Friday, May 27, 2016

God "can be so much in earnest against sinful man that He is for him."

"God would not be God if there could be any altering the universality and logic and completeness of what is necessarily done here, if there could be any escaping this sequence of sin and destruction.  It means eternal perdition to have God against us.  But if we will what God does not will, we do have God against us, and therefore we hurry and run and stumble and fall [(läuft, rennt, stürzt und fällt)] into eternal perdition.
     "But again God would not be God if His reaction to wrong-doers could be compared to a mechanism which functions, as it were, independently of His free ruling and disposing. . . .  How God will fulfil the sentence to which man has fallen inescapably victim is a matter for Him to decide.  He can fulfil it—in all its strictness—in such a way that in fulfilling it there is attained that which man in his perversity tried and never could secure for himself—his pardon.  Without relaxing or mitigating the sentence, let alone as a judge who is unjust by reason of his laxity, He can exercise grace even with His judgment and in execution of it.  He can be so much in earnest against sinful man that He is for him [(Er kann allen Ernstes so gegen den sündigen Menschen sein, daß er eben damit für ihn ist)].  He can bring on him all that must come on him as a wrong-doer at the left hand of God and under his No, in order to set him at His right hand, in order finally to say Yes to him, in order to address and treat him as one who does right and not wrong."

     Karl Barth, CD IV/1 (1956), 221 =KD IV/1 (1953), 242-243 (§59.2, "The Judge Judged in Our Place").




Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Prayer of St. Chrysostom

"Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication unto thee, and hast promised through thy well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name thou wilt be in the midst of them:  Fulfill now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants as may be best for us; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting.  Amen."

"Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication to you; and you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them:  Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us; granting us in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come life everlasting.  Amen."

     A prayer of St. Chrysostom, Morning and Evening Prayer, Book of common prayer (1979).  According to Hatchett (pp. 130-131, which see), Cranmer derived this from "the entrance rite of the late medieval manuscripts of the liturgies of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Basil" (it being absent from "the earliest manuscripts").  Hence (for the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom):

Ὁ τὰς κοινὰς ταύτας καὶ συμφώνους ἡμῖν χαρισάμενος  προσευχάς, ὁ καὶ δυσὶ [(δύο in the Liturgy of St. Basil)] καὶ τρισὶ συμφωνοῦσιν ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματί σου τὰς αἰτήσεις παρέχειν ἐπαγγειλάμενος·  αὐτὸς καὶ νῦν τῶν δούλων σου τὰ αἰτήματα πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον πλήρωσον χορηγῶν ἡμῖν ἐν τῷ παρόντι αἰῶνι τὴν ἐπίγνωσιν τῆς σῆς ἀληθείας καὶ ἐν τῷ μέλλοντι ζωὴν αἰώνιον χαριζόμενος.

     Enarxis (Commencement), modern Liturgy of St. Chrysostom, as reproduced in F. E. Brightman, Liturgies, eastern and western (1896), 367, ll. 18-23.  Cf. H. A. Daniel, Codex liturgicus ecclesiae universae in epitomen redactus, vol. 4 (1893), 343, and elsewhere.  According to Hatchett, this was followed by the doxology on the previous page of Brightman:

Ὅτι ἀγαθὸς καὶ φιλάνθρωπος Θεὸς ὑπάρχεις καὶ σοὶ τὴν δόξαν ἀναπέμπομεν τῷ Πατρὶ καὶ τῷ Υἱῷ καὶ τῷ ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων

For the 8th/9th-century Liturgy of St. Basil, see Brightman 311 l. 22-312, l. 2, and Cod. Vat. Barb. gr. 336, fol. 2v-3r.  This (called "The Prayer of the Third Antiphon") is rendered by the Greek Orthodox Archdioese in America as follows:
Priest (in a low voice):Lord, You have granted us to offer these common prayers in unison and have promised that when two or three agree in Your name, You will grant their requests. Fulfill now, O Lord, the petitions of Your servants as may be of benefit to them, granting us in the present age the knowledge of Your truth, and in the age to come eternal life. 
And he exclaims:For You, O God, are good and love mankind, and to You we offer glory, to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages.
My own extremely literal and non-idiomatic little mere crib I supply here:
Thou [who ()] art granting [(χαρισάμενος, ADP-NMS)] these common prayers in which we agree; Thou [who ()] art also promising [(ἐπαγγειλάμενος, AMP-NMS)] to grant [(παρέχειν)] the requests [of the] two and three [who] agree on your name; [the] same will also now be fulfilling [(πλήρωσον, FAP-NMS)] the requests of your servants unto/in order to/for the profitable, furnishing [(χορηγῶν, pAP-NMS)] us in the present aeon [with] the knowledge of thy truth and in the coming aeon life eternal granting [(χαριζόμενος, pAP-NMS)].
Latin translation (which, according to Hatchett, misled Cranmer).  From  Anselm Strittmatter, "'Missa Grecorum' 'Missa Sancti Iohannis Chrisostomi':  the oldest Latin version known of the Byzantine liturgies of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom," Traditio 1 (1943):  92 l. 27-94 l. 2 (79-137).  For "ducibus et tribubus" read "duobus et tribus"; on the mistranslation "ad conferendum", see 86 and 86n15; for "impresenti" Strittmatter offers "presenti":
Deus qui has communes et consonas orationes donasti, qui et ducibus et tribubus in nomine tuo conuenientibus peticiones prebere promisisti, ipse nunc postulationes seruorum tuorum ad conferendum comple, in presenti saeculo tuae ueritatis cognitionem largiendo et in futuro nobis uitam aeternam donaturus. 
Quoniam obtimus et amator hominum existis, ac tibi gloriam dirigimus, patri et filio et spiritui sancto nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum amen.

1544 English Litany:

1549:  "Letany and Suffrages", The book of the common prayer, as reproduced in Cummings (2011), 45:  "Almightie God, whiche hast geven us grace at this tyme | with one accorde to make our commune supplicacions | unto thee, and doest promise, that whan two or three | bee gathered in thy name, thou wylt graunt theyr | requestes:  fulfill now, O lorde, the desires | and peticions of thy servauntes, as | maye bee moste expediente for them, | grauntyng us in this worlde know- | lege of thy trueth, and in | the worlde to come | lyfe everlasting. | Amen."

1662:  Morning and Evening Prayer, Litany, Book of common prayer, as reproduced in Cummings (2011), 249, 257, 264:  "Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplications unto thee, and dost promise, that when two or three are gathered together in the Name, though wilt grant their requests; Fulfill now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be most expedient for them; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting.  Amen."

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Reception (susceptio) and confession (confessio)

"May receiving this sacrament, O Lord our God,
bring us health of body and soul,
as we confess your eternal holy Trinity and undivided Unity.
Through. . . ."

Proficiat nobis ad salutem corporis et animae,
Domine Deus noster, huius sacramenti susceptio,
et sempiternae sanctae Trinitatis
eiusdem(que) individuae Unitatis confessio.
Per. . . .

May the reception of this sacrament, O Lord our God, as well as [(et)] the confession of the everlasting Holy Trinity and its undivided Unity, advance [(proficiat, a singular)] with/help us unto the salvation of body and soul.

     Post Communion, Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Roman Missal.  =Bruylants no. 897 (9th century).  I am especially interested in the way in which the current official translation obscures the fact that "Proficiat" (a singular) has two feminine (not neuter) subjects, "suceptio" and "confessio".  "-que" seems to have been a 10th-century addition.  1973 "translation", according to Fr. Z:

"Lord, God,
we worship you, a Trinity of Persons, one eternal God.
May our faith and the sacrament we receive
bring us health of mind and body."

"it would then become meet, and right, and my bounden duty to separate from it without delay."

"I am now, and have been from my youth, a member and a minister of the Church of England. And I have no desire nor design to separate from it till my soul separates from my body. Yet if I was not permitted to remain therein without omitting what God requires me to do, it would then become meet, and right, and my bounden duty to separate from it without delay. To be more particular, I know God has committed to me a dispensation of the gospel. Yea, and my own salvation depends upon preaching it: 'Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.' If then I could not remain in the church without omitting this, without desisting from the gospel, I should be under a necessity of separating from it, or losing my own soul. In like manner, if I could not continue to unite with any smaller society, church, or body of Christians, without committing sin, without lying and hypocrisy, without preaching to other doctrines which I did not myself believe, I should be under an absolute necessity of separating from that society. And in all these cases the sin of separation, with all the evils consequent upon it, would not lie upon me, but upon those who constrained me to make that separation by requiring of me such terms of communion as I could not in conscience comply with."

     John Wesley, Sermon 75 On schism, as quoted by William J. Abraham, in "United Methodists at the end of the mainline," First things no. 84 (June-July 1998): 32 (23-33).