Know your sources, Part II
A new/old World Order: 1, 2 , 3, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4, 5, 6 , 7, 8, 8a, 8aFR, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13
This is a follow-on to the original here that exhorts us to pay attention to what comes from where, as nothing is as it seems.
Update: the following post here links these two parts into the original series here.
I have been attending online the Canterbury Cathedral’s choral evensong (above)… as much for the beauty of cathedral and song as the service! I noticed the despite being Anglican, the Credo is the same as the Catholic (Anglican, Vatican) keeping ‘the holy catholic Church’ in both. I emailed Canterbury whose front desk sent it on to a Canon who has yet to reply, so I decided to Google it and found this interesting resource here:
In her excellent book, The Making of the Creeds, Frances Young notes that “Christianity is the only major religion to set such store by creeds and doctrines.” While other religions have their sacred scriptures, prayers, religious practices, art forms, or codes of ethics, Christianity is unique in its high valuation of doctrinal truth. It places a strong emphasis on orthodoxy as opposed to heresy — that is, right belief or praise (ortho-doxa) as opposed to “personal choice” (“heresy” coming from a Greek word for “choice” or “preference”).
The wrinkle being, that’s where Unitarians and Quakers ‘exit left stage’ — both I belonged to at one time or another — the former do not recognise the Trinity [1], and the latter go for personal choice: notice that in line with this post’s topic, her reminder of where ‘heresy’ comes from is interesting; it shows how culture twists meanings [2].
A previous post here was in fact seminal to Parts I & II here — it concluded that “customs and religion are long-term distillations of practices and faith over millennia” — an important clue when discerning what came from where, right? If Creeds lay the foundation — set the dogmatic framework — then customs govern the evolution of what’s built atop that foundation — set the evolutionary framework — the same way as languages evolve.
Let’s not confuse this with Councils, however, like the Nicean one mentioned about and more recently Vatican II: they evolve the dogmatic framework rather then the customs that flow from it. Cases in point are the Credo switching Jesus going ‘to the Dead’ insread of ‘to Hell’ (Wikipedia), or Our Father switching from “Do not submit us to temptation” to “Do not let us enter into temptation” in France (LA Times). The same also say it’s “not suggesting changing Jesus’ words, but just giving a better translation”... And translations have been the bane of all things Biblical, haven’t they?
Update: I’m told the Credo say ‘catholic’ not ‘Catholic’:
catholic
/ˈkaθ(ə)lɪk/
adjective
1. including a wide variety of things; all-embracing.
“her tastes are pretty catholic”
Let me close with a curious case of mistranslation, from ancient Greece this time, for fun. Athenians faced with Persian Xerxes’ invasion ~500BC, received an oracle that “a wooden pallisade” would defend them. Themistocles correctly interpreted it as meaning a navy of wooden boats against Persian fleet, not wooden walls around the Acropolis (JSTOR).
Likewise, now it’s thought that the famous Trojan horse was mistranslated as meaning boats originally (Medium) — ἵππος (hippos) was ship for Phoenicians and horse for Greeks — and as Troy was on a peninsula, a similar interpretation as Themistocles’ wooden pallisade of ships is not out of the question… Imagine all the stories and memes that need to be rewritten now!
1: they parted company after the First Council of Nicea (Wikipedia) affirming the doctrine of the Trinity, hence the name Unitarian. Interstingly the Nicene Creed (here) “is a more detailed summary of what the whole Church believes about the great doctrines of the Christian faith”.
2: for example in “workman”, ‘man’ comes from the Latin ‘manus’ — as in the hand, the person that does the work — and nothing to do with ‘man’ as in gender… as titled, “Know your sources” (from footnote [2] in Part 1 here)
