"Orans" Posture and Hand-Holding During the Our Father -- Two Liturgical Abuses at Once

Monday, July 07, 2008

"Orans" Posture and Hand-Holding During the Our Father Are Against the Rubrics (Instructions) For the Mass

Two liturgical abuses at once: "orans" posture and hand-holding during the Our Father

[ source ]

Colin B. Donovan, STL, over at the EWTN website, states that the "orans' posture in the congregation (arms outstretched in a "praying" or adoration position) is contrary to the rubrics:

The liturgical use of this position by the priest is spelled out in the rubrics (the laws governing how the Mass is said). It indicates his praying on BEHALF of us, acting as alter Christus as pastor of the flock, head of the body. . . .
It is never done by the Deacon, who does not represent the People before God but assists him who does.
Among the laity this practice began with the charismatic renewal. Used in private prayer it has worked its way into the Liturgy. It is a legitimate gesture to use when praying, as history shows, however, it is a private gesture when used in the Mass and in some cases conflicts with the system of signs which the rubrics are intended to protect. The Mass is not a private or merely human ceremony. The symbology of the actions, including such gestures, is definite and precise, and reflects the sacramental character of the Church's prayer. . . .
Our Father. The intention for lay people using the Orans position at this time is, I suppose, that we pray Our Father, and the unity of people and priest together is expressed by this common gesture of prayer. Although this gesture is not called for in the rubrics, it does at least seem, on the surface, to not be in conflict with the sacramental sign system at the point when we pray Our Father. I say on the surface, however, since while lay people are doing this the deacon, whose postures are governed by the rubrics, may not do it. So, we have the awkward disunity created by the priest making an appropriate liturgical gesture in accordance with the rubrics, the deacon not making the same gesture in accordance with the rubrics, some laity making the same gesture as the priest not in accordance with the rubrics, and other laity not making the gesture (for various reasons, including knowing it is not part of their liturgical role). In the end, the desire of the Church for liturgical unity is defeated.
After Our Father. This liturgical disunity continues after the Our Father when some, though not all, who assumed the Orans position during the Our Father continue it through the balance of the prayers, until after "For thine is the kingdom etc." The rubrics provide that priest-concelebrants lower their extended hands, so that the main celebrant alone continues praying with hands extended, since he represents all, including his brother priests. So, we have the very anomalous situation that no matter how many clergy are present only one of them is praying with hands extended, accompanied by numbers of the laity.
So, while we shouldn't attribute bad will to those who honestly have felt that there was some virtue in doing this during the Mass, it is yet another case where good will can achieve the opposite of what it intends when not imbued with the truth, in this case the truth about the sacramental nature of the postures at Mass and their meaning.

Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin, in an article about postures during the Our Father, agrees, and provides more documentation:

The Holy See has been concerned about the laity unduly aping the priest at Mass, and in the 1997 Instruction on Collaboration, an unprecedented conjunction of Vatican dicasteries wrote:

6 § 2. To promote the proper identity (of various roles) in this area, those abuses which are contrary to the provisions of canon 907 [i.e., "In the celebration of the Eucharist, deacons and lay persons are not permitted to say the prayers, especially the eucharistic prayer, nor to perform the actions which are proper to the celebrating priest."] are to be eradicated. In eucharistic celebrations deacons and non-ordained members of the faithful may not pronounce prayers — e.g. especially the eucharistic prayer, with its concluding doxology — or any other parts of the liturgy reserved to the celebrant priest. Neither may deacons or non-ordained members of the faithful use gestures or actions which are proper to the same priest celebrant. It is a grave abuse for any member of the non-ordained faithful to "quasi preside" at the Mass while leaving only that minimal participation to the priest which is necessary to secure validity.

This instruction, incidentally, was approved by John Paul II in forma specifica, meaning that the pope invested it with his own authority and is binding on us with the pope's authority and not merely the authority of the authoring congregations.
Now, what gestures are proper to the priest celebrant? The orans gesture when praying on behalf of the people is certainly one of them.

An article in Adoremus Bulletin offers yet more proof that this is an abuse:
Many AB readers have been asking about the orans posture during the Our Father (orans means praying; here it refers to the gesture of praying with uplifted hands, as the priest does during various parts of the Mass).
In some dioceses in the United States, people are being told that they should adopt this gesture, though it is not a customary posture for prayer for Catholic laity. Sometimes people are told that their bishop mandates this change because the new General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) requires it or at least encourages it.
Thus it may be helpful to review the actual regulations on the orans posture.
Wht does the GIRM say?
First of all, nowhere in the current (2002) General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) does it say that the orans posture is recommended for the congregation during the Our Father.

In GIRM 43 and 160, the paragraphs dealing with the people's posture during Mass, the only posture specified for the congregation at the Lord's Prayer is standing. It says nothing at all about what people do with their hands. This is not a change from the past.

The confusion arose among bishops in the 1990s, when some were suggesting the orans position in the ICEL Sacramentary, but not in the new Roman Missal. But even the Sacramentary revision was "specifically rejected by the Holy See after the new Missal appeared." The article continues:

At their November 2001 meeting, the bishops discussed "adaptations" to the new Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani (or GIRM) of the new Missal (reported in AB February 2002). The proposal to introduce the orans posture for the people was not included even as an option in the US' "adaptations" to the GIRM.
Furthermore, the bishops did not forbid hand-holding, either, even though the BCL originally suggested this in 1995. The reason? A bishop said that hand-holding was a common practice in African-American groups and to forbid it would be considered insensitive.
Thus, in the end, all reference to any posture of the hands during the Our Father was omitted in the US-adapted GIRM. The orans posture is not only not required by the new GIRM, it is not even mentioned.
The approved US edition of the GIRM was issued in April 2003, and is accessible on the USCCB web site - http://www.usccb.org/liturgy/current/revmissalisromanien.shtml
Not on the list
The posture of the people during prayer at Mass is not one of the items in the GIRM list that bishop may change on his own authority (see GIRM 387). Thus it is not legitimate for a bishop to require people to assume the orans posture during the Our Father.
The GIRM does say that a bishop has the "responsibility above all for fostering the spirit of the Sacred Liturgy in the priests, deacons, and faithful". He has the authority to see that practices in his diocese conform to the norms liturgical law, . . .

Holding hands during the Our Father is also clearly against the rubrics: thus should not be done on that basis alone. Catholic apologist Karl Keating wrote about this:

ORIGINS OF HAND-HOLDING
The current issue of the "Adoremus Bulletin" says this in response to a query from a priest in the Bronx:
"No gesture for the people during the Lord's Prayer is mentioned in the official documents. The late liturgist Fr. Robert Hovda promoted holding hands during this prayer, a practice he said originated in Alcoholics Anonymous. Some 'charismatic' groups took up the practice."
My long-time sense had been that hand-holding at the Our Father was an intrusion from charismaticism, but I had not been aware of the possible connection with AA. If this is the real origin of the practice, it makes it doubly odd: first, because hand-holding intrudes a false air of chumminess into the Mass (and undercuts the immediately-following sign of peace), and second, because modifications to liturgical rites ought to arise organically and not be borrowed from secular self-help groups.
Periodically, on "Catholic Answers Live" I am asked about hand-holding during Mass and explain that it is contrary to the rubrics. Usually I get follow-up e-mails from people who say, "But it's my favorite part of the Mass" or "We hold hands as a family, and it makes us feel closer."
About the latter I think, "It's good to feel close as a family, but you can hold hands at home or at the mall. The Mass has a formal structure that should be respected. That means you forgo certain things that you might do on the outside."
About the former comment I think, "If this is the high point of the Mass for you, you need to take Remedial Mass 101. The Mass is not a social event. It is the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary, and it is the loftiest form of prayer. It should be attended with appropriate solemnity."

* * * * *

Further comments, from interaction on the CHNI board. The words of Rick Luquette over there will be in green (official documents indented and in regular black) :
Currently the following is found from the USCCB Committee on Divine Worship:

Many Catholics are in the habit of holding their hands in the “Orans” posture during the Lord’s prayer along with the celebrant. Some do this on their own as a private devotional posture while some congregations make it a general practice for their communities.
Is this practice permissible under the current rubrics, either as a private practice not something adopted by a particular parish as a communal gesture?
No position is prescribed in the present Sacramentary for an assembly gesture during the Lord’s Prayer.

Well (to use the logical technique of reductio ad absurdum), if all gestures are left open, then could congregations spontaneously decide to hug one another during the Our Father? Or how about lifting up one arm heavenward? Or all turning towards each other (i.e., the center of the church)?
The General Instructions of the Roman Missal includes the following:

390. It is up to the Conferences of Bishops to decide on the adaptations indicated in this General Instruction and in the Order of Mass and, once their decisions have been accorded the recognitio of the Apostolic See, to introduce them into the Missal itself.

These adaptations include
The gestures and posture of the faithful (cf. no. 43 above);
The gestures of veneration toward the altar and the Book of the Gospels (cf. no. 273 above);
The texts of the chants at the entrance, at the presentation of the gifts, and at Communion (cf. nos. 48, 74, 87 above);
The readings from Sacred Scripture to be used in special circumstances (cf. no. 362 above);
The form of the gesture of peace (cf. no. 82 above);
The manner of receiving Holy Communion (cf. nos. 160, 283 above);
The materials for the altar and sacred furnishings, especially the sacred vessels, and also the materials, form, and color of the liturgical vestments (cf. nos. 301, 326, 329, 339, 342-346 above).
Directories or pastoral instructions that the Conferences of Bishops judge useful may, with the prior recognitio of the Apostolic See, be included in the Roman Missal at an appropriate place.

So it appears that at present, there is no recommended position for the hands of the faithful at the Our Father.
I should think it is obvious that it would be either hands at the side or clasped or in the hands-joined prayer position. But is not the orans position specifically prohibited, since it is imitating the posture of the priest? As Colin B. Donovan wrote (as I cited):

. . . since while lay people are doing this the deacon, whose postures are governed by the rubrics, may not do it. So, we have the awkward disunity created by the priest making an appropriate liturgical gesture in accordance with the rubrics, the deacon not making the same gesture in accordance with the rubrics, some laity making the same gesture as the priest not in accordance with the rubrics, and other laity not making the gesture (for various reasons, including knowing it is not part of their liturgical role). In the end, the desire of the Church for liturgical unity is defeated.

Also, Jimmy Akin cited the 1997 Instruction on Collaboration (specifically approved by Pope John Paul II):

Neither may deacons or non-ordained members of the faithful use gestures or actions which are proper to the same priest celebrant. It is a grave abuse for any member of the non-ordained faithful to "quasi preside" at the Mass while leaving only that minimal participation to the priest which is necessary to secure validity.

That precludes the orans position, though it itself doesn't seem to prohibit hand-holding (because the priest is not doing that at this time). What is your counter-explanation for that? What you decline to call any abuse at all is called "abuses" and "a grave abuse" by this papally-approved document. If bishops say otherwise, then the faithful Catholic still has the right to appeal to Church-wide proclamations from the Vatican, which carry more authority than bishops, and are to be followed in cases of contradiction. Some priests, however, have refused to give communion to a kneeling recipient, when the Church has specifically stated that all Catholics have a right to receive kneeling. The document above also made reference to Canon 907 from the Catholic Code of Canon Law:

Can. 907 In the eucharistic celebration deacons and lay persons are not permitted to offer prayers, especially the eucharistic prayer, or to perform actions which are proper to the celebrating priest.

Lacking specific instruction from the competent authority (the USCCB) you quote Jimmy Akin as saying holding hands during the Our Father is contrary to the rubrics. Following the link you provided to his article, he states:

Standing means standing without doing anything fancy with your arms.

This appears to be his rationale for declaring that holding hands is against the rubrics. Unfortunately, he does not give any authoritative reference for this statement. To the best of my knowledge, the definition of the word "standing" does not include "without doing anything fancy with your arms".
Let me cite him at greater length from this article:

Standing means standing without doing anything fancy with your arms. It is distinct, for example, from the orans posture, which the priest uses when he stands and prays with arms outstretched. It is also distinct from the hand-holding posture.
The latter is not expressly forbidden in liturgical law because it is one of those "Please don't eat the daisies" situations. The legislator (the pope) did not envision that anybody would try to alter the standing posture in this way. As a result, the practice is not expressly forbidden, the same way that standing on one foot and hopping up and down as an effort to get closer to God in heaven is not expressly forbidden.
In general what liturgical documents do is to say what people should be doing and not focus on what they should not be doing (though there are exceptions). To prevent "Please don't eat the daisies" situations, what the law does is prohibit things that aren't mentioned in the liturgical books. Here's the basic rule:

Can. 846 §1. In celebrating the sacraments the liturgical books approved by competent authority are to be observed faithfully; accordingly, no one is to add, omit, or alter anything in them on one’s own authority.

Akin is not the magisterium, of course, but he is a highly respected apologist who has written a book about rubrics in the Mass (Mass Confusion: The Do's and Don'ts of Catholic Worship; San Diego: Catholic Answers, 1999). He also regularly cites folks like canon lawyer Dr. Edward Peters (who has written about liturgical confusion and need for further codification).
He also says:

Changing from standing to hand holding during the Lord's Prayer would be an alteration or addition of something provided for in the liturgical books and thus would be at variance with the law.

Sneezing is an addition not provided in the liturgical books either. Standing and hand-holding are not either/or positions; they are both/and. I can hold hands while I stand.
I can also hug, kiss, clasp my hands far above my head, make a peace sign, clench my fists, point my fingers towards the priest with arms outstretched, or straight up, pick wax out of my ear, scratch my head, comb my hair, wave, put my hands on my waist (like an outfielder in baseball) and do any number of things while standing, that are not mentioned, either. Quite obviously a line has to be drawn somewhere. If these things were spontaneously introduced by the laity during Mass, then the Church has a right to more specifically define what can or can't be done (and folks should be reasonable in interpreting what "standing" means).
Isn't it common sense, anyway that "stand" means standing without implied reference to anything else (though not necessarily precluding gestures)? If one is, for example, told to stand in a courtroom, they wouldn't stand in the orans posture or hold someone's hands while standing, or put their hands on the top of their head. It would never cross their mind. So why would it be different in church?
I can assume the Orans posture while standing.
Not (or so it seems) according to Canon 907 and the high-level Instruction on Collaboration and deductively from the fact that even a deacon cannot do so. The laity can spontaneously do what a deacon cannot do?
Zenit, in a Q & A with Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum, provides the following:

Some readers asked if the U.S. bishops' vote against allowing the "orantes" posture meant that this gesture was forbidden in the United States. The bishops, in deciding not to prescribe or suggest any particular gesture during the Our Father, did not therefore proscribe any particular gesture either.
The bishops' conference decision does limit the possibility of another authority such as a pastor or even a diocesan bishop from prescribing this gesture as obligatory. But it need not constrain an individual from adopting the "orantes" posture nor, in principle, stop a couple or small group from spontaneously holding hands.
While holding hands during the Our Father is very much a novelty in the millenarian history of Catholic liturgy, the "orantes" posture, as one reader from Virginia reminds us, is as old as Christianity, is depicted in the catacombs, has always been preserved in the Eastern rites and was not reserved to the priest until after several centuries in the Latin rite -- and even then not everywhere.
The controversy regarding the use of the "orantes" posture for the Our Father appears to be confined to the English-speaking world. In many other places, it is pacifically accepted as an optional gesture which any member of the community is free to perform if so inclined.

I think this is interesting in light of the other things mentioned above. I'd sincerely like to see how Fr. McNamara harmonizes them.
So the Orans (or orantes) posture is not forbidden; it is a historical posture of the Church, and it is commonly accepted throughout the world.
It was not a common posture during Mass, according to canon lawyer Edward Peters, who observed:

While the orans position as such has a rich tradition in Jewish and even ancient Christian prayer life, there is no precedent for Catholic laity assuming the orans position in Western liturgy for at least a millennium and a half; that point alone cautions against its introduction without careful thought. Moreover — and notwithstanding the fact that few liturgical gestures are univocal per se — lay use of the orans gesture in Mass today, besides injecting gestural disunity in liturgy, could further blur the differences between lay liturgical roles and those of priests just at a time when distinctions between the baptismal priesthood and the ordained priesthood are struggling for a healthy articulation.

The previous Zenit article in the series includes the following statement from Fr. McNamara regarding the Orans/Orantes posture:

Despite appearances, this gesture is not, strictly speaking, a case of the laity trying to usurp priestly functions.
The Our Father is the prayer of the entire assembly and not a priestly or presidential prayer. In fact, it is perhaps the only case when the rubrics direct the priest to pray with arms extended in a prayer that he does not say alone or only with other priests. Therefore, in the case of the Our Father, the orantes posture expresses the prayer directed to God by his children.
The U.S. bishops' conference debated a proposal by some bishops to allow the use of the orantes posture while discussing the "American Adaptations to the General Instruction to the Roman Missal" last year. Some bishops even argued that it was the best way of ridding the country of holding hands. The proposal failed to garner the required two-thirds majority of votes, however, and was dropped from the agenda.
Fr. McNamara adds that this posture is accepted and officially recommended in Italy, with Vatican approval.
As I have said before, I am not in favor of holding hands during the Our Father. I accept the Orans posture but would quite happily do without it. However, given that there are no instructions to the contrary (and the document quoted by Mr. Akin is intended to address a completely different issue), I see no prohibition against it.

Then I look forward to your counter-explanations of what I have reiterated above. Thanks for the discussion.

[Transubstantiation] was articulated but the concept existed. Jesus said it was a hard thing to hear. It is also a hard thing to explain. That is why we walk by faith and not by sight.

I assume you mean *not* articulated? Otherwise I don’t get your contrast with “but the concept existed.” In any event, yes, from early on, some in the post-apostolic period used language which could be understood as supporting some form of “real presence,” despite the lack of unequivocal Biblical evidence for such, and despite the presence of a patristic stream of evidence that it was understood metaphorically and NOT “substantially” from the earliest times.

But this is not what I am saying. I am saying that the specific form given in the Trent formulation, the one with the anathema attached to it, was not even hinted at until Radbertus. If words have any meaning at all, I do not see how the lurch forward into the Aquinian substance swapping model does not constitute novelty. Nothing in the NT record or any of the early fathers suggests the bread’s true substance ceases to exist (and undetectably so), and that this swap occurs on demand of the consecratory prayer of a sacerdotally empowered priest:

“If anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular change of the whole substance of the bread into the body and the whole substance of the wine into the blood, the appearances only of bread and wine remaining, which change the Catholic Church most aptly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema.” (Council of Trent, Second Canon, Thirteenth Session).

The Trent Canon goes well beyond anything in Scripture, and beyond the patristic writings as well. As I said before, even the Lutheran and Reformed confessions admit of some sense of real presence, either of which would arguably be closer in meaning to the Biblical text than transubstantiation. Simply finding small hints in Scripture that seem to support some aspects of a later, and much more complex doctrine, does not justify the statement that said later doctrine is not a later development. As a matter of history, it IS a later development.

In a way, our disputes are about specific passages in Scripture. These doctrinal developments come from debate over the nature of Jesus, the Good News and Scripture itself. In all these debates, it was the Church who settled the issue. I can’t list all the heresies, they are a matter of record, but when they came, the final authority rested with the Church weighing Tradition and Scripture to proclaim what was True.

No, it was not “the Church who settled the issue.” It was God, persuading through Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit. See especially Athenasius versus the Arians. It was a Biblical battle. What does Jesus say in that famous passage:

“I will build my church.”

Who builds the church? Jesus does. Is it Peter? No. Is it councils? No. Is it Athenasius? Not even. We must be very careful here. God is jealous of His glory:

Isa 42:8 I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.

What happened to the Pharisees? They were the magisterium, sitting in the seat of Moses. But they fell to idolatry, to taking glory to themselves that belonged to God alone, taking credit for “protecting” the common folk by building “fences around the law” designed, theoretically to ensure faithfulness to the law, but which in reality became burdens and barriers, keeping people from a true relationship with God. All that horror stemming from the sin of spiritual pride. That is why Jesus called them blind guides. Not because they lacked a good teacher of the law. They had had plenty of those. And how did they treat them?:

Mat 21:32-40 For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him. (33) Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: (34) And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. (35) And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. (36) Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. (37) But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. (38) But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. (39) And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. (40) When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?

So what can we see from this? The husbandmen had no problem understanding the wishes of the owner of the vineyard. They even knew the son was the true heir. There was no mistake or ignorance. There was just a devilish rebellion to what they absolutely knew was the rightful claim of the owner. They didn’t misunderstand it. They just rejected it.

So we can see here that the Pharisees’ unbelief does NOT make a good argument for a need of an infallible magisterium. They WERE the magisterium, they understood perfectly well who Christ was, by prophecy, by signs and wonders, by words that bring eternal life. But they were blinded by their own idolatry. They had set themselves up in the place of God.

Is Jesus God, truly God? The same God as God the Father? Was Jesus human, truly human? Is the Holy Spirit God? Did Jesus truly die? If so, did God die? Did God raise Jesus, or did He raise Himself? Is baptism necessary? Should children/infants be baptized? Do we keep the Sabbath or celebrate the Lord’s Day? Did Jesus bodily rise from the dead? What is the structure of the Church? What sacred writings are actually Scripture? Why these and not others?

We find very different answers to all of these questions. Some are Truth, some are heresy; all with claims to be derived from Scripture. Which are Truth? Which are heresy?

No, as between you and me, we have remarkable agreement on most of the issues you listed. The pattern for all those in which we agree was set in the Scriptures we both hold as Scripture. Those in which we do not agree require extra-Biblical sources for you to support.

But there is a trap here. You are making a consequentialist argument. And that would be reasonable to some extent if we were talking about a purely human institution. You would want to design it to work within the limits of human fallibility.

But Jesus is the One building His church. He has a right to build it however he sees fit. And one of the things that happens in the true church is you get heresies:

1Co 11:19 For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.

But see how they have a place in the divine plan. They expose the truth, and with the truth, those who are approved, as Paul says. So it is the divine plan that matters, not the alleged pragmatic consequences of one ecclesiastical structure over another. Look first to the design, and the design will be found on the pages of Scripture (which Scripture is self-identifying by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the consensus of the faithful as a whole, and only later looked to by councils).

On then to Peter and the Inspiration of Scripture …

2Peter 1
(16) For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
(17) For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
(18) And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
(19) We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
(20) Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
(21) For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

And the underlying Greek …

16 Οὐ γὰρ σεσοφισμένοις μύθοις ἐξακολουθήσαντες ἐγνωρίσαμεν ὑμῖν τὴν τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ δύναμιν καὶ παρουσίαν, ἀλλʼ ἐπόπται γενηθέντες τῆς ἐκείνου μεγαλειότητος.
17 Λαβὼν γὰρ παρὰ θεοῦ πατρὸς τιμὴν καὶ δόξαν, φωνῆς ἐνεχθείσης αὐτῷ τοιᾶσδε ὑπὸ τῆς μεγαλοπρεποῦς δόξης, Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός, εἰς ὃν ἐγὼ εὐδόκησα•
18 καὶ ταύτην τὴν φωνὴν ἡμεῖς ἠκούσαμεν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ ἐνεχθεῖσαν, σὺν αὐτῷ ὄντες ἐν τῷ ὄρει τῷ ἁγίῳ.
19 Καὶ ἔχομεν βεβαιότερον τὸν προφητικὸν λόγον, ᾧ καλῶς ποιεῖτε προσέχοντες, ὡς λύχνῳ φαίνοντι ἐν αὐχμηρῷ τόπῳ, ἕως οὗ ἡμέρα διαυγάσῃ, καὶ φωσφόρος ἀνατείλῃ ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ὑμῶν•
20 τοῦτο πρῶτον γινώσκοντες, ὅτι πᾶσα προφητεία γραφῆς ἰδίας ἐπιλύσεως οὐ γίνεται.
21 Οὐ γὰρ θελήματι ἀνθρώπου ἠνέχθη ποτὲ προφητεία, ἀλλʼ ὑπὸ πνεύματος ἁγίου φερόμενοι ἐλάλησαν ἅγιοι θεοῦ ἄνθρωποι.

The first thing to notice in verse 19 is the bolded word “kai.” Kai is one of those amazing little multipurpose words in Greek that can have a variety of meanings depending on the context. It is most often translated as the simple conjunction “and.” What is perhaps less well understood about it is the role it plays in linking larger sequences than English sentences. In other words, while kai at times could show a strong linkage between clauses, at other times it amounts to a substitute for punctuation, which the earliest Greek Biblical texts did not have.

Despite this range of meaning for kai, some translators have chosen to *interpret* the text somewhat by giving “kai” the sense of “so,” attempting to show a causal link between the transfiguration and the the “more certain word,” as if to say the prophetic word was somehow “made more sure” by those events, or as you have put it, confirmed by those events. Obviously, nothing is objectively more certain than God’s word, whether given from Heaven in the hearing of the disciples, or delivered by the Holy Spirit to the pens of the prophets. So it is impossible that Peter here is referring to objective certainty.

Nevertheless, in defense of that position, one could surmise he was speaking of the greater certainty of his hearers, resulting from Peter’s personal testimony of what he saw and heard on that mountain. But he doesn’t actually say that. He is literally saying “…and we have more certain the prophetic word…” The “greater certainty” (bebaioteron) is an adjective which here seems most naturally to be amplifying the prophetic word itself.

However, there is no particular reason to use anything other than a simple “and” here. Peter is simply going from one proof to the next of what should convince the believer that Christ really will return, just as He promised. He first dismisses the idea that it was just a clever tale. Then he shares his personal testimony to the convincing reality of the Transfiguration, with God Himself speaking from Heaven. Yet he knows that is only his own personal experience, and that by itself it does not prove to anyone else the Second Coming will occur. So he moves on to the ultimate proof, God’s calling card, the absolute certainty of His written word:

Isa 46:9-10 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, (10) Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

Then what does he mean by “the daystar arising in your hearts?” We cannot begin to imagine, I think, what it will be like on that day when the dead in Christ will rise, and the living will be transformed, and we shall finally, eternally be with Him. We will go from walking in darkness with a lantern to the burst of full daylight, all uncertainty, all sorrow washed away in a moment, our old selves gone forever, the new creation He has made us standing in its place, joining hands with our Savior, when we meet Him face to face.

“know this first,” as if to say, this is the most important thing I’m telling you, lock this in, that God’s written word didn’t have its genesis (ginetai) in the private explanations of the prophets, but in the revealing of God’s word via the Holy Spirit. This appears to be the high note in his crescendo of proofs, that the most important thing we can know, if we desire to be certain of Jesus’ return, is that the Scriptures, which prophesy His coming in gory, are not man-made, but are a direct product of God, and therefore are reliable to the uttermost.

******And sonny I mean everything,*****

That is from your first post with the story of the diary, which I included in my response. Either the Bible does or does not contain the ability to know everything. I have not argued that it is not sufficient; I believe it is when one has been taught how to read and understand it.

Well, it’s my story, so I know what I meant. I’m sorry if it wasn’t clear, but the context is King Solomon’s mines, and the object of the “everything” is “everything necessary to get the good stuff out of those mines.”

So the sufficiency I am illustrating is the two-fold sufficiency in 2Tim 3:15-17, sufficient to lead one to salvation in Christ, and further sufficient to make one prepared for all aspects of the Christian life. The reason this definition of sufficiency is important is because:

1. It excludes the false notion that we Sola Scriptura folks are teaching the Bible is sufficient for everything. It is not. If you want to build nuclear reactors, you have to use material largely NOT found in Scripture. But if you want to know God and God’s Christ, and live a life pleasing to Him in every respect, then everything you need to know about that life of faith is present in that Book.
2. It is also important because if what is IN the Bible is enough to become a Christian and live right before God, then we know that whatever comes from outside the Scriptures is not necessary to either of those specific purposes. This is why we do not need to have in Scripture a complete catalog of all possible heresies. It's the counterfeit recognition problem. You’ve probably heard this before. As I understand it, banks do not teach all possible varieties of counterfeit money. That would be patently impossible. Instead they ingrain in their tellers the knowledge of the true currency. That way, anything fake is recognized immediately as a discrepancy from the true model. It is a much more efficient model for transmitting large amounts of truth in a very small package. Or again, like our dna, the error correction doesn’t have to “know” about all the possible bad mutations. It only has to know the true pattern. The mutations are recognized as the appear because they do not match the pattern of truth.

Here would probably be a good place to mention the terms formal versus material sufficiency. Perhaps I am oversimplifying it a bit, but I believe most current Catholic apologists, even yourself, essentially admit to the material sufficiency of Scripture, that is, that everything one needs to know for salvation and Christian life may be found somewhere in the Scriptures. Where there is disagreement is formal sufficiency, by which is generally meant the ability of an ordinary person to pick up the Bible and find the right information to be saved and mature as a believer. By denying formal sufficiency, the Roman magisterium seeks to retain its claimed necessity as the one infallible interpreter of Scripture.

By contrast, Protestants generally hold to what is called the perspicuity of Scripture, and this is largely misrepresented and misunderstood by most whom I have seen argue against it. The basic idea is that we believe God is perfectly capable of inspiring a text that ordinary people can understand with both heart and mind, IF aided by the Holy Spirit, and without denying the benefit of teachers in the church gifted by the Holy Spirit for the opening up of God’s word.

From a logical standpoint, the problem is you cannot have more than one Ultimate Authority. Any supposed harmonization between the two will inevitably result in one swallowing up the other. As with the Pharisees, their overambitious view of the magisterium led them to a place where their oral tradition undermined the Scriptural law of Moses. They became their own ultimate authority.

Protestantism rejects that model. Humans are fallen, corrupt, and corruptible. Even those who assume leadership roles in the church. There must be accountability to an Ultimate Authority, and that authority must either be those who claim to speak for God or the very words of God. It cannot be both. The risk of a wrong choice is idolatry.

Peace,

The belief of the early Greek Fathers in Transubstantiation is apparent from the terms they employ in speaking of the conversion of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of our Lord

I think not. Lets look at the terms:

1. metaballo. This is just "change." It could refer to any aspect of the elements, including their natural physical change upon consumption, their change from common bread and wine to elements set aside for some divine purpose. Nothing in this term gets us to the idea expressed by Trent.
This especially true of Theodoret, in which it is specifically denied that the nature changes, but only that grace is added to the nature of the element. For example, in his Eranistes dialogue, he writes:

Eran: "Therefore, just as the symbols of the Lord's body and of his blood are one thing before the priest's invocation, but after the invocation are changed, and become something else, so to was the Lord's body changed, after the ascension, into the divine essence."
Ortho: "You have been caught in the nets which you have woven, for not even after the consecration do the mystical symbols depart from their own nature! They continue in their former essence, both in shape and appearance, and are visible, and palpable, as they were beforehand"

In the above quote you must understand that Eran is the heretic and Ortho the "orthodox" believer. Therefore, mere use of the term μεταστοιχειοῦν does not require the rigidly Aquinian exchange of substances, up to and including the soul and divinity of Christ, envisioned by transubstantiation as expressed in Trent:

If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist are contained truly, really and substantially the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ, but says that He is in it only as in a sign, or figure or force, LET HIM BE ANATHEMA.

2. Metastoikeioun (“transelementation”)
Transelementation is a word some Orthodox use to avoid using transubstantiation, because they don’t wish to confine the mystery of the Eucharist to one particular model of human understanding. This relies on the fact that a change in the elements is not necessarily the same as a complete displacement of the created elements in favor of the divine elements. Once again, either sacramental union or spiritual presence would fit within this term, so it does not isolate specifically to transubstantiation.
3 & 4. Metapoiein (“alteration”) and Metarruthmitzeiv (“transformation”) both suffer from the same disability. Is the alteration spoken of a corporeal change? Or is it a reassignment of ownership and meaning, which, as I understand it, was a fairly common meme among the Greek patristics?

It bears noting at this point that all of the figures you cite using these terms are not really very early, but I believe are all proximate to the Nicene period. In the first centuries of the Church, “realistic” Eucharistic language slips nearly completely off the radar. Again, I accept that there was a drift among some in that direction, but as an adverse evolutionary process, a slow shift away from the simplicity of the original community meal that more truly represented obedience to the words of Christ and the Apostles, a shift that would not reach maturity until Aquinas fused the Eucharist with Aristotle’s categories.

Indirectly the Fathers express their belief in Transubstantiation whenever they deny, as they often do, that the bread and the wine continue to exist as independent substances after the consecration, or affirm that the terminus ad quem of the conversion that takes place in the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Christ.

First, there is a difference between being a “dependent” substance, i.e., bread or wine with some new quality, whether spiritual or physical, versus ceasing to exist at all, except as a false projection onto human perception. So any such muted approach to the question of what happens to the bread and wine as substance does not reach the standard of Trent. Remember, there is an anathema for admitting the substance continues in any way after the alleged transformation.

Second, even if there were any merit in this branch of your argument, I would not be able to certify it as true, because you have given me no way to analyze the aforementioned Greek terms in context of the fathers mentioned. This is an unreasonable burden. Have you any citations for “as they often do?” I know what the Catholic apologist wants to get out of these writings, but often on close examination of the actual citations, in context, there will be clues of a more primitive meaning than full Aquinian transubstantiation. So if you could please direct me to where these “indirect” references occur, I would appreciate it.

Thus St. Cyril of Jerusalem says: Μεταβάλλεται καὶ οὐκέτι ἄρτος. St Ambrose: “Species elementorum mutatur.” Cyril of Alexandria declares that the bread is changed into the true Body of Christ; Chrysostom, that it becomes His crucified Body; Ambrose, that it is converted into the Body born of the Virgin Mary.

The so-called Liturgy of St. Chrysostom contains this beautiful prayer: “Send down Thy Spirit upon us and these Thy gifts [i. e. the Eucharistic elements], make this bread into the precious Body of Thy Christ. (Deacon: Amen). But that which is in the Chalice make into the precious Blood of Thy Christ (Deacon: Amen), converting it (μεταβαλών) through Thy Holy Spirit (Deacon thrice: Amen).… The Lamb of God, the Son of the Father, is broken and divided—broken but not diminished, everlastingly eaten but not annihilated, sanctifying those who partake thereof.”

If the information in the link below is correct, the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom is derived from the Liturgy of St. Basil, which in turn is derived from a chap identified here as “pseudo-Proclus:”

http://www.orthodoxchristian.info/pages/Basils.html

…so this suggested date, 8th or 9th Century, is roughly contemporaneous with Radbertus, and that tends to confirm rather than deny my thesis that the full form of transubstantiation is a much later development.

The following invocation is from the Liturgy of St. Basil: “Make this bread into the precious Body of our Lord and God and Redeemer Jesus Christ, and this chalice into the Blood of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, which was shed for the life of the world.”

See above comment on the genesis and dating of the Liturgy of St. Basil. Nevertheless, the language in Basil’s version is equivocal. While I would agree that it looks here like metaphor has finally been displaced, sacramental union or spiritual presence remain distinct possibilities. And certainly nothing at all about the soul or divinity of Christ, as Trent describes it.

And why might it be important that the full Trent formula be in view? Because by assessing the Real Presence in an ostensibly physical object like the bread or the (much neglected) wine, transubstantiation creates the basis for the full adoration and worship of a physical object. Again, nothing like this is present in the early centuries of the life of the church. As I am sure you are aware, we of the Reformed persuasion refuse absolutely to worship any physical representation of God. Even Thomas did not fall in worship at the feet of Jesus because of His body and blood being present, but because the full person of the Son of God was standing before him, body, soul and spirit.

Transubstantiation crosses a critical threshold by claiming that a man-made object is not in fact a representation but the full presence of Christ Himself, at all three levels, spirit, soul, and corporeality. Furthermore, that alleged “reality” is routinely created by the incantations of a sacerdotal class never instituted in the New Testament church, and in such a manner as can never be verified, notwithstanding all of God’s other corporeal miracles were in fact verifiable by direct observation.

All of this is to point out the fact that no one convinced by Scripture of the seriousness of idolatry can possibly accept or participate in the adoration of the host without the strongest possible certainty that this is the express will of God, that what looks like a human-manufactured representation, and appears in Scripture most certainly to be a metaphor for pure faith in the words and sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, is what deserves our most fervent worship. All this, this giant leap of “faith,” not at the word of God-breathed Scripture, but at the word of some mortal claiming to speak for God.

It reminds me of the word of faith heresy I learned of as a young man. I was listening to the radio and a caller was asking the “word of faith” teacher what was wrong. She had believed as hard as she could, and still she was blind. The teacher told her it was her fault, for not having enough faith, that she ought to just act as if the healing had occurred, because that was the greatest act of faith, and surely God would honor that. I am sure you would share with me a proper, boiling outrage for that teacher and his false teaching. That poor woman. I felt so bad for her.

But no physical miracle of God ever asked us to disbelieve our “lying” eyes, the eyes He gave us. When God parted the Red Sea, you could see the water piled up on either side. When Jesus healed the blind man, he could actually see where he was going after that. Nobody had to take it on faith that Lazarus, who was really dead, was now suddenly really alive before their very eyes. Jesus didn’t tell Peter to “see by faith” the miraculous bounty of fish Jesus put in his nets . They were really there. You could fillet them, cook them, and eat them.

Jesus does not despise those who seek empirical evidence. He accommodated Thomas’ demand. He has proved Himself to countless others. In my own case I was eyewitness to the power of His name in driving supernatural evil out of someone I barely knew. I was not much of a Christian at the time. But I had heard there was power in Jesus’ name, and I wanted to see if it was true. I knew there were long, fancy formulas that only really special people were supposed to say, but like Thomas, I wanted to see it for myself. And I knew that God could do it if He wanted, even if I didn’t know the formulas. And sure enough, He did it. It had nothing at all to do with me. I was still a next to nothing Christian. But God was willing to show His power that day to a modern young Thomas. I have never been the same. And I have no doubt God can do whatever miracle He wants. But I also know this. When He acts, the real world changes.

In the Armenian Liturgy we read: “Consecrate this bread and wine into the true Body and the true Blood of our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ, changing (permutans) it through Thy Holy Spirit.”

The Mass formularies of the Western Church are equally expressive. The ancient Gothic liturgy says: “This is the Lamb of God, which, being sacrificed, never dies, but, though slaughtered, lives everlastingly.… May the Paraclete descend, that we may partake of the sacrificial gift in heavenly conversion, and that, after the consecration of the fruit [bread] into the Body, and of the chalice into the Blood, it may conduce to our salvation.”

An ancient Gallican Missal contains the following prayer: “May the fulness of Thy Majesty, O Lord, … descend upon this bread and upon this chalice, and may [it] become unto us the legitimate Eucharist in the transformation of the Body and Blood of the Lord.”

Here I am posed with an impossibility. I found a copy of the text from which you apparently drew this, but the formatting was completely jumbled up, and I cannot track where this “Gallican Missal” (Gallilean?) fits into the timeline of the evolution of the Eucharistic doctrines. That’s critical to my analysis because I accept that there was in fact an evolution, i.e., that certain early sources began the skew to an excessively literal sense, but without arriving at the full-orbed construct of Aquinian transubstantiation. But I cannot know how these pieces shape up into one pattern or another unless I can locate them in time. So without such information these last few evidences must be held in suspended judgment.

So in the end it is lex orandi, lex credendi : how we pray is how we believe. Whether its unequivocal enough is for you to decide. That's a man-made imposition in any event. Do the ECF's repeat word for word the thomistic understanding of Transubstantiation? No. Is transubstantiation as defined at Trent new? No. It's always important to understand the ECF's in full context and in harmony with what they believed.

Nope. Doctrinal equivocation is something that has enough objective reality that it isn’t up to me. I’m not imposing anything. I just believe words have meaning, and if it can be shown that a specific expression of belief did not exist at time A, and it does exist at time B, then something new has entered the mix. No valid system of theology can be so fluid and subjective that it leaves us utterly defenseless against the introduction of false new ideas.

BTW, “how we pray is how we believe” has some truth to it. Anybody who’s ever prayed to God for the salvation of someone else’s soul is … wait for it … a Calvinist. Why ask God for something He cannot deliver, if in fact one does not truly believe He has that level of sovereignty? For my part, I side with Augustine on this issue, and pray accordingly.

Peace,

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