When Christian missionaries—first Jesuit Matteo Ricci, Protestant James Legge and then down to the present day—are introducing Chinese culture into the Western academy, they have been motivated to close the distance between these traditions by interpreting the Chinese world through a heavily Christianized language. Indeed, over the last four centuries of cultural encounter, the vocabulary established for the translation of classical Chinese texts into Western languages has been freighted by a patently Christian framework, and the effects of this “Christianization” of Chinese texts are still very much with us.
当基督教传教士（首先是利玛窦、新教理雅格，一直到当今）把中国文化介绍到西方学界时，他们的动机是缩小两个思想传统的距离，方法是用深受基督教浸染的语言解读中国的世界。其实，在长达四个世纪的近代文化接触中，为把中国古代经典翻译为西方语言所建立起来的一套语汇，被装上的是一个明摆的基督教框架。对中国经典的这种“基督教化”的功效，今天在我们身上仍在很大程度上存在。

Li as an achieved propriety in roles and relations is perhaps the most important term in giving voice to the Confucian human-centered religiousness. And it is within this context that the ancestral/numinous/cultural/natural notion of tian 天has a role.
“礼”是在人伦角色关系圆成的适当性，恐怕是儒家“以人为中心”宗教感声音的最重要词汇。是在这样一个文化语义环境中，一个祖先性、令人敬畏而向往的、文化性的，自然性的“天”观念，获得一种角色。

The familiar mantra invoked to describe Confucian religiousness, tianren heyi 天人合一, describes the inseparability of the relationship between the numinous and the human experience, the inseparability of the relationship between the cultural and natural context and human thinking and living.
 “天人合一”是儒家宗教感呼唤出来的一个人人皆知用语，它表达着令人敬畏而向往的高远与人类平凡经验之间的相系不分，文化与自然域境同人类思想生活之间的互系不分。

Like the heavens and the earth (tiandi 天地), the numinous and the human (tianren 天人) too are one and two at the same time. We are thus concerned about the “depth of coalescence” (du 度) that can be cultivated and achieved in their first order relationality. It is thus that such correlative expressions are not simply descriptive, but are also prescriptive. The relationship is fecund and generative, with tian and ren working together collaboratively to build the connector for their own time and place, and to extend the cosmic order (hongdao 弘道, dadao 达道) in doing so. And tian and ren in their relationship are to be understood as doing and undergoing, shaping and being shaped, in this dyadic yet resolutely constitutive relationship.
就像天地，天人也一样，既是一也是二。是这样，人关注二者的首要秩序理性的可能修养与圆成“深度”；是这样，这种互系性观念不是简单描述性的，而是方略性的。关系饱含活力、生生不已；天人协作着，合力打造它们自己时空的连体，得以达道、弘道。就天人二者的不分关系而言，它的蕴意是既是践行也是历经，既是改造也是被改造；它既是双重也是断然的构成关系。
 
It is clear that human beings in this relationship derive much benefit from the ancestral/numinous/cultural/natural resources denoted by tian. Tian certainly provides human beings with a context for flourishing, and serves us as a model to emulate and revere. But since the relationship between tian and human beings is irreducibly collateral, we have to ask: What through personal cultivation can be made of this tianren relationship? And what does tian get in this relationship from human beings? My argument will be that in these classical Confucian canons, human sagacity not only introduces epochal transformations in the human experience, but also has a transformative effect on the moral content of tian and the cosmos broadly. Said another way, it is my claim that the relatively vague notion of tian as it is expressed in these texts is amplified and made explicit through the specific lives of our human sages. I want to suggest that not only can “human beings broaden the way,” (ren neng hongdao 人能弘道), but “sagacious human beings can broaden tian” (shengren neng jitianliji 聖人能繼天立極).
显而易见，人是在这样的关系中，得益于先祖、令人敬畏而向往的高远之处、自然的源泉；一言以蔽之，它即是“天”。“天”确然为人类提供着一个生机盎然的域境，作为人效仿与崇敬的楷模。不过，因为天人关系是无可质疑相互依赖的，我们势必要问：人在这样天人关系的修身所得是什么？天在与人的不分关系的所得是什么？我的论点是，在这些古代儒家经典中，圣贤不仅以人之经验引得时代的递进，而且对“天”的道德内涵也施展递进影响，达到宏天地之道。换句话说，可以认为，相对浑然的“天”观念，有这样的经典表达，在圣人鲜活的生命之中，变得弘大，变得直白。我要强调，人不仅能弘道，而且圣人还可“继天立极”。

详见：http://hs.lib.tsinghua.edu.cn/news/1203