Mandos and the Reformation

..and [Manwë] said: ‘...Thus even as Eru spoke to us shall beauty not before conceived be brought into Eä, and evil yet be good to have been.’

But Mandos said: ‘And yet remain evil ...’

The Silmarillion

I think about these lines whenever Reformation Day comes along in the Calendar. For Papists such as I, it is (this year) the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. But for Protestants of various stripes it is the day to commemorate the Reformation.

It is undeniable that good did come out of the Reformation. We would never have had a Counter-Reformation without a Reformation. Nor would we have had Choral Evensong or Anglican Chant, or a whole host of other things. Much beauty not before conceived has indeed made it into the World. And I do sincerely pray that evil can be turned to good. But to rip apart the Body of Christ no matter how noble the goals or noble the intent is, as Mandos says, still an evil. The Protestant elves felt justified, and certainly in our ballad their reasons were far more profound than Fëanor’s kin were in the book. And neither side will ever agree to whether they left or were pushed. And no one can deny the triumphs achieved by the Protestant elves in our ballad in the collective war against Morgoth.

But the tearing up of the Body of Christ is a kind of kin-slaying. For the Lord clearly desired that we all be one (Jn 17:21). And he provided means of achieving reconciliation (e.g.Mt 5:24) that do not involve taking your things and going elsewhere. Even anathemas (1 Cor 5:5) are meant to be temporary (2 Cor 2:7), ending in reconciliation. Now it ought to be said that should you stick it out even if they are so totally wrong? Is it not better to enter heaven with one eye rather than burn with two? (Mk 9:47) If your brother won’t reconcile with you, what do you do?

The Church throughout the years has adopted a number of different strategies for dealing with those who do not agree with her teachings. Clearly some have worked better than others as the old joke about the difference between Dominicans and Jesuits attests. And it is without a doubt that the differences that divide us still do matter.

Nevertheless, while my Protestant brothers and sisters celebrate, I am sad. I wait for the day when the Protestant elves will sail back across the sea into the West. For whatever beauty may be wrought, and while “evil yet be good to have been,” the wound in the Body of Christ still remains an evil.

A Fascinating Debate on Islam

Both Patrick Madrid and David Schütz put me onto this most interesting discussion. The question is whether the only good Muslim is a "bad" Muslim. I strongly recommend it.

Patrick Madrid has a few interesting things to say on this: here.

David Schütz mentions it in a fascinating article on the book mentioned in the debate: here


UPDATE: I updated the link to David Schütz's blog. WordPress rather abruptly took it down, but he's back at a new address.

Pope Issues New Apostolic Exhortation on Scripture

Today, Pope Benedict XVI released an apostolic exhortation titled Verbum Domini: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church. Click here for a link to the document in pdf form. (Catholic Culture is the source I used to obtain the link, from their story here.)

It seems a fortuitous opportunity to let you know about a personal project I have undertaken since All Saints' Day. On November 1st, I started a "Read the Bible in a Year" project that uniquely also ties into the Catechism. You can find the plan here. I highly recommend it.

For my Bible I am using the The New Jerusalem Bible: Saints Devotional Edition, which I acquired several years go. I know the NJB has numerous problems, but this edition does much to mitigate them. Most of the notes and all of the introductions are ditched in favour of very few notes (mostly of the cross-referencing kind, and occasionally of the 'this word could also be X' kind). The real strength is Dr Ghezzi's inserting works by the various saints (not a few of whom are Fathers of the Church) throughout as commentaries on various passages. There are 100 Old Testament commentaries, and 100 New Testament Commentaries. All of them are thoroughly orthodox. It really makes reading the Scriptures an enriched experience, and does much to rescue the New Jerusalem version. One thing though that strikes me from time to time ... It's clear in not a few places that the Fathers and other Saints understood the verses in ways modern scholarship poopoos. So for example "Only-begotten Son" in Jn 1:18 and that sort of thing, which means the commentary has to quote a different version entirely. Somewhat defeats the purpose of the commentaries complementing yours when they have to quote someone else.

To return to the Apostolic Exhortation, when I am done reading it, I will post some observations.

Apologia pro Nostra Aetate

Some time ago, my friend Pr. Lehmann declared that Nostra Aetate (Latin text, English text) was “the most satanic document ever written by the Christian Church.” Now, it will come as no surprise that not only do I disagree, I happen to find it to be an eminently Biblical Document. In fact, it reminds me of one passage in particular; a passage from which it derives its ideas and even its structure. The passage in question is Acts 17:22-33, St. Paul's great speech upon the Areopagus of Athens (the Mars Hill of the Authorised Version).

Let us consider the passage first and then how the Conciliar Document interacts with it. St Paul begins by praising the Athenians for their scrupulous religiosity (the Authorised Version and the Challoner revision* of the Rheims version both imply Paul mocks them for their superstition, but in fact he praises them) by noting that they are so thorough as to worship an “unknown god.” And then he says one of the most startling things, “this god you worship unknowingly, Him I proclaim to you.” This one statement gives the lie to people who assert that either you worship the Trinity or you worship Satan. For Paul himself states it is possible to worship God incompletely and not even have any experience of His revelation in either the Old Testament alone or the Old and New Testaments. For, the Athenians knew neither. And yet, Paul declares that although defective, their unknown god was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. St Paul then goes on to preach to them using Scripture, but not our Scripture. The Scriptures Paul quotes are pagan. “In him we live and move and have our being” is Epimenides of Crete, whom Paul again quotes in Titus (the famous statement that all Cretans are liars) where he describes him as a prophet. “We are indeed his offspring” is from Aratus' Phaenomena . And in this great speech, which converted a number of people like Dionysius the Areopagite and Damaris, he mentions Christ never by name, but only in passing. Indeed, he exclusively uses pagan reasoning, pagan verbiage, pagan scripture, pagan concepts, etc.

Now why is this important? Because we are often told, either outright or by implication, that if you're not Christian then you have no truth at all and worship Satan. But the Catholic position, articulated in Nostra Aetate and drawing heavily from Paul's example, is that while other religions cannot save, they are not totally devoid of truth either. God calls out to Man, a point made by Paul, and they grope about for him. Some people get it completely right by becoming Christians, but others, even in their ignorance, can see some parts of the truth, while not grasping it entirely. But it is a foundation that can be built upon. And that's what Paul does. He takes those points of intersection, where the Greeks grasped at but did not yet come to the truth, and Paul pointed them in the right direction. And I still marvel that he did so, he brought people to Christ, and yet never mentioned Christ by name. Indeed, Christ is hardly noted by the people; the point of contention that causes people to mock Paul is his assertion of the Resurrection. Nostra Aetate goes farther even than Paul; Nostra Aetate says very clearly that “[i]ndeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.” Paul doesn't even mention salvation, but Nostra Aetate does, and makes it the central pivot point around which the whole document revolves.

Like Paul, Nostra Aetate talks about those points of intersection between other religions and the Christian religion. It does not, as some assert, claim that other religions are equally as valid, or that they can save. A careful reading shows that these assertions are made about the document but are absent from it. Rather, it notes, for example, that the Muslims are monotheistic, wish to be associated with Abraham, revere Christ (though not as God), have special regard for Christ's Mother, etc. All of these statements are true, and are also points to build upon. The Catholic position is toward “positive proselytism,” building upon the common points where the Other has grasped partially the truth so the Other can be brought to its fullness. At the same time, Nostra Aetate takes great pains to distance itself from mistakes of the past. For example, Nostra Aetate makes this quite clear: “True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.” The preceding quote being a reference to all the terrible tragedies associated with Blood Libel and the like. In the final assessment, the Council Fathers took the position that emulating Paul would lead more souls to Christ. If the Council Fathers issued a Satanic document, then it is because Paul gave a Satanic speech.

But how can this be? St. Luke, who recorded it, praises it as winning people to Christ. And he didn't say, “many came to believe in spite of Paul's abject surrender to Satan's power.” Clearly, the Holy Ghost, who inspired Luke, thinks that Paul's speech was praiseworthy. But maybe Paul was playing a joke on the people, or maybe he deceived them for some reason. Really? This is how we win people to Christ? By deception? We are left, unfortunately for some, with the clear warrant of Scripture that what Paul and the Council Fathers did was not Satanic at all. Now, I am sure we'll be told that some pluperfect, some preposition, some adverbial phrase in Ephesians or the Gospel of St John says this or that. But I tell you now that's just missing the Gospel Forest for a few grammatical trees. What did Paul plainly do? What did the Council Fathers plainly do in emulating the Apostle?

I can tell you that it involves Satan; his defeat to be precise.



*I have no idea what the original Rheims version said on this point, as I don't have a text to consult.

What's wrong?

After a long hiatus, I'm going to write about an opportunity missed, and why it is part and parcel of what ails us.

Before I begin it is important to note that the readings for Sunday were Gn 18:1-10a, Col 1:24-28, and Lk 10:38-42. These three readings are about the relationship between Faith and diakonia (i.e. ministry, service). Abraham, in the Lesson, serves the three strangers for selfless love of them. He does not know the truth of their identity, and serves them even though he is ignorant. His is a truly selfless love. But it still appears to be primarily about meeting the needs of the "flesh" rather than the "Spirit" as St Paul would distinguish. But the Gospel reading helps make this clearer. It is a commentary on the Lesson. The Gospel reading is very hard on us Moderns. We listen to this proclaimed and are affronted. How unjust for poor Martha! She's busting her mmhmmm to serve Jesus and He seems to snub her. But ... is that really what goes on? This Gospel lesson is not to poo-poo Martha's service per se, it's perfectly salutary to serve others. But the point Christ makes is that it should be done in a context where Faith, and literally listening to the Word of God is central. Mary listens first to the Word, literally, before engaging the world in its toils. And thus the Gospel informs the Epistle. This is how St Paul is able to "fill up that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ" by service that is Christ-focused and Christ-centered. It started with Christ and returns to Him. And so we come full circle to the Lesson, where we now realise that Abraham's diakonia was worthy of reward because of how Christ-like it was. He who yearned for a Saviour acted most like him in this selfless service, precisely because it did not just meet the needs of the "flesh" but, as it were, proclaimed the Gospel even before it was proclaimed by Christ.

*****

This brings me to what struck me on Sunday. Immediately after we profess our Faith, using the ancient and yet still ever-present formula of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, we then offer up a set of prayers that are supposed to pray for the corporate needs of the particular parish. All of the prayers were ones for God to meet needs of the "flesh." Examples included that political leaders respect the poor and marginalised, that those who are financially distressed receive relief from their distress, that our military in harm's way be protected from harm and come safely home, and that the sick and their caregivers be a source of healing and comfort to each other. These are fine in and of themselves -- who does not want our troops to come safely home? -- but is there anything particularly Christian about them? Could atheists not offer the same sentiments? I'll return to that question. What about something like "... bring them safely home, and may they spread the Gospel wherever they are sent in thought word and deed"? This is not fashionable. I can see the papers decrying our troops being used as missionaries with guns. But that's not what I just prayed for. Rather I want someone out there in the far-flung reaches of the globe to see our troops living the Gospel and thus ask the question "why does he love like that? How can I love like that?" and thus come to be saved.

This is more than just an opportunity lost, although it is certainly that. I ask again the question, could not an atheist or other secular person offer those sentiments? Yes. And that's the problem. That's one of the main reasons so many churches are hurting. Many of our leaders in the Faith are out there involved in protests, activism and so on. And defending the downtrodden, the marginalised etc are certainly within the mandate given us by Christ. But, if that's all being a nun or a priest is ... if that's all being a Catholic is ... just protesting and getting socially aware ... then we don't need to be Catholic, or priests, or nuns to do that. Secular people are just as capable of doing these things. If all we are is a socially-aware group of activists and charity workers, we don't even really need religion for any purpose, right? And so many people realised that very thing that vocations are down (and not just for those reasons, obviously, but it is certainly a major factor). But we do need the Gospel. We cannot be saved but by the Gospel. If we focus on the Gospel while being socially active, that's the one road to living in Imitation of Christ. But that means making the saving of the souls you engage a greater priority than just making sure you march for them. I have seen it time and time again that when the church emphasises the things of the "Spirit" first, and makes things Christ-centered and Christ-focused we have increased Mass participation, an increase in vocations and so on.

Surely there are many problems besides this that the Church needs to address and all of them urgently (obviously the abuse scandal comes to mind). But, in my mind, the single greatest thing the Church can do is to listen to Christ in the Gospel pericope. If our dioceses, religious orders and so on make Christ the focus, and meet the needs of the "Spirit" before meeting the needs of the "flesh" then it seems to me cleaning up other problems will necessarily follow.

Luke's Parable of the Sower Considered

First a quick word on my lack of blogging. In a recent posting, well ... "recent" ... I said that the crisis I was experiencing was getting better. Alas, it got much worse before it resolved. But for the grace of God I do not know how I would have coped. But in any event, I feel now as though I can blog again, and so ...

The reading in the LCMS One Year Lectionary for Sunday, I am told, is the Parable of the Sower from Luke (Lk 8:4-8, but we'll be discussing the wider context of Chapter 8:1-18). I thought, as an interesting exercise to set myself, I'd ask what I might make of this text. This is one of the most famous of the Parables, narrated in all three Synoptics. It was clearly a favourite of the Followers of the Way.

In Luke's version the "lead up" to the parable begins with a proclamation. This is an important feature of this particular Gospel. The Gospel itself begins with a proclamation from Caesar, Christ begins His public ministry with a proclamation (see Chapt 4). Thus proclaiming the Gospel is an important thematic feature of this Gospel, more important than it being the Gospel of forgiveness (i.e. the only Gospel to include the Prodigal Son, for example) or of acceptance of the marginalised (i.e. the only Gospel to contain the Parable of the Good Samaritan). This proclamation is then followed by the women followers bearing the fruit of that proclamation.

In other words, the parable is explained before it is given. Again, read Chapter 4, where the Nazareth tale clearly happens after Capernaum (see verse 23 in 4), but is narrated before those stories.

And so the parable. The parable serves many purposes, some obvious, others not. One of the primary purposes is to debunk the idea of Christ's preaching being perspicuous. Indeed, it is clearly not. If it were clear, why would anyone ask for it to be explained? Indeed, as an experiment one could narrate the parable, without Christ's explanation, to non-believers who have never been exposed to it before to see how many could grok it right away. I'd be willing to say very few. Indeed, its opaqueness to all except those to whom He reveals the explanation is the point as made clear by verse 10. It is this verse (and its parallels in the other synoptics) that make me want to scream whenever I hear someone preach that Jesus used parables so as to be easily understood by his audience. FALSE! And how do we know it is false? Jesus says so! So the parable serves to illustrate this important point, the purpose of parables. But that is very minor when compared to the other purpose(s).

We can read the explanation for ourselves, and see that we're called to be Little Sowers in imitation of the Great Sower (and here I think of Tolkien's idea of subcreation most strongly). And we can recognise the groups in the Church that this addresses. Theologians like Thomas Aquinas would have a field day with the four different groups. He especially would see the four as significant; he believed that all humans had three choices, and with grace, four. He would point out that the first group represented those who had chosen supernatural evil. The next group experiences a kind of passive indifference that proves they had no foundation to begin with; a natural evil. The next group recognises the good and responds to it, except the worries of the world prevent them from going beyond natural good. Only the last group responds fully to the grace offered and thus flourish, persevere and bear fruit. I'll get to the Molinists in a second, as their response is predicated on an observation I have not yet made.

What of the soil? To me the soil, and its condition, is of critical importance to the parable. The soil was put there, filled with good nutrients and expected the Sower well before He ever set out to sow. It was meant to receive His seed. It was meant to grow, nourish and bear good fruit. And this is important. The soil is the soil if election. The Molinists say that the soil is proof that God actualised reality in response to His middle knowledge of counterfactuals; He knew that we would respond well if the seed fell on us in such a way, and actualised reality to effect it. Thomists say the soil is demonstration that the recipient souls were put in just the right place and properly disposed to receive and respond well to the grace and thus bear fruit. Meh. With all due respect to my side and the other, they miss the point. Here is a simple, and I might add comforting notion, that God has chosen whom He has chosen. But unlike the hard, no holds barred Predestination of the Calvinists, there's more.

The purpose of the parable of the lamp is key. Once sown, the seed must bear fruit, and that requires us to freely respond to the grace. If we don't respond, the light will stay under the bushel and be as useless as James warns (i.e. James 2:18 and/or 20). Jesus doesn't say here "Once you receive the light, WHAMO, you will irresistibly show forth your light!" Instead, He says that so important is this relationship, that even poorly listening to the Word can be catastrophic. In other words, another purpose of the parable is to explain, without getting too technical, the compatiblism of the synergistic approach. Obviously, the choice is still fueled by grace, not every synergist is a Pelagian; but neither are we passive automatons, riding upon the donkey of Christ or the donkey of Satan as a German theologian once wrote.

The whole point of the parable is to admonish (for even inattentiveness can be disastrous), encourage and comfort. To know that God elects whom He elects, and that we will know this by the fruit produced, is a great comfort. To know that with His grace we can grow in Holiness is a great testimony to His mercy. And this to me is the real purpose of the parable.

More Translations

A friend asked me to compare the NASB, MKJV and NKJV. I have to first state that the reason I didn't touch on many of these types of translations is that they weren't released for the Catholic market and don't contain the Deuterocanon. I only included the KJV in the previous post due to its wording's wide familiarity. Anyway, here's my response for my friend:

I'll get the MKJV out of the way, because I know almost nothing about it. I note it uses Jehovah for the name of God, but aside from that I'd have to sit down and flip to different passages to see how it handles this or that Greek phrase.

The NKJV I am more familiar with. I have a Gideon's New Testament and Psalms, and the Gideon's use the NKJV almost exclusively. The NKJV revised much of the spelling and grammar to make it more contemporary while keeping the same flow and as much of the same aesthetic quality as the KJV. This caused some problems, because in correcting they altered some well-loved passages to conservative Protestants. One that immediately comes to mind is Acts 17:22. The KJV says "Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious." Whereas the NKJV says "Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious;" Conservative Christians balked, thinking this was an error. Actually, the NKJV got it right. The KJV translators couldn't possibly imagine Paul praising the Athenians for paganism, but that is exactly what he was doing. He was getting behind them before he threw a curve at them (he says, mixing his metaphors).

NKJV:

1 A Psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. 3 He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake. 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever.

My only fault with it is twofold. One ... no apocrypha/deuterocanon ... That is a show-stopper for me. Two, it, like all KJV derivatives, is too slavish to Textus Receptus. At the time of the KJV that was the best text anyone could use. But more recent scholarship, and by recent I mean from the 18th century onward, has shown that Textus Receptus is serious deficient in some areas and has bits and pieces in others that were not in the original. I also find it ironic that so many Conservative Christians cling to TR, when it was largely an invention of a Catholic Priest, Erasmus of Rotterdam ... yes, that Erasmus.

As for the NASB. It's an extremely literal version of Scripture, to the point where it is nearly unreadable at times in English. Indeed, a criticism of an earlier version than the NASB applies also to the NASB itself: Strong in Greek, weak in English. Psalm 23 won't show this very well, and so I will try to hunt down a passage that is so slavish to the older languages' syntax as to be virtually unreadable in English.

NASB:

1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. 3 He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Translations Compared

My friend Ros raised the issue of which version of the Bible to buy. Another friend remarked "the one you will read" a la Billy Graham. But I hope to offer some additional guidance.

First, a warning, two of the translations actually spell out the name of God. This might cause offence.

Second, an explanation. I think it makes it easy to see the differences by comparing how each translation treats a common and well-known passage from the Bible: Psalm 23

The King James Version, more properly the Authorised Version, is probably the loveliest of all the translation. It is not without problems. I think of the end of Isaiah 13 almost immediately where the KJV translators translated dragons and satyrs. But for sheer aesthetic value, the 1611 version of the KJV (with Apocrypha) is the pinnacle of aesthetic and literal consideration.

KJV

1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. 3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

But the KJV, for all its beauty, is not a Catholic translation, per se. For its contemporary we turn to the Douay-Rheims. It is not nearly as lovely all of the time. The below quote is proof. The D-R translators were as slavish to the Latin as the KJV translators could be the to the Greek of the NT. And that's important. The D-R is a translation of the Vulgate, and although Bishop Challoner revised it to be closer to the original languages it still suffers from an over dependence on the Latin.

Douay-Rheims

1 (22-1) A psalm for David. The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing. 2 (22-2) He hath set me in a place of pasture. He hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment: 3 (22-3) He hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of justice, for his own name’s sake. 4 (22-4) For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me. 5 (22-5) Thou hast prepared a table before me against them that afflict me. Thou hast anointed my head with oil; and my chalice which inebreateth me, how goodly is it! 6 (22-6) And thy mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And that I may dwell in the house of the Lord unto length of days.

Many years later the Revised Standard Version, one of a long line of updates to the KJV was produced with a version made available for Catholics. It is among the best permitted for Catholics, and is an even better translation than the Protestant version. The Protestant version has numerous problems in the New Testament (Holy Spirit is an it; the Pericope Auldterae, i.e. John 7:53-8:11 is in a footnote, and so on). The Catholic version could not obtain the imprimatur until these were fixed. It suffers from several problems still though. The RSV still uses thees and thous when referring to God, even though Hebrew does not contain this distinction, and it is one of many translations to not translate Is 7:14 as virgin. Still many conservative Catholics prefer this version or its revision by Ignatius Press for its overall fidelity to the original languages. It also still maintains a high aesthetic style.

RSV-CE

1 A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want; 2 he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; 3 he restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. 5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies; thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

More recently the RSV has been updated with a version again prepared for Catholics and another for Orthodox. The NRSV suffers from a number of translation problems, not least of which is its decision to often impute politically correct and gender neutral readings on a text where to do so obscures the meaning.

NRSV

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; 3 he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.

The official Catholic Bible in the United States is the New American Bible. This is the version all the readings at Mass are drawn from. So far all the versions I have cited have maintained a high aesthetic style, and the NAB is the first to have very pedestrian and sometimes even ugly lines of text. Psalm 23 is almost not up to the task of showing this. But if you've been reading along then you know this Psalm has a natural rhythm, not unsurprising for poetry. The NAB merely makes these declarative statements with no eye for aesthetics.

NAB:

1 A psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack.
2 In green pastures you let me graze; to safe waters you lead me;
3 you restore my strength. You guide me along the right path for the sake of your name.
4 Even when I walk through a dark valley, I fear no harm for you are at my side; your rod and staff give me courage.
5 You set a table before me as my enemies watch; You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
6 Only goodness and love will pursue me all the days of my life; I will dwell in the house of the LORD for years to come.

Outside the United States, like in Britain and Ireland, the Mass readings are taken from the Jerusalem Bible. While in fresh, modern text, the translators very consciously tried to maintain a literary quality. They retained J.R.R. Tolkien has a translator, although he demurred in later years as to the extent of his contribution. Nevertheless, his influence is clearly evident. This version is still quite controversial for, among other things, deciding to spell out all of God's names. Usually the name of God is obscured by The LORD and so on. Here it is spelled out, although with the popular conjectural pronunciation. Interestingly, in the Mass readings these are returned to The LORD. Also, this version is one of few to split the difference in Is 7:14 by translating almah as "maiden."

Also, its footnotes and introductions were enormously controversial, because they advanced the then still new High Criticism approach. Nowadays you can't actually get the version with those notes. The only version of the JB available is called the "Rearder's Edition."

JB:

1 Yahweh is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2 In meadows of green grass he lets me lie. To the waters of repose he leads me;
3 there he revises my soul. He guides me by paths of virtue for the sake of his name.
4 Though I pass through a gloomy valley, I fear no harm; beside me your rod and your staff are there, to hearten me.
5 You prepare a table before me under the eyes of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup brims over.
6 Ah, how goodness and kindness pursue me, every day of my life; my home, the house of Yahweh, as long as I live!

In the 1980s, the JB was revised. The notes were no less controversial, and they joined the chorus of translations that translate almah as "young girl." Moreover, much of the literary quality was sacrificed under the pretense of increasing accuracy. It also introduced more "inclusive language" although not to the extent of the NRSV. The result is a now uglier and less accurate translation of Scripture.

NJB:

1 [Psalm Of David] Yahweh is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2 In grassy meadows he lets me lie. By tranquil streams he leads me
3 to restore my spirit. He guides me in paths of saving justice as befits his name.
4 Even were I to walk in a ravine as dark as death I should fear no danger, for you are at my side. Your staff and your crook are there to soothe me.
5 You prepare a table for me under the eyes of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup brims over.
6 Kindness and faithful love pursue me every day of my life. I make my home in the house of Yahweh for all time to come.

The next two translations are firmly in the camp of "thought for thought" translations.

The first one, the Good News Translation, which until the 2000s was called Today's English Version, is very easy to read with simple language. It has a kind of aesthetic quality all its own. The simplistic language is intended for all ages, especially children and people who do not Speak English as a first language. One of the benefits of a version like this is that people who come to it not knowing what predestination or justification mean, are not necessarily going to be put off by these versions. Te Word is thus more accessible. The problem is that the simplicity can also allow the biases of the translators to get in the way. One other thing to note is that the GNT, when they changed the name also introduced inclusive language, abut again, not to the extent of the NRSV.

GNT:

1 The Lord is my shepherd; I have everything I need. 2 He lets me rest in fields of green grass and leads me to quiet pools of fresh water. 3 He gives me new strength. He guides me in the right paths, as he has promised. 4 Even if I go through the deepest darkness, I will not be afraid, Lord, for you are with me. Your shepherd's rod and staff protect me. 5 You prepare a banquet for me, where all my enemies can see me; you welcome me as an honored guest and fill my cup to the brim. 6 I know that your goodness and love will be with me all my life; and your house will be my home as long as I live.

Finally is the Living Bible. I include it because Our Sunday Visitor sells a Catholic version where they received permission from Tyndale to paraphrase the Deuterocanonical books and include them. The Living Bible is not a translation, it's a paraphrase, what one man (in this case) says each line means not what the line says. It too has a style all its own, and was quite controversial in its day, no less because he had an individual in the Old Testament cuss.

LB

Because the Lord is my Shepherd, I have everything I need!
2,3 He lets me rest in the meadow grass and leads me beside the quiet streams. He restores my failing health. He helps me do what honors him the most.
4 Even when walking through the dark valley of death I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me, guarding, guiding all the way.
5 You provide delicious food for me in the presence of my enemies. You have welcomed me as your guest; blessings overflow!
6 Your goodness and unfailing kindness shall be with me all of my life, and afterwards I will live with you forever in your home.

As you can see there's a wide variety, but none of them are perfect. Some are much less worthy than others. And I haven't touched on the versions where the Church has given approval to only the New Testament and Psalms versions (which I could have done since my example is Psalm 23).

I hope this helps to give an idea of the ups and downs, and I of course will answer any questions in the combox.

More on the Development of the Canon

Before continuing with my history of the development of the canon, I feel it somewhat important to answer a basic question. If we say that the period of the Councils, like Carthage, Hippo and Rome, defined the OT and NT canons, we do have to answer "which OT canon?" Alexandrian or Palestinian? The Alexandrian canon is also called the Septuagint (often abbreviated LXX for the Seventy translators who supposedly translated it) and the Palestinian is the 39 books no one disputes.

This is an important question, because many of the Fathers considered the LXX to be inspired. Justin Martyr and St Cyril of Jerusalem come immediately the mind as advancing this view. St Cyril even goes so far as to say that it was not done by the agency of human wisdom but entirely as inspired by the Holy Ghost. He explicitly says this.

This helps to explain why the Eastern Churches accepted the LXX entirely, including all four Maccabees, all the Esdrases, Odes and so on. The West, as I said, adopted the Alexandrian canon only to an extent. As I said before, they had a two-tiered system. Of the 39 books, they largely accepted those as being canonical without exception. But they also inherited some books from the Apostles and the Apostolic Fathers and for this reason called the second tier Ecclesiastical. St Cyril, whom I mentioned before, in saying the LXX was inspired, also tells the people to whom he wrote that not to gainsay the books handed down by the Apostles, because "Children of the Church" should not question their "Fathers." But again, this all had to do with the context of what was read out in the churches. As an aside, and to bring Jerome back into this, he was widely criticised for his new Translation into Modern language. People had gotten to like their old translation that sounded very archaic and could only be appreciated by some, especially those with an education. Sound familiar?

By the time of the aforementioned Councils, things had changed enough that the distinction was dropped.

What resulted was a text that could be used to settle disputes, but the important thing to note is that it wasn't Scripture that ultimately settled the disputes but the Ecumenical Councils making use of Scripture. The Canonisation of Scripture was meant to serve the needs of the Church, not the Church serve Scripture.

This served the Church well for centuries. Scripture inspired a rich prayer-life of recitation of the Psalms, Proverbs, and so on. The pericopes of Scripture became so well known as to inspire art throughout the ages. And of all the books, when the Printing Press came about, what was published first? The Vulgate Bible.

Then came the Reformation and the first challenges to the canon in 1100 years. Why? Well, to an extent there's a very simple and logical reason. Suppose you have determined that no institution of Man, no matter how Divinely instituted can be free from the Fall. So you decide that something immutable and outside the structure should be the element to which you appeal. Hence sola scriptura. Since Fallen Man could not be trusted, but the Word of God was unchanging, so now it was the Word of God itself that held the final Authority. But if you're going to have a final Authority, you need to decide which one that is.

Now, cynics charge that the Reformers removed the books that they found disagreed with their position. Exploring that charge is another post entirely. But suffice it to say we can presume their sincerity. If they looked back throughout time they found that the only books of the canon that never met with any resistance in the Old Testament was the Palestinian canon. The New Testament is a different and sometimes fascinating story. Suffice it to say, if we went with some of the first reactions, our New Testament would be a lot smaller. But again, another whole post, and one filled with nuance upon nuance.

But this invites the question "Who gets to decide?" In all previous times it was the Church who decided. So Trent took up something never before deemed necessary. See in the Patristic period the Ecumenical Councils thought it went without saying that the Councils of Hippo, Carthage and Rome had sufficiently dealt with the question. Nowadays we'd liken it to the Supreme Court of the US determining that the lower courts got it right and see no need to take up the question. But with Trent it was different. We had a huge portion of North Europe saying that some books were not to be read with equal reverence and accepted as equally inspired. The position since the Patristic period had been, if not de jure, at least de facto the opposite.

So Trent took up what all its predecessors had seen unnecessary to do and it issued its now famous decree that all of the books in the Vulgate were to be accepted as equally inspired etc. In essence the Council of Trent finally put the seal of an Ecumenical Council to decisions taken and accepted in the Patristic period. Although the Vulgate was held in reverence by the Council, what they really said is that it was not the Vulgate for the Vulgate's sake, but the Vulgate because it was a correct representation of the correct canon. And thus the differences today between the Protestant and Catholic Bibles (and indeed the Eastern Bibles which I touched on earlier).

-------
Some of my friends lament the fact that the Apocrypha has been somewhat disregarded nowadays. The Reformers, trying to ape the Fathers, considered the Apocrypha in a high place although not canonical per se. But there was a difference between the Reformers and the Fathers. The Fathers never had sola scriptura. And so their two-tiered approach could survive. But under sola scriptura if it's not canonical it eventually will be excised as "extra-biblical". And thus the eventually leaving behind of the Apocrypha and even the naked hostility to it as a collection of "Romish books" are perfectly understandable. Obviously I don't agree, but it is a logical consequence of what the Reformers did.

The Development of the Canon of Scripture

To understand the development of the canon, which I touched on a little in the previous post, we have to understand what the Fathers saw as important and how that changed.

Before the Council of Nicaea, the Fathers (the Ante-Nicene Fathers), especially the Apostolic Fathers (those Fathers who knew the Apostles personally) had an interesting way of approaching this subject. For them, what was important about Scripture was which ones were to be read in church. But what we learn is that many churches allowed a wide variety of works to be read in church that later did not make it into the canon: like the Shepherd by Hermas, Pope Clement's First Epistle to the Corinthians, and the Didache to name a few. Some that did make it into the canon of Scripture were contested from the earliest days, this is why some Churches in the East -- to this day -- do not have Revelation in their Bibles. The doctrinal/dogmatic argument-ender for the Ante-Nicene Fathers was "the Apostolic Witness." If anyone could demonstrate conclusively that the Apostles taught X instead of Y ... end of discussion! Scripture was used to corroborate the Apostolic Witness, especially the Pauline Corpus. After all, Paul was an Apostle, and if he taught it, it confirmed the other Apostles taught it, since he learned from them. If Papias or Polycarp claimed that John taught X, that was that. Scripture, while important for educating churchgoers, especially catechumens (they spilled a lot of ink debating which books and which pericopes should be shown to the catechumens) the doctrinal discussion-stoppers were the Apostolic Witness.

But by the time of the Council of Nicaea, indeed the whole reason for it really, the Apostolic Witness was becoming harder to discern from spurious accounts. All of those who knew the apostles and those who knew them were dead. So the Church needed to come up with a way of maintaining right belief (orthodoxia) in union with the Apostolic tradition. This spurred them to determine which Scriptures were canonical and which writings were merely inspired. They would know the canonical Scriptures because they agreed with the Apostolic Witness.

Here are the criteria they used. First and foremost, these Scriptures had to be read by all of the churches and not just some. This seems to affirm a congregationalist polity. But in reality this was a simple, common sense rubric. If all of the churches read these Scriptures it is because they were either taught to do so by the Apostles or they conform to the Apostolic Teaching. The Gospels are a good example of this concept. Not only did they have to deal primarily with Jesus (some contemporary Gospels dealt with other people as well. Luke is the closest to this of the canonical Gospels. He spends quite a bit of time on Jesus' relatives. Other Gospels that did not end up being considered canonical spent more time on others than Luke), and they had to agree completely with what the Apostles taught about Jesus. So the synoptics and John got in, but Gospels were Jesus elevated Mary Magdalene above the Apostles or where Judas was the Good Guy did not, because they disagreed with the Apostolic Teaching.

There was also another consideration that was very important to the Fathers. Nowadays we'd consider this silly superstition, but they took it seriously. Basically, the number of books in the OT had to equal the number of Hebrew letters, and the number of NT books had to equal the number of Greek letters. Here's one example:

There are, then, of the Old Testament, twenty-two books in number; for, as I have heard, it is handed down that this is the number of the letters among the Hebrews; their respective order and names being as follows. The first is Genesis, then Exodus, next Leviticus, after that Numbers, and then Deuteronomy. Following these there is Joshua, the son of Nun, then Judges, then Ruth. And again, after these four books of Kings, the first and second being reckoned as one book, and so likewise the third and fourth as one book. And again, the first and second of the Chronicles are reckoned as one book. Again Ezra, the first and second are similarly one book. After these there is the book of Psalms, then the Proverbs, next Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. Job follows, then the Prophets, the twelve being reckoned as one book. Then Isaiah, one book, then Jeremiah with Baruch, Lamentations, and the Epistle, one book; afterwards, Ezekiel and Daniel, each one book. Thus far constitutes the Old Testament.

-St Athanasius, 39th Festal Letter

Indeed, in the same Festal letter, Athanasius describes what then went on in their minds when they realised they had books left over. Essentially, they had three designations: Canonical, Ecclesiastical, and Apocryphal. Nowadays, we'd call them Protocanonical, Deuterocanonical and Pseudopigriphal. In this second category they included the Old Testament Deuterocanon, of course, but they also included a NT variety, which often included the Shepherd, Clement's Epistle, and so on. They called it Ecclesiastical, because the Apostolic Fathers had ordered them to be read in church. This is behind Jerome's remark in his prologue in my previous post.

By the Councils of Hippo, Carthage, Rome etc it was decided, with respect to the OT, to leave off the artificial designation of canonical and ecclesiastical, and instead to include them altogether. The New Testament fared differently. After much debate certain disputed works were excised and others included.

The purpose for doing all of this though was simple. If the Apostles and their immediate successors are not present to ask about certain points, we need a base text upon which we can debate. Then when the Arians and Nestorians make their claim, we'll have one work to consult. If what they claim is not therein, they're wrong.

(continued tomorrow)

Jerome and the Deuterocanon

I have recently been studying Kevin Edgecomb's translation of the Prologues to the Vulgate.

I find these very interesting for a number of reasons. For one, they tell us a little about how Scripture was viewed in the 4th and 5th centuries. We also see the role of Bishops, and what role they played in this, not least of whom was Pope Damasus I. And we also see the role that Council of Nicaea played.

We also learn a lot about Jerome himself and his translation methodology. All of this is very instructive. But the real reason these are so helpful has to do with why I was looking at them in the first place.

Several days ago I spoke to a friend, B.D., and he (a Protestant) repeated to me the oft-repeated line that Jerome disdained the Apocrypha. He can be forgiven for repeating this line, as it is many quite respectable sources. My Good News Bible, the one with the Apocrypha in a middle section, has this in the intro to the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon. And I have seen it elsewhere. Now, the motivation for this line originally (not B.D.'s per se, or the GNB either, but earlier than they) was to sort of poke fun at us Catholics. The Tridentine Council declared the Vulgate the official Catholic Bible. And so, snicker snicker snicker, isn't it funny you Catholics like this Bible's canon when even its translator rejected the Deuterocanon? Snicker, snicker, snicker.

The truth is much more complicated than that when it comes to Jerome's views himself. I wanted to find the actual Latin of his letters, but it seems I'll have to buy the Biblia Sacra Vulgata, 5th Edition myself to get them, but you see how expensive that is. So I stumbled on Kevin's translations. He does a great job, and shows via footnotes where he got certain translations.

If we just read his prologue to the Solomonic literature, we see the famous line, famous to the Reformers anyway: "Therefore, just as the Church also reads the books of Judith, Tobias, and the Maccabees, but does not receive them among the canonical Scriptures, so also one may read these two scrolls for the strengthening of the people, (but) not for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas." That would seem to be pretty damning wouldn't it? Kevin, in his introduction to this prologue on his blog points out that you could say the same of many canonical Scriptures too. I would be interested, for example, to see what dogma is served by the genealogies at the beginning of 1 Chronicles. Still, in this we see what might be termed at worst naked hostility and at best ambivalence.

So it is then interesting to read the prologues to other more specific books. In his prologue to Tobit, we see Jerome at his most petulant. He complains to the Bishops that they want Tobit translated, when Jerome reminds them the book is not found among the Hebrew canon. But then he says ""But it is better to be judging the opinion of the Pharisees to displease and to be subject to the commands of bishops" (emphasis mine). We again note his surrender to authority in his prologue to Judith: "But because this book is found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request ..." There are some interesting tidbits in these two prologues. In the Tobit one he notes that "I have persisted as I have been able, and because the language of the Chaldeans is close to Hebrew speech, finding a speaker very skilled in both languages, I took to the work of one day, and whatever he expressed to me in Hebrew words, this, with a summoned scribe, I have set forth in Latin words." Quite amazing really. And in Judith he notes "Among the Hebrews the Book of Judith is found among the Hagiographa" which is his word for the Ketuvim, the Writings, the third section of Hebrew Scripture. That's remarkable that Judith was considered canonical by some of the Jews even in Jerome's time.

Some might point to his letter about Daniel, which contains this line "Therefore, I have shown these things to you as a difficulty of Daniel, which among the Hebrews has neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three young men, nor the fables of Bel and the dragon, which we, because they are spread throughout the whole world, have appended by banishing and placing them after the skewer, so we will not be seen among the unlearned to have cut off a large part of the scroll." (emphasis mine). But what we see here actually is something subtle. I bolded a particular part to show what's going on under the surface. Here Jerome is imitating Origen, who placed bits he couldn't find in the Hebrew after an obelus, a skewer. What he is saying here is that he accepts that since the rest of the Church accepts these, rather than be accused of destroying Daniel altogether, he's imitated Origen and placed these stories after the obelus. This is important because many sources I have read say that Jerome placed Deuterocanonical parts in appendices. But in reality placing them after an obelus in imitation of Origen's Hexapla speaks more for their canonicity than relegating them to an appendix.

One could go on. What is interesting to me is that Jerome never, apparently, took up the issue of the New Testament Antilegomena. These books -- Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, and even Revelation -- were all contested in the same way as the Deuterocanon of the OT was contested. I would have been fascinated to see him tackle these and provide his take on them. Jerome's views are often fascinating, like his assertion that Wisdom was written by Philo Judaeus. We do have his prologue to the Gospels, and they are also quite interesting. First, because he admits he's glad the Pope (St Damasus I) was the one to make the request of him, since if anyone objects to his translation, the Big Boss is the one who asked for them: "Against such infamy I am consoled by two causes: that it is you, who are the highest priest, who so orders..." But also for the reverence shown to the Eusebian system of tables for linking all the Gospels together. The Gospels were divided into pericopes, sections intended to be read in Church, and then each pericope was numbered. The tables (ten in number) showed which pericopes are similar to which other pericopes, and which pericopes occur in one, two, three or all four Gospels, and so on. This is due to the fact that the Fathers saw the Gospels are really one interwoven work, and not as four books with no points of intersection as the modern scholars tend to assert (or their common point of intersection is some mythical document named Q. But more on that later).

What this all tells me is that Jerome had very strong personal views about the Deuterocanon. But in the end, he always bowed, sometime petulantly, to higher authority. And my next post will detail why.

What's Coming Up

A few posts I am working on are not ready for publication yet, but here is what they will be about:

1. Jerome on the Deuterocanon (much different from what people have been told).


2. More from Jerome, this time on Matt 2:23


3. Some Musings on the Pericope Adulterae


4. A request from a friend to discuss Qumran

The Long-Awaited Rom 11 Post

First let me apologise for going silent. There have been some crises in my life that left me feeling decidedly unwilling to do much writing. Enough of the crises have subsided that I feel I can finish this post.

In order to understand the eleventh chapter of Romans, it's necessary to understand much of the preceding discussion of Romans. Paul discusses the Law and its inability to save, because, by human nature, we pervert the law such that rather than save it teaches us sin and thereby condemns us. He stresses the Law is not unholy by this, but rather our Fallen nature is to blame for what appears to be the Law's shortcoming. So only the atoning sacrifice of Christ can and does save.

Romans Chapter 11 is a logical following-on from this discussion, and that helps us to understand its tripartite structure. The first part of Romans 11 is a direct answer to the logical question the preceding discussion provokes: namely, if the Law doesn't save but only Faith in Christ, has God then abandoned the Jews? Paul's unequivocal that this is not the case. He says that God has not abandoned anyone he has chosen. Then he gives an example from God's dealing with Elijah in 1 Kings 19. I am actually reminded also of Jeremiah 24, which to me serves as the unwritten segue into the second part of Chapter 11. In Jeremiah 24, God says that it is actually the people punished with Exile whom He will show His favour to and bring back. That seems to play into verses like verse 12 and verse 15, which speak of God returning the Exiled Jews of today. Indeed, Paul exclaims that this act will be more like the resurrection itself than the salvation of the Gentiles.

And that's the heart of the second part ... The salvation of the Gentiles. But it is interesting to note that we are but grafted onto the Jewish tree here. It is Jewish roots and a Jewish foundation upon which our Faith rests. He points this out to remind Gentiles that we have nothing to boast of over our Jewish brothers and sisters, for if God has dealt with His own people in such and such a way, how much more will He deal harshly with us who have been grafted on? And then this segues into a reminder that just as it is joyous for us to be gifted with this act of grafting, how much greater and more natural a gift will it be when God grafts the original branches back onto the tree again.

The third part then transitions from a statement that God will reclaim all of the Jews once He has claimed all of the Gentiles to an explication of the a paradox, what Paul calls a "mystery." That on the one hand, by rejection they seem to be enemies, but by virtue of God's "irreovocable call" they are still beloved "for the sake of the Patriarchs" (It is not lost that God always described Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Something Jesus noted points to the fact that God is a God of the living. Paul's mentioning of the patriarchs is almost certainly an allusion to this).

But the paradox is beyond even Paul's abilities to understand, so just when you'd expect him to land the coup de grace, he actually appends an epilogue to the 11th Chapter that is a hymn to the Sublime, Ineffable Mind of God. In other words, Paul doesn't know how this will all work out, but He is overcome with expressing His joy and trust in this Sublime Will.

So, Chapter 11 should stand as a warning to us, that in reality we have nothing to boast about, and God's plan for the Jews, far from one of rejection, is one instead of future grafting back onto the tree, a tree that has not withered or died. Indeed, it is still very Jewish. But like Paul I don't have any answers as to how or when, only trust. And that should be enough.

Update on my Romans 11 piece

Posted by Ogden (I am doing it this way, because I realise not everyone is going to go all the way to the end of the post to see who posted. And I have tried everything to get this template to let the author's by-line appear at the top. This will have to do until I can figure that out)

I'm completely rewriting it. Now that Pr. Lehmann and I have made peace, it seems petty to do a yeah-boo piece. So instead I am rewriting it to show forth my methodology in reading the Pauline Corpus in general (with the chapter being the specific instance). Fear not, copious reference to Scripture abounds.

Let us have an end to Dispensationalism

Among Protestants, there has arisen a dangerous and foolhardy school of thought known as dispensationalism, which has morphed from a known radical theology accepted only by the most radical anti-tradition, anti-clerical, anti-denominational versions of protestantism into a a cause celebre of the non-denominational-loving, pithy worship music playing, cheesy pre-school like slogan using, and soon to be all tongues-speaking "evangelical" movement.

Dispensationalism consists of meaningless speculation on past events, combined with downright dangerous speculation of future events. It originated with the Plymouth Brethren, a group that, like most dispensationalist groups that followed, lacked historical perspective and theological grounding. The Plymouth Brethren were a restorationist group, believing that they could, somehow, recreate the atmosphere of the 1st century church by ignoring everything but the Bible, believing that a 1st century book could be understood by an 18th and 19th century people without any kind of hermeneutical training. The restorationists quite frequently devolved into heresies, often similar to heresies that were already discussed and defeated.

They rejected salaries ministers, meaning that their teachers lacked theological training. It is out of this atmoshphere of ignorance that dispensationalism(and later Pentecostalism) arose.

Let us then, take up (rhetorical) arms against the dispensationalists, infiltrate their schools and places of learning, and teach them theology that makes sense! Let us remind them that the book of Revelations was written, largely in code, to the Christians of the 1st century, not as a guidebook for believers in some sort of apocolyptic future, that the antichrist referred to is Nero, not Nicolai Carpathia.

Protestant opponents to dispensationalism typically fall under what is called covenant theology(although I believe Anglicans and Lutherans have slightly different beliefs), but this is not emphasized in Reformed churches the way dispensationalism is in "Evangelical" ones. Covenant theology is not some complex order of things, but simply an acknowledgement of the different pacts that God has made with various human beings and groups of human beings throughout time. It is not supersessionist (belieiving that the church has in effect replaced Israel), but instead simply teaches the truth that Rabbinical Judaism is different than Old Testament Judaism, as there is no atonement, no shedding of bloods and thus no communion with God.

It is long past time for the Evangelical movement to reject the influence of the semi-heretical radicals and embrace the church's rich tradition, reason, and a more thorough reading of scripture.

Some verses, their context, and what that means

Passages discussed: 1 John 2, especially 1 John 2:22-23; and John 8, especially John 8:44; and others

Anyone who reads this blog will know that recently there was a huge bust-up over whether or not Scripture claims that Jews (indeed any non-Christians) worship Satan. Now anyone who reads the combox will know I utterly reject that. But several passages of Scripture were used to justify this view. So it makes sense to consider them in context, and to scrutinise them carefully to see if the cited Scriptures really do say this.

The main verses cited are 1 John 2:22-23:

22 Who is the liar? Whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Whoever denies the Father and the Son, this is the antichrist.

23 No one who denies the Son has the Father, but whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well.

and John 8:44

44 You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies.

These are by no means the only ones that are damning in this vein. On the face of it these two verses, and similar ones seem to say that the Jewish people are Satanic in the Gospel verse, and worshiping a false God in the Epistle (since they don't even have the Father).

But is that what these are really saying? Let's discuss 1 John and its second chapter in detail.

1 John was written to the Churches of Asia Minor, who were under the jurisdiction of the Apostle John. This letter was likely written around the same time as the Gospel, because they use so many of the same ideas and turns of phrase as to be indisputably by the same hand. And one of the purposes of the Gospel of John was to dispute the notion of that Christ was not Divine and consequently belief in Him was not essential to the Faith. The letter was similarly addressed to this theme, among others. In the second chapter John discusses these people who were clearly in the Asia Minor community and sought to lead people away from believing in Christ. In verse 19, just a few verses before the verses in question, John mentions that these deceivers proved they were never truly members of the community to begin with.

Then he goes on to explain that the reason he is writing is to help explicate the lies that were recently in their midst, not because they are ignorant, but because they are in fact knowledgeable. And now we come to the verses themselves. In helping them to see this then he gives a rubric. What was the lie? In its nutshell, it sought to deny Christ, and since the Father wouldn't be a Father without the Son, by denying the Divinity of Christ they also denied the Divinity of the Father! Thus they were true enemies of Christ, even though they said that they were not. A few verses later (verse 26), just in case people forgot, he reminds again that he's speaking specifically of the lie that was dividing them.

When we read it in context we realise there's nothing about the Jews, Muslims, Hindus or anyone else. This is about people trying to undermine Faith from within. The letter discusses the idea that sin can be deadly, can cut us off from the Salvation offered by God. Thus warning against the Deceivers is critically important, because if their deception is believed, they cut the believer off from Salvation. But, and again John says it twice, these are the lies of people who were within the community, not people from any other Faith. So this verse cannot safely be used to accuse the Jews or anyone else of worshiping Satan. What these verses can be safely applied to, even today, are the sorts of people who say Jesus was the founder of our religion, you know, if he even existed, but if he did he was most likely a hippy communist revolutionary, or something...but God? Rose from the dead? We're too educated for that! ... Those are the people today against whom these verses can be applied. Because their denial is considerably more pernicious.

But what about the verse from John 8? It says that Jews have Satan for a father! That's much more damning, isn't it? Is it?

The 8th Chapter of John, after the Pericope Adulterae, is a long argument Jesus has with people the Gospel identifies simply as Pharisees; it's not more specific. But during the course of this argument, Jesus rather deliberately explains that He is the same God they have always worshiped. These people to whom He is speaking cannot claim invincible ignorance, since they know the Scriptures. They know the prophesies, they know the signs, and here Jesus explicitly tells them repeatedly, at least three times, that He is the I AM of the Theophany to Moses (aka the Burning Bush). Just as in Chapter 6, Jesus does not back down from the incredulous, instead He becomes ever more specific. In Chapter 6, the people became indignant that Christ would command people to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. Cannibalism they cried! But rather than reassure them it's all just symbolic, He presses on and uses term like "gnaw" that He really means it/ It's so hard a teaching that people reject Him. Well, the same thing goes on in Chapter 8. He slowly but deliberately gets more and more forceful in His language. When verse 44 has come around, it is at the point where, in spite of their constant word-plays and rejection, He is offering them one last chance, but to shock them into understanding this, He accuses them of being no Sons to Abraham (who looked for and would rejoice in the sight of Christ), but rather they have handed themselves over by their rejection to being "Sons of the Adversary."

What is important to understand about this passage is that nowhere does it say that the people simply called Pharisees were ever deputised to stand in for all Jews then and now. Jesus says this shocking thing to the people He's speaking to, because this group of specific people rejects Him (they actually make to stone Him in the last verse of the Chapter). But it cannot be inferred that these people to whom He specifically addressed were made by God to speak for all Jews ever. The only Sons of the Adversary were these specific people. Why? Because they should have known better, but they hardened their hearts and refused to see what was before them. Out of sufficient knowledge and consent of the will, they rejected Christ. So, this verse too, cannot safely be used against the Jews of today or anyone else. It can however be used for those who have sufficient knowledge and are presented with Christ and then reject Him.

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I think one of the reasons this view is "necessary" for some people is the fear on their part that my view somehow is a slippery slope to Universalism. It isn't. My affirming that the Jews of today worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not in any way a soteriological statement (soteriology is the theology of salvation). It is simply a statement of fact. Nor is this meant to imply that Christ is not the way to salvation, and that belief in Him is essential to that. Nothing that I affirm takes anything away from this. Finally, nothing in what I have said is meant to exonerate people from being saved or hindering missionary mandates, etc. In fact, in my next post, I will discuss how this view of mine is little different from St Paul's in Romans Chapter 11.

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Before I close, I want to say a few things about this practice that so annoys me about certain Christian approaches to Scripture; the penchant to slice out verses completely absent their context. But hold on! Isn't St Paul a repeat offender on this front? It only appears that way. In fact, the common practice at the time was to use certain verses as a kind of short hand, a code if you will. By citing a single verse, they intended their interlocutor to reflect in his or her mind on the whole passage from which it came.

A good example of this is Romans 9:8-13:

8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as descendants.

9 For this is the wording of the promise, "About this time I shall return and Sarah will have a son."

10 And not only that, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one husband, our father Isaac -

11 before they had yet been born or had done anything, good or bad, in order that God's elective plan might continue,

12 not by works but by his call - she was told, "The older shall serve the younger."

13 As it is written: "I loved Jacob but hated Esau."

If one looks at that, or even in the wider context of Romans 9 (which I urge you to do), you see that it doesn't really flow very well. What do these verses really have to do with his point in and of themselves? Well, that's the point, they by themselves do not. Rather, one is supposed to consider the whole episode from which each verse is excerpted. Another more famous example of this, by the way, is Christ's "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" which is the opening line from Psalm 22. If one reads and reflects on the whole Psalm it is a song of suffering that leads to later triumph and vindication. That is calling us to reflect on, and when we see it like that, the words themselves take on a much different meaning, don't they?

Therefore, it irks me to no end when people take verses out of context, because this whole idea is not just poor exegesis, but is also alien to the very authors, under the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost, who are so abused by this methodology. They didn't do it, and neither should we. When they cited verses, they expect you to know the context (although sometimes the contemporary exegetical understanding of that context is not always immediately apparent). We should be doing the same.

On Teaching the Trinity

This post is dedicated to Pr. Charles Lehmann

Trinity Sunday is coming up, and I do not envy the task of those who intend to preach on the topic for two reasons. One, the Trinity isn't the easiest of concepts to explain. And two, having explained it, it isn't that easy to apply that lesson to one's congregation.

Now I should stop and say I have no right to tell anyone how to preach, of course. But in musing about this, I think there might be an elegant and rather straightforward way of solving both. And I offer it as a suggestion to consider.

First, let me step back and tell you my own experience with this annual exercise. Most priests, with a few very notable exceptions, begin by explaining that understanding the Trinity is very hard and it's ok if we don't get the Trinity as many Saints didn't. Ok, fair enough, but after a while this sounds like a cop out.

It is true that the Trinity over the years has developed very specific terminology. This partly because we began to really understand the Trinity by telling Arius, Nestorius and others what the Trinity is not. Indeed, Eutyches got so carried away with his passionate defence that his defence itself slipped into heresy. So very specific terminology has been developed to describe the Trinity. This can make the subject intimidating to the people in the seats, as well, I am sure, to those doing the edifying.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a wonderful section on the Trinity, and this is certainly one approach to teaching it:

The dogma of the Holy Trinity
253 The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the "consubstantial Trinity".83 The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: "The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God."84 In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), "Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature."85

254 The divine persons are really distinct from one another. "God is one but not solitary."86 "Father", "Son", "Holy Spirit" are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another: "He is not the Father who is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who is the Father or the Son."87 They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: "It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds."88 The divine Unity is Triune.

255 The divine persons are relative to one another. Because it does not divide the divine unity, the real distinction of the persons from one another resides solely in the relationships which relate them to one another: "In the relational names of the persons the Father is related to the Son, the Son to the Father, and the Holy Spirit to both. While they are called three persons in view of their relations, we believe in one nature or substance."89 Indeed "everything (in them) is one where there is no opposition of relationship."90 "Because of that unity the Father is wholly in the Son and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Son is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Son."91

256 St. Gregory of Nazianzus, also called "the Theologian", entrusts this summary of Trinitarian faith to the catechumens of Constantinople:

Above all guard for me this great deposit of faith for which I live and fight, which I want to take with me as a companion, and which makes me bear all evils and despise all pleasures: I mean the profession of faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I entrust it to you today. By it I am soon going to plunge you into water and raise you up from it. I give it to you as the companion and patron of your whole life. I give you but one divinity and power, existing one in three, and containing the three in a distinct way. Divinity without disparity of substance or nature, without superior degree that raises up or inferior degree that casts down. . . the infinite co-naturality of three infinites. Each person considered in himself is entirely God. . . the three considered together. . . I have not even begun to think of unity when the Trinity bathes me in its splendour. I have not even begun to think of the Trinity when unity grasps me. .92

Some of the best ways I have heard priests preach the Trinity is to start, essentially, with this and perhaps put it in simpler language if necessary (although I do think that sometimes things are too simplified at times.)

The next step is to proceed with the Catechism and highlight the Trinitarian Mission in the world.

In other words, this is a good and adequate way of proceeding; no one could find fault with it unless is strayed a little too far into technical jargon.

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All of this though, it seems to me, can be even more easily summarised (perhaps after one goes through a similar exercise as above). God is love and God is koinonia. There has never been a time in which those statements have not been true. And they are not two separate things in so far as, in many ways, they are true because of each other. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit exist completely and entirely in a perfect communion (koinonia) with one another, because they are all the same God (think of the implications of 2 Cor 13:14: "the grace of Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the koinonia of the Holy Spirit be with you all"), and it is a koinonia of love, because God is love (1 John 4:8). The most powerful homily I ever heard was delivered by a visiting Dominican priest on this very line.

The strength of this summary is that it is then easy to apply to the congregation. We were all created in God's image. What does this mean? Well, the implication is clear, we were created to be creatures of His Love and to seek out koinonia, koinonia of love. The Trinity is therefore something we should seek to emulate in our lives: the perfect love the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have for each other, and the perfect communion/fellowship that exists between the Persons because they have the same ousia, that is, because they are all equally God, the God who is Love.

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UPDATE 1: As I was on the bus home tonight I realised that I had completely forgotten other important elements.

1. The Catechism's approach before those quotes is important too:

234 The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the "hierarchy of the truths of faith".56 The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men "and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin".57

236 The Fathers of the Church distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia). "Theology" refers to the mystery of God's inmost life within the Blessed Trinity and "economy" to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life. Through the oikonomia the theologia is revealed to us; but conversely, the theologia illuminates the whole oikonomia. God's works reveal who he is in himself; the mystery of his inmost being enlightens our understanding of all his works. So it is, analogously, among human persons. A person discloses himself in his actions, and the better we know a person, the better we understand his actions.

2. And this then brings to mind the necessity of the Trinity. A good teaching moment is to point out that this economy of the Trinity in Creation is a necessity, and not just for belief. If we seek to emulate the love and communion of the Triune God, we must also appreciate the way in which this love and communion turns into the economy of Creation, and especially the Economy of Salvation.

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UPDATE 2: Pr. Lehmann, to whom this post is dedicated, asked me in the combox (and in before that when I was musing but not posting) to assess his sermon. Now, normally I read Pr Lehmann's sermons as they are posted. But this time I did not. I am even more glad of it now than before, because my post would have devolved into a "response" to his sermon rather than a general statement.

I do quibble with one thing rather stridently. I am sorry Pastor, but the God the Jews worship is not a false god. For this would mean that Christ was presented to a false god in the Temple, and when he celebrated the Passover, He did so in the name of a false god and so on. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob is my God too. Now, I happen to believe their understanding of Him is incomplete, but that doesn't mean they worship Baal, or Odin, or Amaterasu or anyone other than the same God I do.

I also find it a little sad that he must explain "catholic" to Confessional Lutherans. Now, while I have my own view on their "catholic" status, it is a fact that Luther taught that their movement was, literally, more catholic than the Pope. I'm sorry, Pastor, but I couldn't help but pick up on that.

I also think he spends too much time dwelling on things that are "off-topic," such as his long footnote on the deeds of which we will be asked to make an account. It seems to me that while the Athanasian Creed is by far the greatest explication in prayer form of the Trinity, it might not be doing all the job he wants it to, if a good third of his sermon is devoted to defending it.

As an aside, I pray the very same Creed at every Mass during the Offertory.

If I seem to be saying his sermon was bad, forgive me. There is much to admire in his sermon when he actually gets back to talking about the Trinity itself. Against this rubric he seems to do a pretty good job of explaining the Trinity. There's also an application to the lives of his congregation by way of love. And so, I think, as I said, when it gets to the actual point, he does a good job.

I end this update by apologising to Pastor Lehmann for my harsh words. But I hope he will understand that in order to give him my assessment it must be honest. Still, at the end of the day, who am I to assess anything of his? He's perfectly free to answer correctly: nobody.

Acts: The Gospel of the Holy Spirit?

This post is dedicated to my good friend KeyStroke

At Mass on Sunday I was struck by the reading on Pentecost. I began to think a great deal about Acts as a whole. I realised that Acts is to the Holy Spirit what Luke's Gospel is to Christ; it is Luke's Gospel of the Holy Spirit, if you like.

What struck me most about the pericope is that it forms the real beginning of Acts. There's a transitional bit where Christ ascends, and then the Apostles pray together. Before the Holy Spirit can descend on them though, they have to do one more preliminary thing, let the Holy Spirit pick Judas' successor. The the Spirit descends on them, and then the rest of Acts narrates the effects on this descent; the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the Church as a whole and individuals in the Church.

Reading Acts it is clear the Spirit is present from the very beginning. Christ speaks of Him, Peter refers to Him as having moved the prophet David to predict things about Judas. He obviously dramatically comes upon them at Pentecost. He is almost always depicted afterwards as prompting, leading, and filling up the various different people mentioned in the bible. The Protomartyr Stephen is filled with the Holy Spirit when he gives his apologia. An angel is sent by the Holy Spirit to lead Philip to the Ethiopian Eunuch, and it is the Holy Spirit who whisks Philip away. It is interesting that in the episode before this, when Philip goes to Samaria, the other Apostles go to Samaria after him to Lay Hands (the primitive way of describing what we call Confirmation in the West and Chrismation in the East) on the baptised. This is repeated later in 19:2ff Why? So that they could be completely filled with the Holy Spirit. I'll discuss some ramifications of this in a moment. The Spirit also prevents Paul from going places, instead directing him to other places (such as in 16.7, 20.22, and 21.4). When the Apostles hold the Council of Jerusalem and dispatch their letter, they make very clear that their decision is in reality the decision of the Spirit, much as all subsequent Oecumenical Councils have done.

Sometimes the Spirit's role is subtle. Consider the very troubling and striking episode of Ananias and Sapphira at the beginning of Chapter 5. Here the role of the Holy Spirit seems a little less obvious. They commit fraud, lie about it and are struck dead by Peter? The scene strongly reminds me of the story of Susanna and the Elders. In that too, the elders are tricked into admitting the truth they would have concealed even before God. But what this story really illustrates is that in doing what they did, sinning against the Holy Spirit, they have committed a sin "that leads to death" (cf 1 John 5:16-17), and that by sinning against the Spirit who gives life (cf John 6:63) they demonstrate they have no life in them ... and so they die. Not that Peter killed them, but that they killed themselves by rejecting the life given them by the Spirit.

It is clear that while the Spirit leads individuals, He is also intimately connected with the Apostolic mission of the Church. When Paul comes to the believers in Ephesus (Chapter 19), he found that hey had become believers, but like in Chapter 8, their baptism needed to be accepted by the Apostolic Witness on behalf of the Church, in effect the Church endorsing and sealing their belief in the Spirit. Paul, as Peter and John before him, lays hands on the believers and completes the action of the Spirit by conferring Him completely. Thus it is not enough for the believers to have come to Christ on their own, they had to receive the Confirmation of the Church, of the high Apostolic Witness to complete the action of the Spirit.

And this brings me to the action of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles. The Spirit both works in the Church as a whole and on individuals, but at the same time and not in contradiction to one another. That is by working on individuals and working on the Church the same action of the Holy Spirit is evident. We see plenty of evidence of the corporate action of the Spirit. Consider the three transitional paragraphs 2:43-47, 4:32-37 and 5:12-16. These transitional paragraphs are also examples of the Spirit's subtle work. Th reason all the people share their possessions and so on, again, is because they are filled with the Holy Spirit who is helping them live out the Gospel. Their sharing of possessions isn't a political statement of some embryonic communism, but rather evidence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. We also see it in the Council of Jerusalem. As I said before the Council Fathers make it clear it is the decision foremost of the Spirit that they relay to the believers. We also see the work in individuals, such as Philip and Stephen.

And when we get down to it, the Acts of the Apostles is proof beyond question that Christ really did give a discourse or discourses on the Paraclete (i.e. the Holy Spirit), because everything Christ promised about the Holy Spirit didn't come true slowly over time, but were immediately realised in the Earliest Church. Christ promised that the Spirit would give us the words to speak when the time was right, now read Stephen's martyrdom again. Christ promised that the Spirit would lead the Apostles to all truth. Read the Council of Jerusalem again. And on and on it goes. rather than some made-up discourse years later, as some scholars allege, these promises clearly were made by Christ before Luke wrote Acts, because Acts clearly lays out how these promises were fulfilled.

In any case, this idea of how present the Holy Spirit was in the Church, and the fact that Pentecost is not just the birth of the Church, but the beginning of the work of the Spirit in the life of the Church and our lives. But it is important to learn the lesson of Acts. The Spirit is not just for individuals acting alone. The Spirit gives His gifts to people because He is at work in the Church. The gifts are for our Good, sure, but that Good is not in isolation, like John Donne's "island;" it is for our Good, so that it can also be for the Good of the Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ (cf Col 1:24). This is the lesson of the Holy Spirit and the lesson of Acts.

Interjection on Footnotes and Introductions

I'm sorry for the lack of blog posts recently. I was ill. It's no excuse though. I should push myself. So enough about that, and onto the post itself.

In talking about translating, it occurred to me to discuss one of the more controversial "helps for the reader:" footnotes and introductions. Most modern Bibles have them to one extent or another. General Bibles in the Protestant tradition have very few footnotes, and these only show variant readings like "Cn. Hbr rejoice" to indicate that the text has been corrected, because the underlying Hebrew word would be nonsensical or at least not be as good a choice. I'll discuss that whole issue in another blog post. For now, the question is about the utility and efficacy of footnotes. Protestant Bibles tend to keep footnotes to a minimum for a variety of reasons. One is that they don't want to push a Calvinist or Arminian interpretation on the reader (this was one of the criticisms of the Living Bible, which has extensive footnotes. Calvinists objected to Kenneth Taylor's Arminian take.) There is also a fear of trying to do too much of the Holy Ghost's work for the reader. And there is also the issue of the trouble history that Protestant translations have had with footnotes. The Authorized Version (aka the KJV) was, in part, created because the Geneva Bible (the popular version at the time) had extensive notes of a staunch Calvinist bent that offended many of the high church types in the CofE. There was a huge bust up over the notes, and one of the goal King Jimmy had was to create a Bible translation that wasn't encumbered by the notes. Thus, most translations in the AV tradition (e.g. RV, NASB, RSV, NRSV etc) have very few footnotes to speak of.

Bibles in the Catholic tradition tend to have more footnotes, and often more detailed. This is due to long history of requiring the notes (I'm currently looking for the exact reference, but I don't have it at my finger tips). These notes range from the highly polemical of Bishop Challoner's 18th century notes to the more "higher critical" of the New American Bible and the New Jerusalem Bible. A good blend of the two approaches can be seen with the Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition. The footnotes on the pages are the sparse footnotes about translation issues, and relegated to end notes at the end of each testament are longer explanatory notes about the theological significance of certain passages. Relegating them to endnotes is not ideal and flipping to the back certainly disrupts the flow of the reading. Still, when compared to other modern translations they are much more orthodox.

Introductions are more common among both traditions. The Good New Bible, the New Living Translation and other Protestant translations have them, and of course the major modern Catholic Translations have them too (as did Bishop Challoner's revision of the Douay-Rheims). Introductions can have many of the same pitfalls and benefits as footnotes. Sometimes they can be used to advance a polemical or doctrinal understanding of the whole book or groups of books. And just like footnotes they can be used to push the higher-critical stance as being the only stance. Ideally, introductions should guide the reader to seeing an overall structure to the book under review and point out major themes. When one is used, as many Christians are, to quoting various Scriptures out of context, it can be valuable to call the reader's attention to work as a whole from which these verses have been excerpted.

Of the Bibles to which I have ready and frequent access, the New American Bible's introductions and footnotes are generally poor. It is clear to me that there were several footnotists, a few seem to have been closet orthodox Catholics, but for the most part the introductions and the footnotes portray Seventies higher critical scholarship as definitive and authoritative. Of course, that also betrays one of the pitfalls of footnotes and introductions, especially that try to shill for the higher critical side: they become hopelessly dated. Also rather than being faith-affirming, they can be faith-denying. One of the footnotes that caused my palm to impact my forehead each and every time I read it is, is the footnote to Jhn 15:26. The footnote rather amazingly reads "Whom I will send: in ⇒ John 14:16, ⇒ 26 the Paraclete is to be sent by the Father, at the request of Jesus. Here the Spirit comes from both Jesus and the Father in mission; there is no reference here to the eternal procession of the Spirit." Alas for the translators, but this is not how this verse has been understood by the Fathers up until the present day. It is true that it does speak of the granting of the Paraclete at Pentacost, but that does not mean it has zero reference to the eternal procession, because specific instance can be done with reference to, in accord with, or because of the more general instance. In his masterly treatment of Pneumatology, St Thomas Aquinas frequently quotes the Fathers who in turn frequently quote this verse (among others) to show the eternal procession. A better footnote might have been to the effect "While this certainly is Christ's promise of the Paraclete on Pentacost, it has also been seen by the Fathers and others as affirming the eternal procession." And then perhaps some salient quotes from the Fathers would be helpful too. The NAB is also too easily enamoured of the documentary hypothesis with respect to the Torah. They also are enamoured of a similar approach to Samuel and Kings.

A better system, but by no means perfect, can be found in the New Jerusalem Bible. They are also somewhat enamoured of these approaches, particularly the documentary hypothesis, but they generally do a much better job of acknowledging that this or that approach us not the only, and that other solutions to, for example, the synoptic problem exist. Unlike the NAB, the NJB doesn't seem to think that much of the evidence for Luke and Acts being of late authorship is any stronger than early authorship. The NAB takes Christ's references to the Temple's Destruction as proof positive that the books had to be after the Seventies AD. But the NJB points out that there's no detail in the predictions that could not have been seen in the Thirties with even a modicum of historical awareness. The footnotes and introductions though still do try to present a higher critical approach, although not as stridently and not as if it is the only approach. The NJB is better in regard over all other translations: explaining the translation choices. They discuss the problems with the Masoretic text and discuss many of the main variants, and usually show by means if vowel changes or different division of words how they arrived at their translation choice.

Of particular note, when it comes to introductions, is the Oxford Catholic Study Bible. I admit I have not yet seen the Second Edition, but I found the first edition to be of mixed blessing. For really exploring things like the structure of the Pentateuch and such it was fantastic. But it was even more deficient in "faith destroying" ways too. For example, there was an article in it about the need to revise the Scriptures and the Lectionary to excise troubling passages from a Feminist and Marxist perspective (e.g. Eph 5:22 and its ilk). Again, palm intercepts forehead.

As I stated earlier, the RSV-CE has generally orthodox notes, but they are too few in my opinion and relegated to the end. As I said, endnotes are not ideal as they disturb the flow of reading. Still, of all of the footnotes, they are the best.

Of the more Protestant translations, the GNT is decent when it comes to introductions. Although I often detect a subtle phenomenon. The sort of .... "I am being diplomatic here about higher criticism; in reality, I believe it, but I am going to couch my words so as not to upset you."

As a segue into my next post, I will do a little aside about the penchant in some translations to move bits of scripture around. I will discuss this a bit more in the next post, hence the segue. But take Job 24:18-24. I'll discuss the passage more in the next post, but the NJB moves this passage into Bildad's speech (placing it at the end of Job 25). I find this very annoying, because it is not always clear where various sections came from or why they were put there. The footnotes are spotty at addressing this. The GNT does a better job by putting a little note and saying "the text isn't clear who is speaking in this section, but it is often assigned to Bildad."