When the Consilium ad exsequendam was engaged in its work of radical liturgical reform in the 1960s, it was the ‘expert consensus’ that the so-called Apostolic Tradition was written by Hippolytus of Rome, and provided a witness to the liturgy more ancient than the Roman Canon. Thus, we were given various “restorations” in the Roman Rite, such as Eucharistic Prayer II, popularly known as the ‘Canon of Hippolytus,’ as well as an epiclesis in every one of the new eucharistic prayers, since this was thought to be a primitive feature of all liturgies that mysteriously went missing from the Roman Canon. Indeed, one still hears these sorts of things from time to time, even from people who ought to know better!
Of course, the current scholarly consensus is that the Apostolic Tradition is neither the work of Hippolytus or any other individual. Rather, it is now considered to be a composite work redacted over several centuries, and not at all representative of the early Christian liturgical tradition in Rome (being West Syrian in origin). [1] Eucharistic Prayer II is thus the best-known example of previously ‘assured results’ of historical-critical scholarship making their way into the post-conciliar reforms without, as it turns out, much of an ‘assured’ basis at all—in spite of the admonition of Sacrosanctum Concilium 23 that “there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.”
It should not be terribly surprising, then, that there are many other examples of dated scholarship influencing aspects of the work of the liturgical reformers, and I would like to highlight one that recently jumped out to me. Is the famous passage from Philippians 2, 6-11, used in the post-Vatican II Liturgy of the Hours as a canticle at I Vespers of Sundays every week, really an early ‘Christ-hymn' that was used in the primitive liturgy?’
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| “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2, 8) |
Well, on a personal level, this is certainly what I was told by my biblical studies and theology lecturers back when I was at university. Many scholarly commentaries on Philippians claim that 2, 6-11 is an early Christian hymn. For example:
[T]his is a hymn devised for and taken from the context of public worship… [T]he unusual vocabulary of the hymn, with its many hapax legomena, the careful parallel construction, and the rhythm of the Greek original all suggest a pre-existing hymn. The passage is different in tone from what surrounds it, uses many non-Pauline terms and the sort of servant language that is largely absent from Paul’s other letters. On stylistic grounds it seems that Paul, like a good preacher, is using a pre-existing hymn illustratively in his exhortation to the Philippian congregation. Just as modern preachers may use a stanza or two of a well-known hymn to illustrate a point in a sermon precisely because the hymn is well known to the hearers, Paul is using a similar approach here. [Bonnie B. Thurston and Judith M. Ryan, Philippians and Philemon (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), pp. 85-86]
In what he says about Jesus Christ, the Apostle is not simply proposing him as a model for us to follow. Possibly transcribing an early liturgical hymn adding some touches of his own, he is—under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit—giving a very profound exposition of the nature of Christ and using the most sublime truths of faith to show the way Christian virtues should be practised. [The Navarre Bible: Saint Paul’s Captivity Letters (New York: Scepter Publishers, 2005), p. 102]
To give greater force to the plea which Paul has just addressed to his readers, he now introduces one of the earliest Christological hymns. This hymn embodies the essence of early Christian faith, the faith which acclaims the humiliation and exaltation of Christ… The stately and solemn ring of the words of this hymn are unmistakable even in English translation. The passage has a liturgical style, with its majestic rhythms, balanced clauses, and artful parallelisms. The hymn may be pre-Pauline, since it contains some uncommon words and ideas not found in other Pauline writings. [I-Jin Loh and Eugene A. Nida, A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (New York: United Bible Societies, 1995), p. 54]
The Catechism of the Catholic Church also makes the claim that Philippians 2, 6-11 is a hymn, on multiple occasions:
In a hymn cited by Saint Paul, the Church sings the mystery of the Incarnation: ‘Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus…’ (CCC 461)Like the inspired writers of the New Testament, the first Christian communities read the Book of Psalms in a new way, singing in it the mystery of Christ. In the newness of the Spirit, they also composed hymns and canticles in the light of the unheard-of event that God accomplished in his Son: his Incarnation, his death which conquered death, his Resurrection, and Ascension to the right hand of the Father [footnote 125: Cf. Phil 2, 6-11; Col 1, 15–20; Eph 5, 14; 1 Tim 3, 16; 6, 15-16; 2 Tim 2, 11113]. (CCC 2641)The most usual formulation, transmitted by the spiritual writers of the Sinai, Syria, and Mt. Athos, is the invocation, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners.” It combines the Christological hymn of Philippians 2, 6-11 with the cry of the publican and the blind men begging for light. (CCC 2667)
In terms of liturgical studies, no less a figure than Klaus Gamber, taking the form-critical work of numerous other scholars such as H. Lietzmann, R. Deichgraber and J. Jeremias as reliable, wrote in 1970 that “The basis thesis, that this passage is itself a pre-Pauline (liturgical) hymn, has become almost universal today.” [2] However, as Ralph P. Martin pointed out in the late-1960s, “It is a singular fact that it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the unusual literary character of Philippians ii. 5-11 was detected and classified.” [3] This ought to have been a red flag for exegetes and interpreters, yet, as so often in academic biblical studies, theory and reconstructions quite quickly overtook the actual evidence—which, as Markus Bockmuehl noted in his 1997 commentary on Philippians, has always been basically non-existent:
Everyone agrees on the fact that exalted, lyrical, quasi-credal language is employed in these verses. There is an undeniable rhythm here, combined with typically poetic tension, repetition and a Hebraic-sounding parallelism (e.g. v. 7b, 8b), although occasional proposals to identify a clear meter have been forced and implausible… Despite continuing assertions of this ‘hymn’ being sung in one setting or another, we have in fact no contextual evidence of such use; nor is the passage ever cited in this connection in Christian literature of the first or second century… Perhaps another telling argument against a ‘hymnic’ reading of this passage is the observation that scholars have advanced at least half a dozen mutually incompatible proposals of how the different stanzas are to be arranged and divided. Some of these in fact depend on surgery on the text as it stands, involving various omissions or rearrangements… This lack of agreement about the very form and outline of our passage suggests that, even though poetic style and credal language are undoubtedly present, it is unwarranted and potentially misleading to call it a ‘hymn’ in the absence of evidence for its liturgical usage. [4]
As with the so-called Apostolic Tradition, more recent scholarship has moved away from the idea that Philippians 2, 6-11 (as well as other New Testament passages) was ever a ‘hymn’ at all. For example:
The reconstruction of ‘Christ hymns’ and other formulaic pieces considered to originate from early Christian liturgy seemed to allow a deeper insight into the worship of the first Christians. These optimistic attempts found their climax in the thesis that 1 Peter as a whole (except for the epistolary frame) contained a complete baptismal service held at Rome, including all the songs and even the sermon!From the middle of the 1960s to the early 1970s, several monographs summed up the discussion on the early Christian hymns that had meanwhile been discovered, so that a certain scholarly consensus was reached. Ever since, early Christian “hymns” or “songs” have been an integral part of introductions and handbooks to the New Testament…Phil. 2, 6-11 has turned out to be a ‘praise of Christ’ written by Paul himself and firmly interwoven with its immediate context (2, 1-11) as well as with the letter as a whole. Appropriate to the subject-matter, it is written in an elevated, one can even say “hymnic” style. But the passage is neither poetic (because of the lack of meter) nor is it a hymn (because of the lack of the typical three-part structure)…[It is] a ‘praise of Christ’ within the letter, but is neither a hymn nor pre-Pauline. Since this text is often introduced as the principal witness for ‘hymns’ in the New Testament, the result of my investigation raises reasonable doubt concerning the other comparable passages. [5]
The Consilium would go on to fall prey to the erroneous 1960s scholarly consensus regarding these so-called New Testament ‘hymns.’ In September 1966, Coetus III of the Consilium proposed that canticles from the New Testament [6] be introduced to Vespers in the reformed Divine Office. They admit this is an innovation, [7] but they give the following reasons for this, among which is a “resurgence of biblical studies on the New Testament”:
1. Tradition. Regarding this, [such canticles] are not present in the tradition of the Roman rite. But in the Mozarabic liturgy, there are some excerpts from the New Testament, which are called canticles: Matthew 22, 23-32; 1 Timothy 6, 12 and 4, 12-16; Revelation 15, 1-4; Revelation 19:, 5-8. (Cf. Porter, “Cantica mozarabica officii,” in Ephemerides liturgicae [49], 1935, [pp. 126-145].)2. Utility. The resurgence of biblical studies on the New Testament has highlighted sections where a hymnic literary genre is prominent. The clearest examples are the canticles from the Apocalypse. Their literary form is similar to that of laudatory psalms, which begin with an invitation and continue with reasons for praise, e.g., “Praise the Lord, all nations, for great is his steadfast love…” (Ps. 116 [117]). They are also similar to prefaces for the same reason. Therefore, such canticles can excellently foster the spirit of liturgical prayer.Additionally, the faithful and priests of our time have a certain difficulty in reciting the psalms because the psalms inherently carry the spirit of the Old Testament. However, since the [time of the] Fathers, they have been sung in a figurative sense about Christ and the Church. Therefore, it will be essential to teach everyone, especially priests, how to chant the psalms in the spirit of the New Testament. If, besides the psalms, everyone can sing something specifically Christian, it will greatly assist in a Christian understanding of the psalter.Moreover, the psalms speak of the mystery of Christ only prophetically and indirectly, whereas the canticles of the New Testament do so directly. Thus, whoever recites these canticles after the prophetic psalms experiences spiritual joy in meditating on the glory of Christ.3. Possibility. In Coetus IX, there was extensive discussion about the placement of new canticles in the Divine Office, and it seemed to us that canticles of this kind could most fittingly occupy the fifth place in Vespers. In this way, after the prophecy of the psalms, the hearts of those who recite [these canticles] will ascend to the truth of the mystery of Christ, perfectly prepared for the climax of the entire Hour, namely, the canticle from the Gospel, with exultation: Magnificat. [8]
So, we can see that Coetus III justified the general introduction of New Testament canticles into the Roman Office on several dubious grounds:
- first, though never part of the Roman tradition, we can freely import them from the Mozarabic liturgy—this seems highly questionable, and not consistent with what Vatican II says about “innovations” in the liturgy (SC, n. 23);
- second, as we now know certain passages of the New Testament, including some not used in the Mozarabic liturgy (such as Philippians 2, 6-11), were hymns composed and used by the ancient Church, we should use them in the same way today—except this seems to be a 20th century scholarly fiction, with no actual evidence to back it up—and even if there was evidence, this would be the sort of archaeologism and antiquarianism condemned by Pope Pius XII (Mediator Dei, nn. 61-64);
- third, that this innovation will alleviate the alleged ‘difficulties’ clergy and laity have with praying the psalms, and imbue the psalter with the ‘spirit of the New Testament’—yet if the Christological nature of the psalter had been lost by ‘modern man,’ such an innovation does not seem sufficient to rectify this—and in any case, the psalter in the Liturgy of the Hours still ended up censored because of “certain psychological difficulties” (General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours, n. 131)!
With regard to the so-called Apostolic Tradition, the liturgist John Baldovin wrote in 2003 that “[t]here is a very real possibility that the Apostolic Tradition describes liturgies that never existed.” [9] Likewise, there is a very real possibility that the ‘hymns’ of the New Testament used at Vespers in the reformed liturgy never existed as hymns. They are just yet another item on the long list of scholarly fictions, myths and “restorations” that the liturgical books of the Novus Ordo are currently saddled with. It is to be hoped that these historical falsehoods will be corrected by younger generations who do not treat the work of the Consilium as absolutely identical with the intentions of the Second Vatican Council.
NOTES
[1] Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson and L. Edward Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002), p. 14:
[W]e judge the work to be an aggregation of material from different sources, quite possibly arising from different geographical regions and probably from different historical periods, from perhaps as early as the mid–second century to as late as the mid–fourth, since none of the textual witnesses to it can be dated with any certainty before the last quarter of that century. We thus think it unlikely that it represents the practice of any single Christian community, and that it is best understood by attempting to discern the various individual elements and layers that constitute it.
See also Matthieu Smyth, “The Anaphora of the So-called Apostolic Tradition and the Roman Eucharistic Prayer”, Usus Antiquior 1.1 (2010), pp. 5-25, at p. 24:
The purpose was to enrich the patrimony of eucharistic prayers of the Church of Rome; that which was done was based on the belief of the Romanitas and of the supposed antiquity of this document [i.e. the Apostolic Tradition], which [Bernard] Botte had defended with so much ardour. What a paradox for a document that in reality never had a relationship with the city and which in many respects was less ancient than the Roman Canon, the authentic eucharistic prayer proper to the Church of Rome!
[2] Klaus Gamber, “Der Christus-Hymnus im Philipperbrief in liturgiegeschichtlicher Sicht”, Biblica 51.3 (1970), pp. 369-376, at p. 369: “Die Grundthese, daß es sich hierbei um einen vorpaulinischen (liturgischen) Hymnus handelt, hat sich heute fast allgemein durchgesetzt…”
[3] Ralph P. Martin, Carmen Christi: Philippians ii. 5-11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 24. Of course, this is not a problem for Martin, who goes on in his monograph to treat the so-called “hymnic character” of Philippians 2, 6-11 as an important 20th-century form-critical discovery, hidden to all previous generations!
[4] Markus Bockmuehl, The Epistle to the Philippians (BNTC; London: Continuum, 1997), pp. 116-117. See also the comments of Michael Peppard, “‘Poetry’, ‘Hymns’ and ‘Traditional Material’ in New Testament Epistles or How to Do Things with Indentations”, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 30.3 (2008), pp. 319-342, at p. 322: “most of the major scholarship on this subject has not so much argued for the hymnic qualities of certain New Testament texts as much as it has assumed these qualities and then analyzed them.”
[5] Ralph Brucker, “‘Songs’, ‘Hymns’, and ‘Encomia’ in the New Testament?”, in Clemens Leonhard and Hermut Löhr (eds.), Literature or Liturgy? Early Christian Hymns and Prayers in their Literary and Liturgical Context in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), pp. 1-14, at pp. 2 and 7-8. See also Benjamin Edsall and Jennifer R. Strawbridge, “The Songs we Used to Sing? Hymn ‘Traditions’ and Reception in Pauline Letters”, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 37.3 (2015), pp. 290-311; Paul A. Holloway, Philippians: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), p. 116; Gordon D. Fee, “Philippians 2:5-11: Hymn or Exalted Pauline Prose?”, Bulletin for Biblical Research 2 (1992), pp. 29-46.
[6] The list of “canticles” given in Schema 185 (De Breviario, 40), Adnexa, 19 September 1966, p. 1, is as follows:
- 1 Corinthians 13, 1-7
- Ephesians 1, 3-10
- Colossians 1, 12-20
- Philippians 2, 6-11
- Revelation 4, 11 + 5, 9-10, 12
- Revelation 11, 17-18 + 12, 10b-12a
- Revelation 15:, 3-4
- Revelation 19, 1b-2a + 4b + 5b + 6b-8a
[7] As does the liturgist Rubén M. Leikam, “The Liturgy of the Hours in the Roman Rite,” in Anscar Chupungco (ed.), Handbook for Liturgical Studies, V: Liturgical Time and Space (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 59-98, at p. 83: “It must be noted that, historically, the introduction of a canticle from the New Testament into the psalmody of the Vesper hour was an innovation.”
[8] Schema 185, pp. 1-2:
1. De Traditione. C[ir]ca talia non adsunt in ritu romano cum traditione sua. Sed in Liturgia mozarabica inveniuntur nonnulla excerpta e N.T., quae ut cantica dicuntur: Mt 22, 23-32; 1 Tim 6, 12 et 4, 12-16; Apc 15, 1-4; Apc 19, 5-8. (Cf Porter Cantica mozarabi officii in EL 1935.)2. De utilitate. Renascentia studiorum biblicorum de N.T. in lucem posuit sectiones in quibus viget genus litterarium hymnicum. Exempla clarissima sunt cantica apocalypseos. Forma litteraria similes sunt psalmis laudatoriis, qui incipiunt cum invitatione et prosequuntur cum motivis, e. gr. “Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, quoniam confirmata est ---” (Ps 116). Similes sunt etiam praefationibus ex eadem ratione. Quapro[p]ter talia cantica optime fovere possunt spiritum orationis liturgicae.Accedit, quod fideles et sacerdotes nostrae aetatis quandam difficultatem habent in recitatione psalmorum, quia psalmi ex se habent spiritum Veteris Testamenti. Sed iam a Patribus in figura cantantur de Christo et Ecclesia. Quare valde laborandum erit, ut discant omnes, maxime sacerdotes, modum talem psallendi in spiritu Novi Testamenti. Si vero praeter psalmos omnes possunt aliqua saltem specifice christiana cantare, valde iuvabuntur adintelligentiam christianam psalterii.Insuper psalmi de mysterio Christi loquuntur prophetice tantum et indirecte, cantica autem N.T. directe. Ita qui post psalmos propheticos haec cantica dicit, spirituali laetitia gaudet in meditatione gloriae Christi.3. De possibilitate. In coetu IX multum disceptatum est de loco novorum canticorum in officio divino et visum est nobis cantica huius generis optime locum habere posse quinto loco Vesperarum. Ita post prophetiam psalmorum corda recitantium ascendunt ad veritatem mysterii Christi optime praeparata ad culmen totius Horae, canticum nempe de evangelio, cum exultatione: “Magnificat”.
[9] John F. Baldovin, S.J., “Hippolytus and the Apostolic Tradition: Recent Research and Commentary”, Theological Studies 64.3 (2003), pp. 520-542, at p. 542.
