罗马时代的信仰危机

On Crisis of Faith in Ancient Roman

异教时期的罗马国教具有公共性、反个人崇拜及相对宽容等特点。自从元首政治建立之后,随着东方思想的大量涌入,有关个人灵魂拯救的秘传崇拜开始打破公共崇拜对于信仰领域的垄断;皇帝崇拜日益冲击着城邦宗教中的共和与民主传统;与此同时,帝国政府对于异己思想表现得越来越不宽容。这种信仰危机随着3世纪社会总危机的爆发而日益加剧,其最直接的后果就是造成了普遍的道德危机。基督教的崛起有效地缓解了公共崇拜与私人信仰之间的张力,彻底瓦解了个人崇拜赖以存在的基础,并用一套全新的伦理原则重塑了社会的道德模式,因而最终结束了这场长达四百年之久的信仰危机。

State religion of pagan Rome is characterized by publicity,anti-personality cult,and relative tolerance.After the establishment of Principate,with oriental cultures being introduced into Rome,monopoly of Roman public cult began to be broken by a variety of mystery religions;republican and democratic tradition inherent in the city-state religion was attacked increasingly by cult of the emperor;at the meantime,attitude of imperial government towards alien religions was more intolerant than ever before.The crisis of faith became aggravated as a result of general social crisis from the third century on,and consequently,it directly gave rise to extremely serious moral crisis.Nevertheless,rise of Christianity effectively relieved the tension between public cult and private faith,utterly destroyed the basis on which the personality cult set up,supplied the whole society with a new moral model,thus eventually put an end to the crisis of faith which lasted 4 centuries.