A consubstantial conundrum
Foaming Draught
Shipmate
ANZAC Day aside, and that's not a sermon, just a brief reflection, I'm not preaching again until 3rd May. The epistle is 1 Peter 2, Christ the Corner Stone. One of the perks of preaching, unless you have a stroppy director of music, is that you can choose hymns which fit the theme but which you also like. So it is, that we'll wrap up with Christ is made the Sure Foundation. Sadly, modernity has crept even into an old favourite. The penultimate line of the last verse has always been, and should be to the ages of ages, "Consubstantial, co-eternal". Sound theology capturing ὁμοούσιος, homoousios. But I see that it's been Jubilated into "One in might, and one in glory". If I put consubstantial up on the screen, am I an old fogey?
I know, I know, Athanasius preferred co-essential, but now there's a real old fogey.
I know, I know, Athanasius preferred co-essential, but now there's a real old fogey.
Comments
“One in might and one in glory” is the only way I’ve ever sung it, and I’m 65. That’s how it’s been in my denomination’s hymnal since st least 1955. I’m traveling, so I can’t check now to see if those words go back longer.
For my money, “consubstantial” just isn’t a word to put in the mouths of the average modern English speaker. (Yes, I know it’s in the Creed in the current translation of the RC Mass. I’ve heard many a Catholic complain about it.)
Just in this particular hymn, we have such words as laud, vouchsafe, benediction and Zion. None of these are commonplace words these days. And given that the hymn is a translation of a hymn from the 7th or 8th century, I might suggest that sticking to the traditional words would be best. If a word or two makes people go "huh?" then you have the opportunity to talk about what it means.
As it's a translation of a Latin hymn, it is probably seen as being more "fair game" than an original creation, but I can't be certain of that.
Quite right, and
Urbs beata Jerusalem,
dicta pacis visio,
Quæ construitur in caelis
vivis ex lapidibus,
Et angelis coronata
ut sponsata comite
scans to either tune. But then we have even more of a comprehension challenge.
In other hymns where changes have been made I often get caught out as I know the old words by heart, but I do approve of some updating of language, as I think we should know what we are singing about, and all the more so for people less familiar with our hymnody.
If you are in a church with a Director of Music, s/he is not being stroppy if they raise objection to the congregation being given words which are different from those in the church hymn book without warning, especially if there is a choir.
Problem is I cannot from the UK tell you which one is culturally normative in Australia at present.
I posted that I'm not preaching on ANZAC Day, when we sing only Advance Australia Fair, and God Defend New Zealand. They are our respective National Anthems, and the words are set in stone. Well, except that we changed Australia's "For we are young and free" to "One and free" a few years back, but I don't think anyone or any service booklet has caught up yet.
Thinking of another hymn, I've always loved "The Potentate of Time" and I'm surprised no-one has used it for a Doctor Who episode yet.
And don't forget "ineffably sublime"!
So on behalf of everyone who doesn't have graduate level vocabulary, Latin, or both, I am grateful for the rewording. There's more than a whiff of ablism - or just linguistic snobbery- in some complaints about "dumbing down".
Edit: yeah, and ineffable. And sublime.
Meanwhile “laud” turns up in other hymns, like “All Glory, Laud and Honor.” And “vouchsafe” isn’t found in the version of “Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation” found in my denomination’s hymnal.
While I’d say the fact that it’s a translation may offer more freedom to deviate from the traditional words (noting again that the words in question are not the traditional words for some of us). Though as noted, the words at issue aren’t part of the Latin hymn.
Perhaps. But in the context of liturgy, that needs to be balanced with a responsibility to worshippers. Hymns are a form of prayer, and a form of prayer in which the words to pray are provided. Allowing people to pray intelligently and with understanding would generally rank higher than providing a teachable moment.
And it ranks much higher than what @KarlLB aptly describes as linguistic snobbery.
Well, it's a genuine "dumbing down" in the sense that mapping language from a large vocabulary to a smaller one is lossy compression. There are certainly places where one can prune ornamental Victoriana without giving up either meaning or feeling, but if what you end up with is "Our God is a great big God", then I think you lose quite a lot.
That sounds like the slippery slope fallacy.
The meanings of those words are not "basic theology".
I had an excellent and pretty rigorous religious education, including catechism, growing up. “Consubstantial”—the word, not the concept—wasn’t, so far as I can remember, part of it. (“Consubstantiation,” on the other hand, was.) I was taught basic, solid theology, but without too many inkhorn words. It’s quite possible to do that.
So from my perspective, there’s no “dumbing down” because there’s no “down” to start with.
But I still tend to think that if one feels the need to fight the dumbing down, the place to start that is outside the liturgy, and then let the liturgy follow. As Article XXIV says, “It is a thing plainly repugnant to the word of God and the custom of the primitive Church, to have public prayer in the Church, . . . in a tongue not understanded of the people.”
Does it? What is "all eternal?" Is that something like "almighty" or "all powerful"? I'm not persuaded that it is an improvement on coeternal. I think "one in substance" would be fine for consubstantial.
And a lot of highly literate wordy people not understanding how literate and wordy they are. At the risk of getting Epiphanic - privilege needs checking here.
“All eternal” is all three of them (Father, Son, and Spirit - mentioned in the first part of the verse) are eternal.
If there were ever to be some ecumenical 'trade', I'd be happy for us to accept and adopt that in return for 'the West' dropping the filioque. 😉
A Russian woman told me the other day how much she loves Church Slavonic and how like many Russians she uses it in her own personal prayers at home.
At the same time I hear these stories - urban myths? - about Greeks and Russians in the diaspora only understanding the words of the Liturgy for the first time when they've heard it in English.
I think there is a problem. It's compounded for both cradle-Orthodox migrants and indigenous converts and enquirers from non-church backgrounds - and we do get those- because the English translations are often presented in a faux-Elizabethan style.
The late Fr Ephrem Lash produced decent translations in contemporary English but I've only heard those used once or twice and even then in an ecumenical context on not a parish setting.
As so often with my 'both/and' hat, I find myself in sympathy both with the comments @KarlLB and @Nick Tamen have made here and the views @ChastMastr has expressed.
And yes, of course I subscribe to the 'slippery slope fallacy'.
Orthodox Christianity, subscribing to the 'slippery slope fallacy' since 1054.
'consubstantionalem Patri ,per quem omnia facta sunt' appears in the Latin version of the Nicene Creed.
Apparently the word was not allowed in some sort of Council before that of Nicaea but used in the 325 version of the Nicene Creed then used again with a slightly different meaning in the 381 version of the same Creed.
Let’s not get Epiphanic, then. We can disagree without doing that.
I don't think that we can discuss the disagreement without getting Epiphanic, because my disagreement is rooted in Epiphanic issues. It'd be like trying to discuss blackface without reference to racism. Further discussion would, I suspect, need to be on said board.
I’m happy to not discuss “privilege” further on that board or this, then. I believe our churches need to engage in far better religious education for everyone, even if it means—for example—before the service, taking an extra moment to explain the meanings of some doctrinal words the congregation may not know, or putting them in the service leaflet, or in the online/email newsletter, or all of the above. Indeed, maybe this could be a new way of explaining various doctrines and concepts that have fallen out of common parlance, with a “word of the week” or something. I’m not suggesting people should be left in ignorance to scratch their heads when an unfamiliar word (or concept) shows up in the hymns or the liturgy. I wonder, when I run across lines * like “Christ the victim, Christ the priest,” do people get the reference to a “victim” being the sacrifice offered by the priest in those more ancient contexts, or do they only think of a “victim” as (say) the victim of a crime? I think that explaining the meaning in some way is better than just jettisoning the language altogether.
* https://saint-aelfric-customary.org/2019/05/07/hymn-at-the-lambs-high-feast/
Yes, if witholding education within churches is being used a deliberate means of keeping them ignorant. Otherwise ...... ?
Thing about education is it's a lot more involved than just telling people stuff. When you've got a word that appears in one hymn somewhere it may be a bigger ask than you imagine to expect people to retain the definition much beyond the after church coffee.
Not to mention who would convince the average 70 year old lay person to attend.
Beyond that, “Zion” (or “Sion”) and “Mount Zion” are not uncommon names for churches—especially Lutheran, German Reformed (now United Church of Christ), Baptist and nondenominational churches—in my part of the world. And one of the leading historically African American denominations in the US is the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (aka, the A.M.E. Zion Church).
I suspect many non-churchgoing Americans put “Zion” in the same category as “Emmanuel”—they know it’s a churchy word, even if they don’t know what it means.
I’m home from travels now, so I’ve had a chance to check at least some hymnals. I’ve looked at Presbyterian (American and Canadian), Episcopal and Lutheran hymnals from the 1900s on—maybe about 10 hymnals in all.
Some, including the Episcopal Hymnal 1940 and Hymnal 1982 (TEC’s current hymnal) don’t have the doxological verse at all. (As @BroJames notes above, that verse isn’t part of the original Latin text.) Of those that do have the doxological verse, not a single one I looked at has “consubstantial.” In the hymnals I looked at, “one in might and one in glory” first appears in 1927—99 years ago. (And the Lutheran hymnals have had “Praise” rather than “Laud” since at least the 1970s.)
Perhaps that’s why I’m not too sympathetic to concerns about losing words like “consubstantial.” On this side of the Pond, that seems to have happened at least a century ago.
Ah, sorry, I thought you were asking who would lead it.
In a moment, I shall redress my lifelong failure to understand or look up this word. To me, "ineffable" means "unable to be effed." I'm sure I'm wrong.
I really dislike the word "potentate" because of how it must be pronounced here in the USA. "Pot'ntate" sounds and feels like Foghorn Leghorn speaking.
That is all.