Jesus’ Amidah prayer, the ‘Our Father’, with an ecumenical Abrahamic commentary.
(The proximate source where I found the calligraphy above does not seem to be the original artist’s page, and I couldn’t find yet the name of the artist.)
“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,
that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:20–21)
The ‘Our Father’ prayer is Jesus’ personal version of the Amidah prayer, the Jewish basic daily prayer. His disciples called him ‘rabbi’ and asked how they should pray. He taught them a version of the common basic daily prayer.
Abrahamic ecumenism means the belief that the differences in the three Abrahamic traditions do not mean there is any real basis for any division between the three traditional faith communities. What differences there are between our family of three religious traditions are either different ways of expressing or leading towards the same silent and non-conceptual knowledge of God (‘theology’), or are mere misunderstandings of each other’s traditions.
If there is really any objectivity to truth and justice, it must be universal. Logically, there must either be a common objective basis to all three Abrahamic traditions, or else they must all three be objectively unfounded.
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
(Matthew 5:17–20; this passage immediately follows on from the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, so it’s extremely likely to be authentic.)
Often the passage above is cited to justify strict traditionalism or moral legalism, but the line “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees” suggests that is not the point. Jesus himself broke some rules of the law in order to fulfil its more fundamental purposes (Matthew 12:2, 12:10–11; Luke 6:7, 13:10–17, 14:5; Mark 3:1–6, 3:2–4; John 7:23, 9:16).
St Melito’s interpretation of ‘fulfilling the law’ in ¶¶39–45 of the Peri Pascha (c.160AD) was “the law was fulfilled by surrendering its significance to the gospel”. The main meaning of the passage above is continuity with previous prophets, as also said in this Quran verse—
“He has ordained for you in religion what He enjoined upon Noah and that which We have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], what We enjoined upon Abraham and Moses and Jesus — to establish the religion and not be divided therein. Difficult for those who associate others with Allah is that to which you invite them. Allah chooses for Himself whom He wills and guides to Himself whoever turns back [to Him].” (Quran 42:13)
“to establish the religion and not be divided therein”
The first person to recognise and declare Muhammad as a prophet was a Christian, who was probably a priest or monk, named Waraqa bin Naufal bin Asad bin ‘Abdul ‘Uzza, who was Khadija’s couson. He said to Muhammad —
“This is the same one who keeps the secrets (angel Gabriel) whom Allah had sent to Moses. I wish I were young and could live up to the time when your people would turn you out.”
Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) asked, “Will they drive me out?” Waraqa replied in the affirmative and said, “Anyone who came with something similar to what you have brought was treated with hostility; and if I should remain alive till the day when you will be turned out then I would support you strongly.” After a few days Waraqa died and the Divine Inspiration was also paused for a while.”
I simply accept Waraqa bin Naufal’s perception of Muhammad when he met him face to face. He was in a better position to know than anyone else since.
‘Waraqa bin Naufal, pray for us, for the grace to be reunited in mutual understanding and just peace with our Muslim sisters and brothers, so that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen.’
I don’t see any need to ‘convert’ between religious traditions or communities, because essentially the conversion which really matters is the change of heart, μετάνοια, for which all three traditions are just cultural vehicles and supports. As Micah prophesied, “He has shown you, oh mortal, what is good, and what is that? Act justly, love gratuitously, and walk humbly beside your God.” (6:8) I also think atheists, or people who have not yet come to an intellectual accommodation with their sense of the presence of God, can also move towards the same purpose as “walk humbly beside…” by reading Mary Oliver poems. God doesn’t need us to believe in “him”, but wants us to be in love.
So, I interpret Jesus’ personal version of the Amidah prayer, the Our Father of Christian tradition, also with reference to Islamic tradition, at some points.
The current standard version of the weekday (brief) Amidah is:
“Blessed are You L-rd our G‑d, and G‑d of our fathers,
G‑d of Abraham, G‑d of Isaac and G‑d of Jacob,
the great, mighty and awesome G‑d,
exalted G‑d, who bestows bountiful kindness, who creates all things,
who remembers the piety of the Patriarchs,
and who, in love, brings a redeemer to their children’s children,
for the sake of His Name.”
That Jesus prayed a personal version of an Amidah implies a few things:
The original context of the ‘Our Father’ is Hebrew religious tradition, what we now call Judaism, which was probably more diverse and fluid then;
Notice what example Jesus was setting by personally adapting a common prayer— it’s OK to co-create personal versions of prayers in collaboration with the Spirit, who guides us to pray according to our real needs which we may not even recognise yet and guides us how to pray when we don’t have the words; as the Apostle Paul wrote “When we no longer know how to pray, the Spirit, in groans too deep for words, prays through us.” (Romans 8:18–26)
Jesus presumably would have stood and faced the direction of Jerusalem for the amidah, as Jews still do. He almost certainly would have prayed with his arms raised and outstretched, as we see in many frescoes in the catacombs—
The current rubrics of the Roman Rite liturgy are ambiguous about whether the laity should ever use the orans posture, or only priests, and you can find plenty of Traditionalist Catholics online (most of them closet sedevacantists, in my experience) displaying worries about about this. Since the earliest epigraphic evidence from the first Christian community in Rome shows laity praying in the orans position (either that or you have to admit that the woman in the fresco above was a priest), there should be no need for any controversy.
The Text — Aramaic and Greek authentic recensions
The original Christian community were Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek speakers. Unless a specific text was originally in Latin, I prefer to take the authentic version as the basis for interpretation, not the Latin translation.
This appears to be a reasonable attempt at reconstructing the Galilean Aramaic behind the oldest remaining Syro-Aramaic and Greek versions —
One of the Syriac-Aramaic versions, sung in a fairly simple and easy to learn by imitation way —
From —
There are two authentic versions — Luke’s version and Matthew’s version. Luke’s is simpler, so, according to the presumptive principle of textual criticism that ‘the shorter reading is to be preferred’ (lectio brevior praeferenda), we should guess it is more likely that Jesus originally said Luke’s version, although he might also have said Matthew’s version, probably later.
The two texts in Greek and English NRSV-C versions are —
I’ve purposefully included the context from the beginning of the chapter there, because context is always important before interpreting.
The setting
Jesus taught this prayer to his disciples in response to a question —
‘Rabbi, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
5 “When you pray, do not be like those who just want to appear holy. They like to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, so that they will be seen by other people. I tell you truly: They have received their reward already.
6 When you pray, go into your room. Close the door and pray to your Father, who can’t be seen. Your Father will reward you, because he sees what you do secretly.
7 And when you pray, do not keep babbling on like the pagans do, thinking that they will be heard because of many words. 8 Do not be like them.
Your Father knows what you need even before you ask him.”
The essence of prayer is internal recollection of God, not outward performance. Jesus emphasised first the right attitude to prayer.
Our most solemn prayers should not be performed in way which values aesthetic qualities over their contemplative purposes — it is possible to have both, as some Renaissance and Greek Orthodox music does, but attention to the meaning and contemplative participation should always have the priority.
Cranmerian style English does not make a prayer more ‘holy’, attention to the meaning and letting it challenge us does. Latin was the most universal language available in Medieval Europe, so it was appropriate then, but it is not appropriate if the people using it do not understand it and cannot pay attention to the meaning and follow it with their hearts. The ultimate purpose of it all is change of heart — μετάνοια, the ongoing conversion.
Singing in prayer is fine, but when the singing becomes a performance more for social approval or a sense of one’s own aesthetic skill than it is attention to God, then it’s just not prayer anymore. It may be pretty, but it’s not prayer.
Prayer can also be utterly simple, silent, and without any words or discursive thoughts. Saying more words or following traditional forms are not essential.
Spontaneous prayer led by the Spirit is better than mindlessly repeating traditional forms of prayer, or saying more words. Have the courage to ask for the grace which you most need now, and simply let the Spirit guide you. Don’t worry about whether it sounds nice or is grammatical or even dogmatically correct — trust. There is a time for reflecting on whether the forms of concepts and words we have contributed to the Spirit’s sighing and panting in us is correct or not — afterwards. Let yourself be surprised and challenged first.
And Samuel said, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”
“22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. …
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit intercedes for us through wordless groans.
27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”Paul’s Letter to the Romans 8:22–27
So no babbling with many words, but wordless groans are okay, and don’t worry, God knows what you need to ask for better than you know yourself.
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
the face of God?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me continually,
“Where is your God?”
The essence of prayer is recollection, but what exactly is recollection?
What’s called “recollection” in later Catholic theology, is yirah in Hebrew —
Or taqwa in Arabic —
Both yirah and taqwa etymologically literally mean a kind of “fear”, which is sometimes translated “reverence” or “awe”, and sometimes “recollection”.
“Fear” as a translation of yirah or taqwa is etymologically literal, but excessively so when you compare the contextual usages, such as:
11 The fear of the Lord is glory and exultation,
gladness and a festive crown.
12 The fear of the Lord rejoices the heart,
giving gladness, joy, and long life.
13 Those who fear the Lord will be happy at the end,
even on the day of death they will be blessed.14 The beginning of wisdom is to fear the Lord;
she is created with the faithful in the womb.
15 With the godly she was created from of old,
and with their descendants she will keep faith.
16 The fullness of wisdom is to fear the Lord;
she inebriates them with her fruits [“wine”?].
Comparing usage of “taqwa”, we find —
“Those who have believed find rest in their hearts in recollection of God,
And certainly those who dwell in their hearts in recollection of God find rest.”
Or for a word-by-word analysis —
The calligraphy above says:
“in the recollection of God their hearts find rest”
from Quran 13:28.
Translations as “fear” are misleadingly literal, as the word had clearly developed in meaning since its etymological origin certainly by the time of Yeshua (romanized as ‘Jesus’) ben Sirach in approximately 200 to 175 BCE.
Recollection is related to wisdom, and wisdom develops gradually and cyclically, which is described in seven stages or factors in Isaiah 11:1–9.
In particular, the relevant part is the relation between rûªch û viynäh — the ‘spirit of understanding’, and ‘recollectedness’, w’yir’at y’hwäh, as seen in —
“See: the fear of the Lord is wisdom;
and avoiding evil is understanding.” — Job 28:28
The ‘spirit of recollection’, w’yir’at y’hwäh, is also one of the traditionally named ‘Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit’, from Isaiah 11:1–9, which Pope Francis explained in his catechesis classes during Lent 2014, collected here with some additional prayers and scripture readings before and after —
Also related to recollection and wisdom, here is a pdf copy of the book of Solomon in Greek, Arabic and English, in parallel columns.
Also in Islamic tradition, there is a connection between the basic spiritual meaning of taqwa and its moral effects — justice and kindness.
As Iyad said —
Iyad’s point is similar to the first line of the Lord’s Prayer itself — that oneness of God and justice are naturally connected. The oneness of God is not just a spiritual or individual concern, but it also has social and political implications and practical effects. Once you start to notice the connection, you’ll find that the ideas of idolatry and oppression, or the oneness of God and justice, are repeated close together so often in the Bible and the Quran. (The word ‘Quran’ is related to the Syro-Aramaic, Christian word for a lectionary — qeryan-a.)
‘Our Father, in heaven’
‘Heaven’ is a metaphor for transcendence and the coming restoration of the ‘Kingdom of God’ which means the trust and hope (i.e. faith) that there is really no necessary and inevitable injustice, poverty, and cruelty, that these are human-made evils which can and will all be resolved, ultimately.
Parallel to the restoration of the Likeness in each human soul, the world also needs restoration to the original paradisaical form, and will be even better.
Good precedes evil, and will emerge victorious in the end — but by good means, relying on the power of love, which requires giving people the freedom to not love back, but inviting people into the right relationships by example.
There is no evil demiurge, and God did not create evil. God created all things good, including human nature, but humans have gone astray seeking good by our own separate ways — separating ourselves from right relationships with God and each other. Underlying every evil is an unmet genuine need or desire for the good, but we tend to go about seeking partial goods for ourselves and our own groups, against the universal common good, and thus we separate ourselves from our relationship to the universal infinite good, which is God. The freedom to sin is necessary for us to be capable of freely returning in love.
‘Father’ implies a relationship of intimacy and creativity — this scripture was no doubt authored by men, as the heads of families and their representatives in the public forum then, and what fatherhood meant to them was creating new life, caring for and protecting that vulnerable new life, but God is not masculine anymore than God has a “hand” — this is metaphorical language.
The combination of intimacy and transcendence refers to the “face” of God. We find the “face of God” at the interface between the most intimate, interior spiritual communion, closer to us than any other human can be, and an open and continuously growing understanding of God’s infinite Otherness.
For example, the metaphor of “face” in the Aaronic blessing —
24 “‘The Lord bless you
and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”’
— Numbers 6:24–26 (NIV)
‘Face’ of God implies, as St Basil the Great taught, that we can only know and talk about the operations, ἐνέργεια, of God (‘the shadow of the presence’), we can never totally comprehend the essence, οὐσία, of God, except partially in silent contemplation. “Only the Son knows the Father…” (Matthew 11:27).
Loving a person doesn’t require totally comprehending them — rather the opposite, allowing them to remain a mystery in themselves. Allowing another person to remain ultimately a mystery is exactly what enables us to love them forever. Levinas and Zizioulas also consider that there is a fundamental asymmetry, or a certain kind of hierarchy, because of the priority of the Other existing first and giving identity by difference and relationship to the person.
In the Personalist philosophical anthropology and theology of e.g. Emmanuel Levinas and John Zizioulas, the ‘face’ or ‘person’ has great significance —
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: an essay on exteriority, 1961,
from the chapter “Ethics and the Face”, pp.197–201. In the following excerpt, Levinas tries to prove his phenomenological ethical philosophy by taking it to the extreme, to show that it still holds true even in the moment of murder.
The [Otherness of the] face resists possession, resists my powers. In its epiphany, in expression, the sensible, still graspable, turns into total resistance to the grasp.
It’s not so obvious how this relates, although I believe it does, so I’ll leave the quote that brief and refer you to read more here if you’re curious —
John Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon, Professor of Systematic Theology of the University of Thessaloniki and Chair of the Academy of Athens:
God’s oneness or unity is not safeguarded by the unity of substance, as St. Augustine and other western theologians have argued, but by the monarchia of the Father. It is also expressed through the unbreakable koinonia (community) that exists between the three Persons, which means that otherness is not a threat to unity but the sine qua non of unity. […]
Otherness is not moral or psychological but ontological. We cannot tell what each Person is; only who He is. Each person in the Holy Trinity is different not by way of difference in qualities but by way of simple affirmation of being who He is. We see that otherness is inconceivable apart from a relationship. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all names indicating relationship. No person can be different unless it is related. Communion does not threaten otherness; it generates it.
“When scientists and theologians agree that being is at all levels relational, they do not tell us only something about God and the world. They throw light also on our ordinary everyday life as human beings. If we live in a relational universe, not as external visitors to it but as parts of it, any individualistic approach to existence is bound to contradict not only the will of God but also the truth of our own being. A relational ontology, if it is ontology in the true sense of the word, cannot but cover all aspects, all areas, and all levels of existence: the divine, the cosmic, the social. Such an ontology acquires its full significance as it helps us understand that a relational existence, a transcendence of the boundaries of the self for the purpose of communion with the other, an existence of communion in otherness, is not a matter of our bene esse (well being) but of the very esse (being) of ourselves and of the world in which we live. In engaging with relational ontology we encounter all that ultimately matters in existence.”
(Zizioulas in The Trinity in an Entangled World, 2010, page 156)
See also —
Zizioulas, Being as Communion (link to full pdf copy of the book), 1997.
Pages 107–112 are especially interesting.
The one most significant apparent point of disagreement between Islam and Christianity is in Quran verse 17:111:
The concept criticised in this verse is not the same concept of the ‘Son’ as in the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. What is condemned in this verse is effectively the Nestorian heresy of two separate natures of Christ (duophysitism).
What the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed says —
“the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages (co-eternal), Light of Light, true God of true God, being born not made (gennithenta ou poiethenta), being of the same essential nature (homoousion) with the Father”
And in the earlier Nicene Creed of 325AD, appended was —
“But those who say: ‘There was a time when he was not;’ and ‘He was not before he was made;’ and ‘He was made out of nothing,’ or ‘He is of another substance’ or ‘essence,’ or ‘The Son of God is created,’ or ‘changeable,’ or ‘alterable’ — they are anathematised by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.”
The concept of the Trinity which Muhammad criticised was probably a partial understanding of Nestorianism, which was declared heretical by the ecumenical councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon in the 5thC AD. The clearest meditative remedy for Nestorianism is in St Melito’s homily on the Pascha —
“69. This one is the passover of our salvation. This is the one who patiently endured many things in many people: This is the one who was murdered in Abel, and bound as a sacrifice in Isaac, and exiled in Jacob, and sold in Joseph, and exposed in Moses, and sacrificed in the lamb, and hunted down in David, and dishonoured in the prophets.”
If you read Melito’s Peri Pascha in a medieval Western European social context, far and long away from its roots and original context, or in a modern context, it’s quite easy to misread bits of it in an antisemitic way. But Melito was Jewish by birth, living in a Greek majority city, Sardis, near to what is now Izmir in Turkey. Interpreting between the Jewish and Greek sides of his culture and harmonising the two sides of the community was his life’s work. He was considered so brilliant at it that his contemporaries called him a prophet, as well as electing him to be the bishop of their city. His homily on the Pascha has the form of a Haggadah — a traditional Jewish guide text on how to explain the meaning of the Passover meal to the children of the family.
God did not have a son at some point in time. The Trinity is a mystical theological symbol of the nature of God as relational being. The ‘Son of God’ in its original Hebrew context generally meant a king anointed (consecrated) by God, and in some contexts it meant the Messiach, the final divinely anointed king who will bring about the complete restoration of the heavenly order of justice and peace on earth (Psalm 85:10). In Deuteronomy, there are ‘sons of God’ plural — anointed kings who fulfil the law, and they are related to the ‘angels of the nations’, who turn into demons (asabiyyas gone wrong?).
The most impressive and clearest interpretation of Zizioulas and Levinas combined I have found is, by Andrew Shephard, see especially pp.107-112—
Essentially, the point of the Greek Christian development of the doctrine of God as Triune is to replace the old Greek substantialist idea of the way in which things exist (ontology) with a relational, personalist ontology. It’s unfortunate that that sounds like a complicated, abstract, academic word, because the implications are very practical — how we imagine or conceive of how things can exist and relate to each other systemically affects our behaviour.
Throughout earlier Hebrew spiritual tradition you can find the three underlying natures (hypostases) or ‘persons’ (prosopoi) prefigured, for example, the three strangers who appeared to Abraham.
Abraham, the prophet who all three major monotheistic religious traditions from the Middle East trace their origins to, had his first recorded spiritual experience when he welcomed three strangers wandering out of the desert, and he recognised in them the presence of God (singular, “If I have found favor in the eyes of the Lord, do not pass by your servant.” “When the men left they went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord.”).
I have an intuitive guess about how Muhammad (ﷺ) actually distinguished the Christians who were ahl al-kitab, people of the book, and mumin مؤمن, sincere believers and friends, even if he thought they were a bit mistaken, and those whom he criticized as polytheists or idolators: if your idea of God leads you to believe that your ‘God’ is not the only God who all people can encounter in contemplation and action, then practically this matters. Your ‘God’ is actually a nationalist idol and it will necessarily lead to scapegoating violence. If you think the people of the other tradition may be a bit mistaken in their concepts and words, but they are sincere and really encountering the transcendent, universal, one and only God (لَا إِلٰهَ إِلَّا ٱلله), and that the genuineness of their relationship with God is shown by their acts of kindness (“by their fruits shall you know them”, Matthew 7:16), then there is no conflict.
The above principle also implies that Muslims who insist on dividing from Christians about their interpretation of the Trinity, ignoring our own interpretation, and claiming that the idea is shirk without even bothering to really understand it first, the same practical principle applies: If you make your idea of ‘God’ into an idol in order to create an ethnophyletic asabiyyah or to justify fighting the other nation, beware, and re-read Surah al-Imran.
For Christians alleging that Islam is a fundamentally incompatible culture, and claiming to advocate for a return to ‘Christian principles’ — indeed, and these are really Christian principles —
Be an extremist in those. You won’t find any basis for your nationalism, scapegoating and persecution of the Other in authentic Christian tradition.
‘Our Father in heaven’ — we recollect God’s presence in relationship and communion and simultaneously God’s infinitely transcendental Otherness. That means we face the ‘presence’ (shekinah, parousia, advent) of God.
‘May your name be kept holy’
I think this line may have two meanings — historically it is most likely to be a form of the kedushah portion of the Amidah prayer, since Jesus was a rabbi.
Kedushat also means the blessing said over the wine, following the Hamotzi blessing over the bread, at the Sabbath meal and at the end of synagogue services, which are similar to the portion of the Eucharistic liturgy now —
“Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life”
Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the wine we offer you: fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink.
The people’s response to both in the liturgy is: “Blessed be God for ever.”
San Francisco Catholic diocese catechesis notes on this portion of the Eucharistic liturgy and its relationship to earlier Jewish practice — pdf.
What sanctification of the name of God implies can be both (i) beginning our prayer with the recollection of a fundamental kind of gratitude and our duty to respond in love to God’s love for us first, and (ii) it implies a prayer to God to help to keep us from idolatry: keep us from identifying the name of God with any creature or created thing, especially our own ideas of ‘God’.
The practical social and political importance of the oneness of God
In this essay, Richard Beck traces the historical-textual development of ideas about idolatry, oppression, scapegoating and “demons” in the bible, explains how they’re connected, which the first time you read it may seem surprising but then the more you read of the bible afterwards the more it makes sense—
Since reading his essay, I have not stopped noticing how frequently a mention of idolatry or of avoiding it, and a mention of oppressing foreigners and refugees or of not doing so, occur line after line together in the bible. It was a gestalt moment for me, like for Darwin re-visiting Cwm Idwal slate mine and seeing evidence of glaciation all around, but only after he’d read the theory. It seems as though the authors of the Bible perceived the most common and most direct result of ‘idolatry’ as oppressing or persecuting foreigners.
The “demons” were originally the “angels of the nations” (Ezekiel 28), but then people turned to worshipping them separately from God, which you can still see in the behaviour of ethnic and sectarian militias worshipping their tyrannical leaders today, and demanded sacrifices to those national idols. When people claim that Muslims don’t revere the same God because they use a different word, which, by the way, is closer to the Hebrew word ‘El’ than the Germanic rooted word ‘God’, they are making an idol of the name of ‘God’, and next they will be scapegoating and demanding human blood sacrifices.
Jacques Maritain, referring to one of the irrationalistic forms of ‘humanism’ gone astray, one movement in ‘the crises of our times’ (1939, but sounds eerily similar to now), makes I think the same or a very similar point—
“A mystic hatred of all intellectual or moral subtlety, of wisdom and all asceticism is thus developed; and at the same time a powerful religiosity, the natural religiosity inherent in the human substance down to its elementary physical fibers. God is invoked, but only in virtue of the testimony, if I may say so, of these elementary fibers and of the desire of nature written in the biological elements of the human being; and (because of the basic reactional process which I indicated) He is invoked against the god of the spirit, of intelligence and love, excluding and hating this God. For an extraordinary spiritual phenomenon, then, here you are: people believe in God, and yet do not know God. The idea of God is affirmed, and at the same time disfigured and perverted. A God who will end by being identified with an invincible force at work in the blood is set up against the God of Sinai and against the God of Calvary, against transcendent Being, ‘He who is’ and who dwells in inaccessible glory, against the Word who was at the beginning, against the God of whom it is said that He is Love. We are facing, not a pseudo-scientific atheism, but, if I may speak thus, a demonic para-theism which while declining wisdom, is open to every kind of occultism, and which is not less anti-Christian than is atheism.”
From “Integral Humanism and the Crisis of Modern Times”, by Jacques Maritain, in The Review of Politics, Vol. 1, №1 (Jan., 1939), pp. 1–17.
Nazi ‘church’ services co-opted Christian symbols to legitimise the fascist regime —
Pope Pius XI defined and declared all forms of nationalist or Statist idolatry everywhere and forever to be anathema —
“8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, (…) whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.
9. Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. (…)
10. This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and race. As God’s sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor are equally subject to His word. (…)
11. None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are “as a drop of a bucket” (Isaiah xI, 15).”
33. Thousands of voices ring into your ears a Gospel which has not been revealed by the Father of Heaven. Thousands of pens are wielded in the service of a ‘Christianity’, which is not of Christ. Press and wireless daily force on you productions hostile to the Faith and to the Church, impudently aggressive against whatever you should hold venerable and sacred. (…) Today, as We see you threatened with new dangers and new molestations, We say to you: If any one should preach to you a Gospel other than the one you received on the knees of a pious mother, from the lips of a believing father, or through teaching faithful to God and His Church, “let him be anathema” (Gal. i. 9).”
We are again in one of those backwards phases of human development, which always seems to proceed in a three steps forwards two steps backwards kind of way, another little ‘Dark Ages’, such as Maritain and Pius XI warned about.
We are surrounded by this vice again, particularly frequently now the members of the American Evangelical Alt-Right and Russian Orthodox Neo-Eurasianist movement are spreading this habit of nationalist idolatry globally.
We have replaced the medieval Christian vice of antisemitism, stereotyping and scapegoating Jews to use them as human sacrifices to our ethno-nationalist and religious-nationalist idols, with using Muslims in this way.
Fromm and Girard observed that scapegoating occurs more frequently and more strongly when the person has developed a negative identity formation. When the boundaries of their ego are defined in opposition to a demonised, self-projected ‘Other’, the person is reduced to a mere unit in a collective, and it shapes social and political decisions that lead people like that into conflict.
To displace the guilt of their internal conflicts, they set up a palingenetic myth and then sacrifice their scapegoat — but it doesn’t work, it cannot work because social and political pluralism is based on the reality of personhood. After the bloodshed, there is a period of reflection and return to more open, humanist values and institutions, but inasmuch as people don’t understand what they’re doing in either the fascist or the liberal phases, we are doomed to repeat the vicious cycle again. All historical fascist movements have had a lifecycle of just a few decades at most — fascist movements are inherently self-destructive.
“Negative identity is a phenomenon whereby you define yourself by what you are not. This has enormous advantages, especially in terms of the hardening of psychological boundaries and the fortification of the ego: one can mobilize a great deal of energy on this basis and the new nation [the US] certainly did. . . . The downside . . . is that this way of generating an identity for yourself can never tell you who you actually are, in the affirmative sense. It leaves, in short, an emptiness at the center, such that you always have to be in opposition to something, or even at war with someone or something, in order to feel real.”
— Morris Berman, A Question of Values
Quoted in —
Girard explaining his Scapegoat Theory, with biblical referencing, here —
Pray the madness will pass this time round without so much bloodshed again.
So, following on after the sanctification of God’s name and the invocation against idolatry and what practically follows from it, we come to — -
“May your kingdom come”
As it happens, my favourite definition of “God’s kingdom” came up in the daily lectionary today (6th day before Christmas, O Adonai in the antiphons).
Truly his salvation is close to those who revere him,
so that glory may dwell in our land.Kindness and faithful love shall embrace,
justice and peace shall kiss.
Faithful love (tsedaqah) shall spring up from the earth,
and compassionate justice (chesed) has looked down from heaven.Truly the Lord will give generously,
and our land will be fruitful.
Justice will walk before him
and place its footsteps on his path.From Psalm 84 (85)
I think the two main kinds of love ascribed to God in this line of Psalm 85 are parallel in meaning to the two main words describing God in the Quran— “الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْم” ِ(ar-rahman ar-rahim) — ‘the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful’.
“Truly the Lord will give generously” leads us into understanding the next line —
“Your will be done”
“…he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Matthew 26:39
St Ignatius Loyola’s prayer for generosity —
“Lord, teach me to be generous,
to serve you as you deserve,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to look for any reward,
save that of knowing that I do your holy will.”
According to St Ignatius, every prayer and contemplative exercise should begin and end with gratitude. Gratitude entails recollecting God’s generosity to us, specifically, according to him, the absolute gratuitousness of God’s faithful love shown to us through —
Creation, redemption and our particular charismata.
(*charismata has a very specific meaning, crudely translatable as ‘talents’, which is why I’ve left it untranslated and linked to the Summa Theologica.)
‘Gratitude’ for Ignatius meant awareness of those three fundamental kinds of gifts. Ingratitude, he wrote, is “the cause, beginning, and origin of all evils and sins.” in a letter dated March 18, 1542, cited in — Lehane SJ, 2011.
Faced with these fundamental gifts that absolutely exceed our capacity to exchange or “repay” anything of equal value, we are obliged to be grateful and to respond generously, continuously and infinitely in a relationship of mutual love and collaboration with the Spirit, using our freedom wisely and well.
“Truly it is right and just, our duty and our salvation,
always and everywhere to give you thanks…”
From the Anaphora (Suscipe) part of the liturgy of the Eucharist.
That relationship is our ongoing conversion or profound change of heart — metanoia, and theosis — sanctification, restoration of the Likeness — ομοίωμα.
Having recalled God’s absolutely gratuitous and incomprehensible generosity of love, we come to the next line — asking for our daily needs to be met, which implies a recollection of contentment and simplicity.
“Give us today our daily bread”
25 “I tell you, do not worry. Don’t worry about your life and what you will eat or drink. And don’t worry about your body and what you will wear. Isn’t there more to life than eating? Aren’t there more important things for the body than clothes?
26 Look at the birds of the air. They don’t plant or gather crops. They don’t put away crops in storerooms. But your Father who is in heaven feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? 27 Can you add even one hour to your life by worrying?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the wild flowers grow. They don’t work or make clothing. 29 But here is what I tell you. Not even Solomon in all his royal robes was dressed like one of these flowers. 30 If that is how God dresses the wild grass, won’t he dress you even better? Your faith is so small! After all, the grass [wheat?*] is here only today. Tomorrow it is thrown into the fire.
31 So don’t worry. Don’t say, ‘What will we eat?’ Or, ‘What will we drink?’ Or, ‘What will we wear?’ 32 People who are ungodly run after all those things. Your Father who is in heaven knows that you need them. 33 But put God’s kingdom first. Do what he wants you to do. Then all those things will also be given to you.
34 So don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Gospel according to Matthew 6:25–34 (NIRV translation)
(*Incidentally, I guess this was probably referring to what’s called فريكة freekah in Arabic: wheat picked green and the husks burnt off, which makes it sweet like malted grain and smoky — it is the tastiest basic starch there ever was!)
The path of theosis, restoration of the Likeness (homoioó) of God in the human being, the state human beings were originally created in—
requires us to absolutely prioritise ecstatic self-emptying love and service —
“Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things, as far as we are allowed free choice and are not under any prohibition. Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer — health to sickness, riches to poverty, honour to dishonour, a long life to a short life. The same holds for all other things. Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created.”
Our “likeness” to God is that we have the freedom to generously and creatively respond to God’s love, to collaborate with the Spirit in not only our own salvation but also in re-creating and collaboratively creating the world anew and restoring the original justice and peace of God’s kingdom, as in psalm 84.
More fundamental and before Original Sin, humanity was made in the Image and Likeness of God , and “God saw everything he had made, and it was very good.” Genesis 1:27; Genesis 1:31.
We are not dealing with an angry authoritarian father who demands a blood sacrifice of his son to atone for humanity’s essential evilness— no. That is a human projection and a later perversion of the meaning of the scriptures.
Starting from assumptions of fundamentally sinful human corruption and wretchedness, and the need for despotic authorities to control disobedient subordinates, heretical false ‘Christianities’ at their worst become like this —
“What developed in the South was a theology carefully tailored to meet the needs of a slave state. Biblical emphasis on social justice was rendered miraculously invisible. A book constructed around the central metaphor of slaves finding their freedom was reinterpreted. Messages which might have questioned the inherent superiority of the white race, constrained the authority of property owners, or inspired some interest in the poor or less fortunate could not be taught from a pulpit. Any Christian suggestion of social justice was carefully and safely relegated to “the sweet by and by” where all would be made right at no cost to white worshippers. In the forge of slavery and Jim Crow, a Christian message of courage, love, compassion, and service to others was burned away.
Stripped of its compassion and integrity, little remained of the Christian message. What survived was a perverse emphasis on sexual purity as the sole expression of righteousness, along with a creepy obsession with the unquestionable sexual authority of white men. In a culture where race defined one’s claim to basic humanity, women took on a special religious interest. Christianity’s historic emphasis on sexual purity as a form of ascetic self-denial was transformed into an obsession with women and sex. For Southerners, righteousness had little meaning beyond sex, and sexual mores had far less importance for men than for women. Guarding women’s sexual purity meant guarding the purity of the white race. There was no higher moral demand.
Changes brought by the Civil War only heightened the need to protect white racial superiority. Churches were the lynchpin of Jim Crow. By the time the Civil Rights movement gained force in the South, Dallas’ First Baptist Church, where Jeffress is the pastor today, was a bulwark of segregation and white supremacy. As the wider culture nationally has struggled to free itself from the burdens of racism, white evangelicals have fought this development while the violence escalated. What happened to ministers who resisted slavery happened again to those who resisted segregation. White Episcopal Seminary student, Jonathan Daniels, went to Alabama in 1965 to support voting rights protests. After being released from jail, he was murdered by an off-duty sheriff’s deputy, who was acquitted by a jury. Dozens of white activists joined the innumerable black Americans murdered fighting for civil rights in the 60’s, but very few of them were Southern.
White Evangelical Christians opposed desegregation tooth and nail. Where pressed, they made cheap, cosmetic compromises, like Billy Graham’s concession to allow black worshippers at his crusades. Graham never made any difficult statements on race, never appeared on stage with his “black friend” Martin Luther King after 1957, and he never marched with King. When King delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech,” Graham responded with this passive-aggressive gem of Southern theology, “Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.” For white Southern evangelicals, justice and compassion belong only to the dead.”
The ‘image’ in the line in Genesis that says all human beings are “made in the Image and Likeness of God” is eikon —
Seeing through icons we see a reflection of the divine presence in a person.
St John of Damascus’ defence of icons —
Images, metaphors, symbols, concepts and words, that remind us of God, although we can never capture or totally comprehend God, are as necessary to us as food and drink, they cannot finally fulfil us, but they enable us to live.
So “give us our daily bread” — fulfil our needs, not necessarily all our wants.
“Forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sinned against us”
Jesus explained this line directly after teaching how he prays:
“14 Forgive other people when they sin against you. If you do, your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive the sins of other people, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Matthew 6:14–15
And James explains further —
“12 Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, 13 because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.” James 2:12–13
‘Law’ in the sense of the passage above means a pattern of relationship, a principle of koinonia. We are to be judged by the standard of freedom — how did we use our freedom? Our freedom is given so that we can be loving like God, uniquely among creatures we can recognise free gifts and be grateful, and freely and generously respond in loving collaboration with God to restore the justice and peace of God’s kingdom, tikkun olam, repairing the world.
Hurt people tend to hurt others, especially if they are not healed first in a restorative relationship which models the law of freedom and generous love. To repair the world, forgiveness is essential.
“Do not put us to trial”
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.”
Luke 4:1
Jesus also said “pray that you may not come into the time of trial” to the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before he was betrayed —
I think the current translation ‘do not lead us into temptation’ is not wrong, in fact it closely fits Luke 4:1, but it is too easily misunderstood, so I agree —
God is incomprehensibly forgiving, endlessly, gratuitously forgiving. What he wants is a free return of love, and would rather have us imperfectly gradually stumble towards an approximation to free and generous loving relationship than force us to be perfect but not free, not in love. His ways are not our ways.
Full, positive freedom is a pre-requisite for genuine love.
Jesus’ favourite prophet, who he quoted or alluded to the most often, says —
“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.
3 Give ear and come to me;
listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David.
4 See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
a ruler and commander of the peoples.
5 Surely you will summon nations you know not,
and nations you do not know will come running to you,
because of the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has endowed you with splendor.
6 Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
12 You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord’s renown,
for an everlasting sign,
that will endure forever.”
Isaiah 55
God’s generosity and forgiveness out of love are incomprehensible to us.
Why are we to be judged by a standard of freedom that allows us to fall into sin?
“Melius enim iudicavit de malis bene facere quam mala nulla esse permittere.”
He judged it better
to make good out of evil
than not to permit evil to come to be.
And as Peter the Apostle said —
“Do not ignore this one fact, beloved,
that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years
and a thousand years like one day.
The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard “delay,”
but he is patient with you,
not wishing that any should perish
but that all should come to repentance.”
Incidentally, Peter clearly seems to suggest here what St Gregory of Nyssa later called ‘universal reconciliation’, apokatastasis —
“But neither Gregory nor Isaac advocate the pre-existence of souls. Their construals of universalist hope are grounded solely upon God’s infinite love and the power of purgative suffering to bring enlightenment to the damned. The 15 anathemas, therefore, do not touch the biblical universalism of St Gregory of Nyssa, St Isaac the Syrian, or more recent exponents, such as Sergius Bulgakokv and Hans Urs von Balthasar. As J.W. Hanson writes in his classic, but dated, survey of the Fathers of the first five centuries: “The theory here condemned is not that of universal salvation, but the ‘fabulous pre-existence of souls, and the monstrous restitution that results from it’”. (Universalism, p. 285).
Universal reconciliation has indeed been incomprehensible to much of the Church for many centuries, but it is clearly there in the bible, and some of the greatest theologians of the first centuries of the Christian era saw it clearly.
It requires accepting an infinitely, literally incomprehensibly gracious and mercifully loving God, whose love is bigger and beyond our comprehension.
Paul is also very clear about the incomprehensibility(hyperekperissou) of God’s love —
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
Ephesians 3:14–20
And again —
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and supplication*, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me — put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
Phillipians 4:4–8
‘Supplication’, an intriguing word, refers to prayer on behalf of another —
Defend us from the Evil One
The explanation here is directly in the gospels, the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness —
The temptations are traditionally categorized as — the ‘flesh, the world and the devil’, or, comfort and pleasure, wealth and social status, and political power.
Or recalling Ignatius again — “We are to be indifferent to all created things… and we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short life, but our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created.”
The devil’s only power is to delude and deceive. Jesus final rebuke, when he was tempted by the offer of power, is “Get behind me, Satan!” — ‘I recognise you’. But the tricks of the devil seem nice to us, seem normal by the standards of the world, and always there is a necessary good and an unmet need underlying all our choices for evil, so at first when we choose we perceive it as good.
Evil does not present itself as an option transparently, but it begins with a fault of understanding, which is then compounded with a fault of will — a little bit of us is aware, our conscience, that the partial or relative good we’re seeking is depriving us and others of an inherently, necessarily universal kind of good. A sin is a turning away from the Spirit and separating ourselves from collaborating with the grace of God’s love which calls us to respond in kind, as generously. The ‘Original Sin’ was that our first parents, mythically speaking, sought the good by their own experiential knowledge of all possible forms of good and evil separately from the complete, integrated kind of goodness which can fulfil all our needs and exceeds our wants.
The ‘tree’ in contemporary Middle Eastern mythology was a symbol for systematic completeness. The word for ‘knowledge’ in that myth means experiential knowledge of , not just knowledge about. It’s an ultra concise way of saying they tried everything, seeking good by their own separate ways.
However, the Original Sin was necessary for us to reach an even greater good
O certe necessárium Adæ peccátum,
quod Christi morte delétum est!
O felix culpa,
quæ talem ac tantum méruit habére Redemptórem!O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer!From the Praeconium Paschale, part of the liturgy of Easter,
or the Exsultet as it is commonly known, from its first word “rejoice!”.
Also from St Ambrose: “a fortunate break, which was repaired even better” (“felix ruina, quia reparatur in melius”)—
The restoration of the Likeness of God in humanity given through Christ is even better than the brokenness of humanity which occasioned its necessity.
Aquinas agrees and adds another reference —
“Where sin abounded, grace abounded even more.”
Romans 5:20
Unsurprisingly, the Exsultet also has precedents in earlier Jewish tradition.
Paul again —
“10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of justice in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the courage that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. (Ephesians 6)
The attitude which most essentially goes against the misuse of freedom that is ‘evil’, and the temptations of comfort, status and power to yield to the deceits and delusions of the Evil One, is expressed in the prayer which Ignatius loved-
“Take and receive, Lord, all my liberty,
All my memory, all my understanding and my entire will.
Everything I have and everything I am you have given to me,
And I return it all in love, to be governed according to your will.
Give me only your love with your grace, that is enough for me,
And I ask for nothing more.”Suscipe, Domine, universam meam libertatem.
Accipe memoriam, intellectum, atque voluntatem omnem.
Quidquid habeo vel possideo mihi largitus es;
id tibi totum restituo, ac tuae prorsus voluntati trado gubernandum.
Amorem tui solum cum gratia tua mihi dones, et dives sum satis,
nec aliud quidquam ultra posco.
It is an incredibly challenging prayer. It makes a holocaust of our self-will.
I rarely say it because I cannot often be sure I am fully sincere in praying it.
Biblical precedents for the doxology
The doxology (“For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever, amen.) follows in the order of the liturgy of the Eucharist, but it is not an original part of the prayer taught by Jesus according to Luke and Matthew.
It is therefore permissible, as Taizé community do, to alternate some other doxological prayers, or as the Spirit leads us at the time. Or we can lead up to the traditional doxology gradually by understanding the biblical precedents, so as to be in the same state of mind as when the inspired words were given —
From the depths I have cried out to you, O Lord;
Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplication.
If you, Lord, were to mark iniquities, who, O Lord, shall stand?
But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered*. I trust in the Lord;
My soul trusts in his word.
My soul waits for the Lord,
More than watchmen wait for the dawn, let Israel hope in the Lord.
For with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.
And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.Psalm 130:1–8
‘Revered’ is from the root word yirah again, and I still think “recollection” is a more contextually appropriate translation.
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who revere* him;12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;14 for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.Psalm 103:10–14
Notice how we keep coming back to recollection, yirah or taqwa, and —
Say, “O My servants who have believed, fear [revere / recollect] your Lord. For those who do good in this world there is good, and the earth of Allah is spacious. Indeed, the patient will be given their reward without reckoning.”
Ittaqū is a form of the word taqwa, which recurs over 250 times in the Quran.
Verses 9–10 are similar to the middot or ‘thirteen attributes of divine mercy’,
as prophesied by Moses—
“The Lord! The Lord! God, Compassionate and Gracious, Slow to anger and Abundant in Kindness and Truth, Preserver of kindness for thousands of generations, Forgiver of iniquity, wilful sin, and error, Who Cleanses…”
Exodus 34:6–7
I am deliberately referring to Jewish and Muslim sources too, in order to show their fundamental compatibility. Indeed, I believe that anyone who claims the three traditions of the people of the book (ahl al-kitab) do not come from the same source is either a fool or a politician. It is logical therefore to also accept that any apparent incompatibilities can only be based on misunderstandings.
Finally we come to the nearest biblical precedent for the traditional doxology
7 The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear-minded and sober, so you can pray. 8 Above all, love one another deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Show hospitality to one another without complaining.
10 As good stewards of the manifold grace of God, each of you should use whatever gift he has received to serve one another. 11 If anyone speaks, he should speak as one conveying the words of God. If anyone serves, he should serve with the strength God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the power forever and ever.
Amen.
1 Peter 4:11
My hope is that if people really understand what they’re saying and doing better, not just superficially or literally, then eventually we “may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (John 17:20–21).
The three Abrahamic religious traditions and communities should recognise that we share a true common basis, and turn against those who seek to divide us in order to more easily maintain their despotic control and exploitation.
