"The beauty of inflexibility"

Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge

"these sometimes murderous divisions were not the symptoms of a movement without coherent identity, but just the opposite.  Controversy arose precisely because 'unlike the religion of the Greeks and the Romans,' Christianity was more than a set of rituals:  'Christians affirmed that certain things were true' (and others, therefore, false).  Such a religion 'does not lend itself to every possible opinion; it imposes limits that cannot be formulated in advance, but become evident over time.'
     "This evolution and hardening of Christianity's doctrinal core, into what the Victorian Cardinal Manning liked to call the beauty of inflexibility, involved both the acceptance of martyrdom and the proclamation of creeds.  But it was also what gave the movement its staying power, and enabled it to prevail over the more yielding polytheism of the society in which it first found itself.  Paradoxically, the existence of self-imposed limits on the adaptability of Christian belief was the key to the movement's ability to thrive in dramatically different cultural settings."

     Eamon Duffy, reviewing Robert Louis Wilken's The first thousand years:  a global history of Christianity (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2012), in "The staying power of Christianity," New York review of books 60, no. 11 (June 20, 2013):  70.  Cf. this.

"Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it."

"Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend.  Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the 'most portable' person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one.  I then said, in a very shaky voice, 'Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.'  That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable."

     Flannery O'Connor, letter to "A." dated 16 December 1955.  The habit of being:  letters edited and with an introduction by Sally Fitzgerald (New York:  Random House, 1979), 125; Flannery O'Connor:  collected works (New York:  The Library of America, 1988), 977.

"'in the name of Christ is implied he that anoints, he that is anointed, and the unction itself with which he is anointed'—i.e., the threefold God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit".

     Douglas Farrow, Ascension and ecclesia:  on the significance of the doctrine of the ascension for ecclesiology and Christian cosmology (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 61n74, quoting Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 3.18.3, which appears as follows in ANF 1 (trans., I believe, by Roberts and Rambaut):

For in the name of Christ is implied, He that anoints, He that is anointed, and the unction itself with which He is anointed.  And it is the Father who anoints, but the Son who is anointed by the Spirit, who is the unction, as the Word declares by Isaiah, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me,'—pointing out both the anointing Father, the anointed Son, and the unction, which is the Spirit.

Cf. Sources chrétiennes 34, ed. F. Sagnard, O.P. (1952), p. 316, ll. 23-30, where it reads as follows:

in Christi enim nomine subauditur «qui unxit» et ipse «qui unctus est» et «ipsa unctio» in qua unctus est; et unxit quidem Pater, unctus est uero Filius, in Spiritu qui est unctio; quemadmodum per Esaiam ait Sermo:

Spiritus Dei super me: 

propter quod unxit me,

significans et ungentem Patrem et unctum Filium et unctionem qui est Spiritus.

This is 3.19.3 in the 1857 edition of the Adversus haereses ed. W. H. Harvey (vol. 2, p. 97):

In Christi enim nomine subauditur qui unxit, et ipse qui unctus est, et ipsa unctio in qua unctus est.  Et unxit quidem Pater, unctus est vero Filius, in Spiritu, qui est unctio; quemadmodum per Esaiam ait sermo:  Spiritus Dei super me, propter quod unxit me; significans et unguentem Patrem, et unctum Filium, et unctionem, qui est Spiritus.

ungentem is the reading in Claramontanus =Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin MS Phill[ipps] 1669 (9th cent.) and Vossianus =Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden VLF 33 (14th-15th cent.); unguentem, in Arundelianus =British Museum Arundel MS 87 (13th cent.) and Salmanticensis (15th cent.).  According to Lewis and Short, both (ungo, unguo) are attested.  If I understand the SC apparatus, "et «ipsa unctio» in qua unctus est; et unxit quidem Pater, unctus est uero Filius" is repeated ("iter.") in Vossianus.

Love, the greatest of the theological virtues, is the subject of them as well. It is love that believes, love that hopes.

Ἡ ἀγάπη. . . . πάντα πιστεύει, πάντα ἐλπίζει. . . . Νυνὶ δὲ μένει πίστις, ἐλπίς, ἀγάπη, τὰ τρία ταῦτα· μείζων δὲ τούτων ἡ ἀγάπη.

     1 Cor 13:7, 13.

The "Adoro te devote" should really be called the "Te devote laudo". So not "Hidden God, devoutly I adore thee," but rather (to but modify the one translation) "Hidden God, devoutly I do praise thee".

     According to Robert Wielockx, in "Adoro te deuote:  zur Lösung einer alten Crux," Annales theologici:  revista internazionale di teologia 21 (2007):  101-138.

Te deuote laudo, latens ueritas,
     Te que sub his formis uere latitas.

Tibi se cor meum totum subicit,
     Quia te contemplans totum deficit.
Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,
     Sed auditu solo tute creditur.
Credo quicquid dixit dei filius,
     Nichil ueritatis uerbo uerius.

In cruce latebat sola deitas,
     Sed hic latet simul et humanitas.

Ambo uere credens atque confitens,
     Peto quod petiuit latro penitens.
Plagas sicut Thomas non intueor,
     Deum tamen meum te confiteor.

Fac me tibi semper magis credere,
     In te spem habere, te diligere.

O memoriale mortis domini,
     Panis uiuus uitam prestans homini.

Presta michi semper de te uiuere,
     Et te michi semper dulce sapere.

Pie pellicane, Ihesu domine,
     Me immundum munda tuo sanguine.

Cuius una stilla saluum facere,
     Totum mundum posset omni scelere.

Ihesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,
     Quando fiet illud quod tam sicio?
Vt te reuelata cernens facie,
     Visu sim beatus tue glorie.

This is identical to the critical edition Wielockx gives at "Poetry and theology in the Adoro te deuote:  Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist and Christ's uniqueness," in Christ among the medieval Dominicans:  representations of Christ in the texts and images of the Order of Preachers, ed. Kent Emery, Jr. and Joseph Wawrykow, Notre Dame conferences in medieval studies 7 (Notre Dame, IN:  University of Notre Dame Press, 1998):  172 (157-174), except that Wielockx now (in 2007) replaces the incipit "Adoro te deuote" with the incipit "Te deuote laudo".  In 1998 he spoke of a "crux" that "cannot be resolved defin[i]tely" (172); in 2007 he provides what he considers to be the "Lösung einer alten Crux", namely the restoration of "Te deuote laudo" to the position usurped after the death of Aquinas by "Adoro te deuote".  The latter (or so Wielockx argues) derives not (like "Te deuote laudo") from Aquinas himself, but from the early-13th-century-and-later incipit common to the "prayers for the adoration of the Holy Cross" that arose originally in the Carolingian period.

Translations to add at some point, however deficient the underlying Latin:
English:

• My own (of the Wielockx edition, above).
• Walsh, Peter G., & Christopher Husch.  One hundred Latin hymns:  Ambrose to Aquinas.  Dumbarton Oaks medieval library 18.  Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2012.  No. 99, pp. 366-369.
• Connelly, Joseph.  Hymns of the Roman liturgy.  Westminster, MD:  The Newman Press, 1957.  No. 75, p. 128.
• Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1876).  This was "a rendering of a variant of Aquinas’s 'Adoro te devote, latens Deitas', beginning 'Adoro te supplex, latens deitas', found in editions of the Paris Breviary and in a Paris Processionale of 1697 (Milgate, 1982, p. 204)", via "John Henry Newman's Hymni Ecclesiae (1838), where Hopkins would have found it" (J. R. Watson in the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology).  It's incipit from 1953 has been "Godhead here in hiding | Whom I do adore".  For more information on this, see The Poetical Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Norman H. Mackenzie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
• And many more.

German:

• "Dich bet ich an in Treuen, Gott der heimlich wirkt", by R. A. Schröder, Gesammelte Werke 1 (Berlin & Frankfurt, 1952), pp. 852 ff.

"It is therefore the worship of God alone that renders them superior [to the beasts], through which alone one is assisted to immortality."

"[It] is therefore the worship of God alone that renders them superior, through which alone one is assisted [(i.e. aspired)] to immortality" (Calvin, Institutes I.iii.3, trans. Perisho).

"the only thing, therefore, which makes them superior is the worship of God, through which alone they aspire to immortality" (Calvin, Institutes I.iii.3, trans. Beveridge).

"Therefore, it is worship of God alone that renders men higher than the brutes, and through it alone they aspire to immortality" (Calvin, Institutes I.iii.3, trans. Battles).

"Unum ergo esse Dei cultum, qui superiores ipsos reddat, per quem solum ad immortalitatem aspiratur."  Or, from 1539-1554,  "Unum ergo esse Dei cultum, qui superiores ipsos faciat, per quem solum ad immortalitatem aspiratur" (Calvin, Institutes I.iii.3; COS 3, 40, ll. 27-28).

     Contra Beveridge and Battles both, aspiratur is surely (?) a passive (not a deponent) singular.  Cf. Lewis & Short, s.v. aspiro I.A.2, "to be favorable to, to favor, assist (the figure taken from a fair breeze)".  So "through which alone one is aspired to [(ad-spir-ed)] immortality."  The McNeill edition trans. Battles notes that elsewhere in the Institutes it is said to be reason that distinguishes men from the beasts (vol. 1, p. 47n14).  But here it is worship (the cultus).

     Yet don't the beasts render God a cultus?

     Lexicon latinitatis medii aevi:  "1. tr., exciter (qqn.)—2. intr., conspirer."
     Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus =Medieval Latin dictionary =Lexique latin médiéval =Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch, 2nd (2002) ed., ed. Niermeyer et al.:  "exciter—to incite—anstacheln."
     Oxford Latin dictionary:  "7 (intr.) "to give assistance (to), favour, aid."

"To be an atheist in the best modern sense, . . . and so to be a truly intellectually and emotionally fulfilled naturalist in philosophy, one must genuinely succeed in not believing in God...."

"To be an atheist in the best modern sense, . . . and so to be a truly intellectually and emotionally fulfilled naturalist in philosophy, one must genuinely succeed in not believing in God, with all the logical consequences such disbelief entails."

     David Bentley Hart, The experience of God:  being, consciousness, bliss (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2013), 32.  See also "The back page:  God, gods, and fairies," First things no. 234 (June/July 2013):  71 (72-71).  "The philosophical naturalist's view of reality is not one that merely fails to find some particular object within the world that the theist imagines can be descried there; it is a very particular representation of the nature of things, entailing a vast range of purely metaphysical commitments."