Catholic Community Forum

[post] [thread] (I am posting this thread from the Catholic Community Forum in reverse chronological order, so that they show up in the right order in this blog).

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Originally Posted by cpks Not exactly. The two possible senses of "Jesus shed his blood for many/all" were distinguished by the fathers of the council of Trent. They said that Jesus was speaking in one sense, not the other, because in the other sense, it would contradict other sound doctrine equally based on the teaching of our Lord.

Now I think you are saying here that the fathers of the council of Trent taught that when Jesus said many, he really meant all, because if he meant many, it would contradict other sound doctrine. I am baffled as to how you could arrive at such a conclusion. Read through post #84. The Fathers say that Jesus deliberately said "for many", not "for all", because he was speaking of the fruits of the Passion, and to the elect only did His Passion bring the fruit of salvation.

If I have misunderstood you, what is the other sense you referred to, in which you said our Lord was not speaking?

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Originally Posted by MichaelDunphy However, I am not sure how a variation in the meaning of the word "for" in Our Lord's words gets you to anything like your two sentences.

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Originally Posted by cpks If you mean the two headlines, then in (1) the meaning of "for" was "for the sake of" and in (2) it was "for the benefit of".

No, I was referring to this statement:

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Originally Posted by cpks Now it is clear from this that there are not two senses here of "shedding" or "blood", but rather two senses of "for". In the first sense, the "value" sense, Jesus shed his blood with the intention of or, perhaps better, for the enabling of, the salvation of all. In the second sense, of course, the fruit of the passion is to the benefit of many, but alas perhaps not all.

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Originally Posted by cpks Why does Michael Dunphy insist on talking about "a variation in the meaning of 'for' in our Lord's words"?

You brought up "two senses of 'for'"; I didn't.

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Originally Posted by cpks I am not alleging any variation in the meaning of our Lord's words. I am talking about how people would understand a quotation of our Lord's words in a liturgical context - just ordinary people walking in off the street and not immediately seeing a connexion to, e.g., Is 53:11-12. This is what the liturgist has to consider. Hence the appropriateness of holding up two newspaper headlines. The question is not about what Jesus said (that is adequately represented by the reliable biblical translations and by the Latin text of the words of consecration). The question is about how it's translated into vernacular English in the vernacular liturgical context.

The question is exactly "What did Jesus say?" All through this discussion it seems as if you have forgotten that immediately before the consecration of the wine, the priest tells the congregation that what he is about to say is what Jesus said. It is never appropriate to misrepresent what Jesus said, but the absolute worst time possible is at the most solemn moment of the Mass, when the priest speaks in persona Christi, using the words of Christ, so that He will be truly present on the altar. Only now, rather than speaking Christ's words, the priest is forced to speak ICEL's words instead.

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Originally Posted by MichaelDunphy We can certainly both agree that "the Redeemer shed His blood for the salvation of all". That is straight from the Fathers. That is the value of His Passion. Notice, however, that when the Fathers are describing the value of His Passion, they do not reference His words at the Last Supper. His words, they say, "serve to declare the fruit and advantage of His Passion". Furthermore, "if we look to the fruit which mankind have received from it, we shall easily find that it pertains not unto all, but to many".

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Originally Posted by cpks True, admirable, agreed, but irrelevant.

It is relevant if you think the Fathers teach that when Jesus said "for many" He really meant "for everyone". They don't teach that, and the point of the quotes was to point that out.

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Originally Posted by MichaelDunphy If Jesus said that "My blood...shall be shed...for many", it seems one either has to agree that His blood is shed for many, or believe that His words were incorrectly recorded, or believe that Jesus was mistaken about the purpose of His sacrifice.

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Originally Posted by cpks This seems to me to be missing the point, and indeed offering all sorts of false alternatives. There is no question that Jesus's blood was "shed for many" in the sense that the fathers at Trent held. There is no question that Jesus's blood was "shed for many" in the sense of "the all who are many" that we see in the semitic idiom exemplified by e.g. Is 53:11. In this sense, we need not have resort to the theory of the fathers at Trent, that Jesus was speaking of the fruits of his passion, since nobody could rightly or credibly allege that Jesus was inconsistently here proposing that his blood was being shed for the effective salvation ("fruits" sense) of absolutely all. There is no question whether Jesus's words were incorrectly recorded. Please! There has never been any suggestion that Jesus "misunderstood" anything. I find the use of these false alternatives, which are totally unrelated to what has gone before, bizarre.

Either our Lord's words were recorded correctly, or they were not. If they are recorded correctly, those words are themselves either correct or not correct. There are no other alternatives, so these are not false alternatives.

oi polloi ("the many") is said to be the Greek idiom that corresponds to the alleged "all who are many" meaning of saggi'in ("many"). It seemed to me you might believe that Matthew and Mark erred in translating saggi'in as "many" instead of "the many", considering that you mentioned oi polloi yourself, and said it was eminently justifiable to examine how the Greek word was actually used in the NT. [This was my second alternative]

But in this post you agree that reliable Bibles and the Latin Mass are correct: Jesus said He sheds His blood "for many". [My first alternative]

I mentioned the third alternative [Jesus misunderstood] for completeness and as a way one could logically simultaneously hold that Jesus said He died for many, and that it is improper to say that Jesus died for many.

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Originally Posted by cpks This is ad hominem, ungrounded and unworthy.

I thought the point of your story was it is so shocking to say that a father died for some of His children, that Jesus could not possibly have been saying something similar about himself. I know you didn't mean it that way. What I think you meant, is that we can't tell people He said that He died for many, because they might misunderstand. I'm sure you'll correct me, if I'm wrong. To my mind, what I now think you are saying is worse than what I thought you were saying before, because it seems as if you are saying "Yes, I know Jesus said He would shed His blood for many, but I think we should say He said something else, instead".

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Originally Posted by cpks True, but inadequate. First, because it confuses the task of the biblical translator with that of the liturgist. Second, because it glosses over the task of the translator, which is to communicate something - what? One may take the view that simple literalness is all that is required. One may take the different view that communication of the truth about our Lord is required. All the time, we are working within the constraints of language as it is commonly understood, and different situations demand different responses as to how these tasks are best addressed.

If you want to express a truth about our Lord, other than a truth about something He said, don't start off by saying "He said".

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Originally Posted by cpks I hope, moreover, that "misrepresenting the words of Christ" does not encompass the interpolation of the words "mysterium fidei" into the words of consecration in the liturgy. (Ah, but Jesus never actually said those words. - Oh, well that's all right, then.)

It is your opinion that Christ never said "the mystery of faith". It is the opinion of the Fathers at Trent that Christ did. Scripture does not record every word our Lord spoke.

It would be a reasonable interpretation of the Roman Catechism quote in post 84 to conclude that "mysterium fidei" is required for a valid consecration. Reasonable, but wrong, I think. At the time of Trent, Eastern Catholics were celebrating their Divine Liturgies as they had for centuries, without the "mysterium fidei", and without censure from Rome. From this one can conclude that more than one form of the sacrament is permissible. What I object to is the importation of words contrary to Scripture and Tradition into the formula of consecration.

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Originally Posted by cpks I don't argue that the Latin word is "wrong". I don't argue that the Latin words of consecration should be changed - absolutely not! I cited "hoi polloi" (with the definite article) merely to show that "polloi" on its own was not, in the Greek idiom, so opposed to the sense of "all" as the English word "many". I think that if the English words "for the/a multitude" were used to translate "pro multis", it would be closer to the sense of Jesus's original words than "for many", and less prone to misunderstanding; but this is a question of nuance, and not at all owing to any mistaken belief that "polloi" was used with the definite article here.

A writer whose opinion I respect has the same idea: he advocates translating pro multis as "for the multitudes". It seems to me, however, if Matthew and Mark both chose to leave the definite article out when translating our Lord's words into Greek, we should respect their choice and not add the article, since that could change the meaning of what they wrote.

Thank you for the extra comments on your headlines example. I should have remarked that although I remain unconvinced, your example was moving and offer about as strong a case as I can imagine for your point of view.

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Originally Posted by cpks As to these private interpretations of Isaiah:

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Originally Posted by MichaelDunphy v.6: We [almost] all sin, or at least are stained by original sin.

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Originally Posted by cpks Contrast Isaiah: "...and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." [RV]

Here, I consider your scepticism justified. I was thinking only about the verse referring to [almost] all of us, and left out the main point, which that our Lord bears the burden of our sins. If it is the "almost" that bothers you, the exceptions that I was thinking of are the Lord Himself, and His mother.

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Originally Posted by MichaelDunphy v.11&12 Many of us will win pardon for our offences because of the Sacrifice of Christ.

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Originally Posted by cpks Contrast Isaiah: "...yet he bare the sin of many" [v. 12, RV]

I should have quoted the verses from the Bible I was looking at, the New American Bible, which is what the version I hear at Mass on Sundays. In that translation, verse 12 ends:

And he shall take away the sins of many, and win pardon for their offenses.

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Originally Posted by MichaelDunphy If you prefer to say that "all" will win pardon for their sins...

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Originally Posted by cpks Ad hominem and unworthy! In citing these verses I was not seeking to interpret their significance for the doctrine of the atonement at all, other than to assert that they are plainly relevant to that doctrine. What I was asserting was that if you compare them, you will see that whereas in v. 6 the Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all, in v. 12 he bore the sin of many. Unless one is committed to a doctrine that some of what the Lord laid upon his suffering servant unaccountably slipped off, it should be apparent to the most unprejudiced reader that "many" and "all" are not opposed in this chapter in the way that they would appear to be in English.

I was simply substituting "all" for "many" in the translation I had in front of me. I am not arguing that "many" has to be opposed to "all", only that the two words are not interchangeable and that one should not be substituted for the other.

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Originally Posted by cpks ICEL may have made this rather "free" translation for the worst of reasons. Had it been applied to scripture, rather than to the vernacular liturgy, it would have been a grave mistake. As it is, however, there are good grounds for leaving it alone, however defective ICEL's reasons or intentions might have been. The most important ground is that some might be led to the false belief that Jesus's sacrifice atoned only for the sins of the elect, and that therefore it cannot be said of the rest that they turned down an offer that was open to them, or a sacrifice that sufficed to redeem them. There are other, much more grievous mistranslations that ICEL has done. And I ask (again): why, then, are people so focused on this particular one?

Speaking only for myself, even if there are more blatant mistranslations, there are none more grievous. In other parts of the Mass, ICEL has monkeyed with the words of men, but this case they have altered the words of our Lord. In my eyes, at the most solemn part of the Mass, infidelity to the truth and to our Lord are on display, and it raises some doubts in my mind as to the validity of the consecration.

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"The consecration is accomplished by the words and expressions of the Lord Jesus. Because, by all the other words spoken, praise is rendered to God, prayer is put up for the people, for kings, and others; but when the time comes for perfecting the sacrament, the priest uses no longer his own words, but the words of Christ. Therefore, it is Christ's words that perfect this sacrament." (St. Ambrose, De Sacram. iv)