倪柝聲的作品《正常的基督徒生活》(The Normal Christian Life)是一本享譽基督教世界之經典作品。此書原係倪氏於一九三八及一九三九年,在英國和歐陸數地之英文講道記錄,由英國的金尼耳(Augus I. Kinnear)整理成書。本文擬將此作置入十九世紀末、二十世紀初的「福音教派」或徑稱「福音派」(Evangelicalism)的脈絡中來審視兩者之間的相應又個殊之處,希望藉此以略窺此一福音派對基督徒生活之論述的特質,進而探索倪氏基督教思想的淵源,並同時凸顯倪氏關於基督徒生活之論述之獨特。為此,本文將分別追蹤十九世紀後半葉福音派之發展,並以慕安得烈(Andrew Murray, 1828-1917)、慕迪(Dwight Lyman Moody, 1837-1899)、辛普森(Albert Benjamin Simpson, 1843-1919)、梅爾(Frederick Brotherton Meyer, 1847-1929)等人的相關作品為基礎,勾勒出福音派對基督徒生活的主張。此外,本文亦將分析、比較倪柝聲《正常的基督徒生活》一書在思想與論述上和上述福音派各家的異同之處,探索其關係連鎖、辨明其原委差異,冀望藉此能一面凸顯倪氏對基督徒生活論述與眾不同之處,另一面也標明在十九世紀後半葉基督教發展之脈絡中福音派人文主義之特質。
In this paper I propose to set Watchman Nee's The Normal Christian Life against the background of the Evangelicalism cross the Atlantic Ocean in the late nineteenth century, when the evangelical movement ran its height in line with the tide of western imperialism. In specific, the discourses of the Christian life by four representative Evangelical leaders, i.e. Andrew Murray, D. L. Moody, A. B. Simpson, and F. B. Meyer, were chosen intentionally to compare and contrast with Nee's discourse of "the normal Christian life." For the sake of presenting the thesis more lively and persuasively, I adopted certain skills of "discourse analysis," which include to characterize the ministry of each Evangelical speaker, vivify the Lebenswelt of each book, analyze the vocabulary of each discourse, and pinpoint the uniqueness of meaning of each text. By this way, we could obtain a better view of the thought world and linguistic context of Nee's The Normal Christian Life, consequently a better comprehension of its significance. Moreover, when we look through these five Evangelical discourses on the Christian life altogether in the light of the late nineteenth century Evangelicalism, it became clear to us that the emphasis upon the crucifixion of self or soul life was the keynote of this Evangelical humanism.