疑和犹豫时，内心随时准备服从，这就是真正信心的标志。这种信仰远远超出了大多数信徒所宣称的那种合成加工的信仰替代品。这种合成的替代信仰对我们的要求太少，不足以配得上真正信仰的称号。这对信仰的自我理解是至关重要的——它包括投降和屈服。这样的投降和屈服显然不是傲慢或骄傲。实现它可能是痛苦的，但它会任性而自信地服从上帝深不可测的意志。

The story of Abraham and his journey of faith is powerfully moving, even poetic. And again, it presents faith as a deep form of humility and a willful self-overcoming. But as powerfully moving as this picture of faith is, it not only doesn’t help with our original worry about the conflict between the faithful and the faithless, it actually makes things worse! And that is precisely because of the incomprehensible nature of faith so understood to those who lack faith.

Suppose you came across someone today dragging his poor son up that mountain, and he told you his plan to follow Abraham. Wouldn't you try to stop him? Wouldn’t you try to at least talk him out of his plan, to convince him that perhaps the voice he heard commanding him to drag his son up the mountain wasn’t, after all, the voice of the all-wise, all-knowing God? The problem is that if he really is as full of faith as an Abraham, your efforts will be entirely unavailing. He may listen politely to your arguments. But eventually he will faithfully heed God's call. He will say to you, “Move aside! I must do as God commands!” Would you just stand there and accept that, or would you treat him as a murderous lunatic?

这就是亚伯拉罕这种不可战胜的信仰的问题所在。它不能为自己辩护的世界的非信徒，还没有暗示到深不可测的意志的一个高深莫测的上帝。事实上，它甚至没有试图去做。在其最极端的版本中，这种信仰的方法将仅仅屈从于理性视为有损信仰的尊严。克尔凯郭尔持有这种观点的一个极端版本，但你也可以在马丁·路德·金这样受人尊敬的信仰人士身上找到这种思想的痕迹，他对吉姆·克劳种族隔离的抵抗主要是由信仰推动的。他说，当心灵“缺乏信仰的净化力量”和“被罪恶蒙蔽”时，人的理性只会扭曲和合理化，因此不应该被注意。Though we we may greatly admire King's own faith fueled resistance, in the wrong hands, such thinking can also lead to theCrusades, Inquisitions, and Jihad!

与金相反，我怀疑在理性和信仰的冲突中，问题在于信仰而不是理性。如果信仰与缺乏信仰共存，它需要找到一种方式，不仅是在高深莫测的上帝面前谦卑，而且在全人类面前谦卑。信仰不仅要学会倾听神的声音，还要学会倾听来自人类世界各个角落的声音。它需要倾听那些渴望公开庆祝他们的爱情的同性恋者的请求，需要倾听那些想要从有问题的怀孕中寻找出路的单身母亲的孤独哭泣，因为怀孕会使本已不堪重负的生活从根本上复杂化。

Only if faith can find a way to be humble—not just before the unfathomable will of an inscrutable God, but before humankind—and thus to be less dogmatic and less confident that it has an exclusive and direct pipeline to God, will the non-believer be able to find it within him or herself to listen more respectfully and receptively to the voice of the faithful in return.

也许，最后，我们不应该把亚伯拉罕不可战胜的信仰作为真正信仰的真正榜样。也许我们应该思考，而不是信奉一神论或佛教。这两种传统都看到启示的力量潜伏在任何地方，在创造的各个角落，在科学和圣经中，在对无神论者的质疑和对信徒的信仰中。

Now I do not delude myself that this approach will satisfy a certain sort of committed true believer. The true believer will reject my prescription for faith as just the sort of wishy-washy faith substitute that I earlier described and decried. Down this road, they will say, lies such abominations as, say, cafeteria-style Catholicism, where you pick and choose which doctrines of the Church to accept based, not on revelation and scripture, but on the moral fads of this or that age. This, they will insist, is once again nothing but faith in name only.

我理解你们的抱怨。但我担心这种对信仰的强硬和分裂的态度使忠实和不忠实的人几乎不可能共存，更不用说对彼此采取谦卑、容忍和尊重的态度。如果这是正确的，如果我们关心在一个张开欢迎的双臂平等地拥抱世俗和神圣的多元社会中共同生活，那么除了为了更大的人类利益而“淡化”信仰之外，可能别无选择。神性的他/她/自己会赞成，这并非完全不可思议。但谁能说得准呢?