Everything New Is Actually Still Old

 

The concept of interpretation is all here: there is no experience of truth that is not interpretative. I do not know anything that does not interest me. If it does interest me, it is evident that I do not look at it in an uninterested way. 

Gianni Vattimo, "Toward a Nonreligious Christianity," After the Death of God, ed. Jeffrey W. Robbins (New York: Columbia University Press 2007)*

I say "Father" half the time and "Mother" half the time because none of the neutral language proposals I've seen sounds right in English. The same is true for most languages. Esperanto could say " Nia Gepatro" which is gender inclusive and correct according to the rules. 

I always had a problem with "Lead us not into temptation," and a few years back Pope Francis said he did too because it makes God tempt us to do evil. The Bishops in France came up with "Let us not go into temptation," which is better though I don't know of any others who followed on with that. The US Catholic Conference of Bishops will need most of its current members to die off before there's any hope of it being changed here.

First, this topic is really old news (like nearly 40 years old, in its current form).  And I have better archives than I think:

Concluding minor scholarly postscript:

Meacham says:

Or, in a wonderfully revealing insight of MacCulloch’s, that the “daily bread” for which countless Christians ask in the Lord’s Prayer is not what most people think it is, a humble plea for sustenance. “Daily” is the common translation of the Greek word epiousios, which in fact means “of extra substance” or “for the morrow.” As MacCulloch explains, epiousios “may point to the new time of the coming kingdom: there must be a new provision when God’s people are hungry in this new time — yet the provision for the morrow must come now, because the kingdom is about to arrive.” We are a long way from bedtime prayers here.

Well, maybe. Per a note in the Scholars Version of Luke:

The meaning of the Greek word epiousios is disputed. Possible translations are "daily," "for sustenance," and "for the future." Its only certain occurrence in the Greek language is in the Lord's prayer.

Bauer's Greek-English lexiconconfirms this, and tells me that Origen claimed the term was coined by the evangelists. This is why I like, and dislike, serious works written for non-scholars.

Forget the original context of that material; my interest is in the otherwise unknown koine Greek word. There’s more than a few of those in the New Testament. Which is interesting in itself.

As for the “Our Father,” that’s harder to get away from:

Instead, you should pray like this:

 Our Father in the heavens,

 your name be revered.

 Impose your imperial rule,

 enact your will on earth as you have in heaven. 

Provide us with the bread we need for the day. 

Forgive our debts, to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us. 

And please don't subject us to test after test, 

but rescue us from the evil one. 

 Matthew 6:9-13, SV

One one occasion he happened to be praying some place.  When he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us how to pray, just as John taught his disciples."

He said to them, when you pray, you should say:

Father, your name be revered.

Impose your imperial rule.

Provide us with the bread we need day by day.

Forgive our sins, since we too forgive everyone in debt to us.

And please don't subject us to test after test.

--Luke 11:1-4, SV

Matthew's version is the more familiar "Our Father" we all (seem) to know in the King Jame's English (a/k/a Early Modern English).

I agree, the inclusive language versions don’t work for me. The original Greek, for both Matthew and Luke (they got it from Q, and altered it for their purposes), is Pater as the first word of the prayer. Yes, that looks Latin, but I’m transliterating the koine Greek.  The word was meant to describe a relationship between Creator and created; but then “husband” was meant to describe a role of responsibility, and we turned that into just a descriptor for a person in a marital relationship. Just as “father” has come to mean only “progenitor**.” “Religion is responsibility, or it is nothing at all.” And we do so much to avoid responsibility.

As for that last clause, about “tests,” more commonly rendered “temptation”, let's start with the original Greek.  The word both Matthew and Luke use (drawn, clearly, from Q) is a form (let's not get into Greek grammar) of peirasnos (which doesn't capture the proper pronunciation, but go with it).  Bauer gives the first meaning as "test, trial," secondary as "temptation, enticement to sin."  I would argue that second meaning is a consequence of Augustinian influence over scriptural interpretation, and so not a dispositive reading.  I think "trial" is better.  Bauer goes on to point out the word appears in the Septuagint as meaning "a testing of God by man [sic]", with a reference to Psalm 94:8. "Test" can be understood, primarily, as "putting to proof" or a trial to determine truth.

Which shifts it away from the Early Modern English version that leads us to think God is tempting us to sin.  Once again, the KJV is beautiful; but it's a bad translation, especially 4 centuries on. And as a support for "test" v. "enticement to sin," we have the witness of Jeremiah:

The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse-- 

who can understand it? 

I the LORD test the mind and search the heart, 

to give to all according to their ways, 

according to the fruit of their doings.

Jeremiah 17:9-10

Perhaps that’s a little too “Old Testament” for some, but I’m comfortable with it; especially since it aligns us with Job’s admonition to his wife: “If we accept good from God, shall we not accept evil as well?” Besides, asking God not to lead us into temptation is often the way we decide we don’t have to do what we don’t want to do. Like feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or comfort the afflicted. You know, the stuff God wouldn’t ask us to do because then we might be tempted not to. Just like God answers prayers with “No,” temptation is not always into evil.  Sometimes it's a test.

Matthew and Luke make it clear Jesus was teaching his disciples how to pray; as in, what to pray for.  And maybe the real issue is how and why we pray:

Prayer is sweeping the front porch.

Prayer is poetry, too, but poetry meant to spur action: Singing to a god of the glory of its creation, calling others to that glory, using the only voice a poet has to bring people together for a common purpose. Prayer does something.

Prayer is love, and love is work, or it is nothing. Anyone can sing a song.

And prayer like that has moved mountains and it has built cities and it has brought the walls of Jericho down. Prayer like that would take the events of today and shake the foundations of this country until our fear-mad politics and our angry, resentful culture came tumbling down, too. Prayer like that would pass laws. Prayer like that would make this one the last one.

So when we say our prayers are with the victims of a crime, we’d better mean our backs are bent to work to help them, or we’re not talking about our prayers.

And I can't mention "Father" and "Mother" in addressing God without citing Julian of Norwich:

And so in our making, God almighty is our father by nature; and God all wisdom is our mother by nature, along with the love and goodness of the Holy Ghost; and these are all one God, one Lord....

For our whole life falls into three parts.  In the first we exist, in the second we grow and in the third we are completed.  The first is nature, the second is mercy, the third is grace.  As for the first, I saw and understood that the great power of the Trinity is our father, and the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our mother, and the great love of the Trinity is our lord; and we have all this by nature and in our essential being.  And furthermore, I saw that as the second Person of is mother of our essential being, so that same well-loved Person has become mother of our sensory being; for God makes us double, as essential and sensory beings.  Our essential part is the higher part, which we have in our Father, God almighty; and the second Person of the Trinity is our mother in nature and our essential creation, in whom we are grounded and rooted, and he is our mother in mercy taking on our sensory being.  And so our Mother, in whom our parts are kept unparted, works in us in various ways; for in our Mother, Christ, we profit and grow, and in mercy he reforms and restores us, and through the power of his Passion and his death and rising again, he unites us to our essential being.  This is how our Mother mercifully acts to all his children who are submissive and obedient to him.

But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that I needed to know, answered with this assurance: 'Sin is befitting, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'

With this bare word 'sin" our Lord brought to my mind the whole extent of all that is not good, and the shameful scorn and the utter humiliation that he bore for us in this life, and his dying, and all the pains and sufferings of his creatures, both in body and spirit--for we are all to some extent brought to nothing and shall be brought to nothing as our master Jesus was, until we are fully purged:  that is to say until our mortal flesh is brought completely to nothing, and all those of our inward feelings which are not truly good.  Have me insight into these things, along with all pains that ever were and ever shall be; and compared with these I realize that Christ's Passion was the greatest pain and went beyond them all.  And all this was shown in a flash, an quickly changed into comfort; for our good Lord did not want the soul to be afraid at this ugly sight.

....And because of the tender love which our Lord feels for all who shall be saved, he supports us willingly and sweetly, meaning this:  'It is true that sin is the cause of all this suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'

*The context of that quote is provided here.

**The negative connotations of the word are not, I think, due to “patriarchy,” except inasmuch as patriarchy is an oppression (it should, again, be about responsibility, not authority), but due to to personal experiences. We may not, on the scale of “the common good,” want to recognize those exceptions to the rule of common experience; but if we don’t, as Jesus pointedly asked, how are we then better than the heathens? And no, some variation of Gott Mit Uns is not the answer; that’s just more of the same excuse of how we aren’t responsible. Are we our sisters and brothers keepers, to ask another Biblical question? The answer is: yes. If not us, then who?