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Lead us not into Temptation: On the Proposed Revision of the Our Father
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Recently a change to the Italian text of the Pater Noster has been proposed. Motivation for this change centers on worries about the suggestion that God leads us into temptation. This paper argues that these worries issue from a confused picture of the relationship between God and creaturely freedom. More fundamentally, however, the suggestion that these kind of worries ought to precipitate revision of liturgical texts fails to take seriously the nature of the liturgy as prayer, rather than simply a means of communicating information. Drawing on Wittgenstein, the sui generis nature of prayer is laid out before the paper concludes with some comments on the distinctive values of both scholarship and prayer.
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- Copyright © 2019 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Thanks to Anastasia Philippa Scrutton and Helen de Cruz.
2 My use of the almost stereotypically Catholic ‘Our Father’, rather than ‘Lord's Prayer’ is to emphasise that it is Catholic use with which I am concerned. Appeals to ecumenical practice have been made by both sides of the current argument. My own feeling is that changing texts merely on ecumenical grounds tends to feed into a lowest common denominator ecumenism, detrimental to genuine unity of faith and understanding. Be that as it may, I'm bracketing ecumenical considerations here.
3 Luke 11:4; Matthew 6:13. My translation.
4 As an aside, one has to wonder whether the revision is consonant with recent norms about the translation of liturgical texts. It is not unclear how ne nos inducas in temptationem ought to be translated, and it is not in the manner instanced in the new Italian translation! However, I think a case against revision on lexicographic grounds would be uninteresting – there are good theological and philosophical reasons to be sceptical about the change, and these are my concern here.
5 For details and background see Lamb, Christopher (2019), ‘’Lead us not into temptation’ falls out of Lord's Prayer’, The Tablet, June 2019Google ScholarPubMed.
6 Lamb (2019).
7 Job 1:8 NRSV.
8 See e.g. Guttierez, Gustavo (1987), On Job: God-talk and the suffering of the innocent. Ossinning: OrbisGoogle Scholar.
9 I put things in that round-about way because I accept the Augustinian-Thomist idea that evil is simply a privation of good. So I do not think there are entities which are evil insofar as they exist and are created by God. But I do think God, freely, creates entities in which there are privations of good (and remember that for orthodox Christians, as distinct from deists, creation is that act whereby God sustains an entity in being over and against nothing for every moment of its existence – God doesn't just wind things up and let them run, such that he would not be responsible for the way things go with an entity after its initial creation. God not only creates the fertilised ovum which will grown into Donald Trump; God is freely, and directly, creating Tump even as Trump tweets his latest inanities.)
10 See especially Davies, Brian OP (2006), The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil, London: Continuum.Google Scholar
11 Davies (2006), pp. 218-9.
12 On this see McCabe, Herbert OP (1980),. ‘God II: Freedom’ in New Blackfriars, 61(725), pp. 456-69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Liturgy of the Paschal Vigil, Exsultet.
14 It is only a philosopher who would make the mistake of thinking that because we cannot but, and rightly, plead with God that we must therefore believe (contrary to faith) that God is some kind of malleable entity who can be brought round to our way of thinking. Praying is an activity; it does not commit one to a metaphysical theory about God, any more than do gospel passages such as Luke 11:5-13.
15 Malcolm, Norman (1993), Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, London: Routledge, p. 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Note in this respect the presentation of the Our Father at a Lenten scrutiny for RCIA participants.
17 Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1979), Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough. Translated by Miles, A.C. and Rhees, Rush. Retford: Brynmill Press, p. 1Google Scholar.
18 Wittgenstein (1979), p. 4.
19 Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1966), Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Oxford: Wiley, pp. 61-2Google Scholar.
20 King Lear 1.4. Wittgenstein considered the quote as an epigraph for the Philosophical Investigations – the point being one about the diversity of language use.
21 Pagola, José A. (2009), Jesus: an historical approximation. Translated by Wilde, Margaret. Miami: Convivium, p. 316Google Scholar.