Ship of Fools: forgive us our debts

Thread: forgive us our debts Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

Just following on from a post in Ecc, I was thinking about the Lord's prayer. I fairly often reflect that it doesn't seem to say what we think it says.

The common version in many churches talks about "forgive us our sins/trespasses" - and yet it seems that the words used are talking about (financial) debts - which I guess we are expanding to include all kinds of sinful actions.

In Luke 11:4 the word is ὀφείλοντι - which Strong has as owing money. Matt 6 has οπηειλεμα - again which is about owing money, according to Strongs.

πειρασμοσ is also an interesting word (as discussed in Ecc) - with the use of the word "temptation" implying that a) God puts temptations in our way and b) that God can be persuaded not to put temptations in our way with sufficient prayer.

Interestingly, most churches (formally liturgical and not so) I've ever attended add the ending "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen."

I'm not exactly sure where that comes from.

Anyway, just a thought: maybe we could discuss some of this?

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

Back in Scotland we use "debts".

Here, we use 罪を (tsumi-o) which carries connotations of "crimes".

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

AIUI in NT Greek there was no distinction between debts and trespasses. This is certainly the case in modern German. The word Schuld covers both.

Moo

Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on :

I'm re-posting here what I posted on the other thread because I think the structure is syntactically and semantically significant.

The whole prayer is a series of balanced psalm-like parallelisms around a central petition with (as used in public worship) a concluding doxology.

So:

code:

        Our father in heaven || hallowed be your name
           Your kingdom come || your will be done on earth as in heaven
               Give us today our daily bread
         Forgive us our sins || as we forgive those who sin against us
Lead us not into temptation* || but deliver us from evil

[* or Do not put us to the test or Do not bring us to the time of trial]

Each pair of parallel statements encapsulates a single idea: God's holiness; a desire that his rule will be made real; a plea for forgiveness; and a plea for protection.

The first three pairs of parallel statements all use synonymous or synthetical parallelism where the second element either restates or builds and develops what is stated in the first. The fourth pair of parallel statements uses antithetical parallelism, in which the statement is reinforced by having the parallel members express opposite sides of the same thought.

I think the ELLC English version best captures the thought of the Greek. It does have the idea that both difficult times and good times come from God, but avoids the idea (partly flowing from the more modern understanding of 'tempation') that God some how entices us to do evil.

The ending ("thine is the kingdom…") can be found in the Authorised Version of the Bible and is present in some ancient manuscripts, but is mostly regarded as not original. There is a helpful piece on it in Wikipedia

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
The fourth pair of parallel statements uses antithetical parallelism, in which the statement is reinforced by having the parallel members express opposite sides of the same thought.

I don't understand what you mean by this: what is the thought that the parallel statements are expressing opposite sides of?

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

Hmm, tossing a wild pre-caffeine thought into the ring -- forgive us for our having gotten into debt which makes us slaves to the need for money and focused on worry about losing it all, instead of focused on God and enjoying freedom to delight in life?

I grasping for a way to see "forgive our debts" as something other than what it sounds -- "God should pay our debts or get the creditor to write them off." In what ways is incurring debt (what our culture thrives on, all those credit cards) an offense to God that we need to ask God's forgiveness?

Seems like "trespasses" has to be other than just taking a harmless shortcut across a field. I can see disdain for others or self righteousness underlying a concept of trespass. Maybe "debts" is meant to convey that disdain or arrogant self righteousness? The feeling you have a right to what you want, which plunges you into debt?

Could asking for forgiveness of debts be a shorthand for asking forgiveness for the attitudes that led us to get into debt? But in this credit card age we also have to deal with "why is debt bad?" Is going into debt is how I got to buy a house, or how a friend got medical care (she's uninsured, docs here don't do free), a sin?

Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
The fourth pair of parallel statements uses antithetical parallelism, in which the statement is reinforced by having the parallel members express opposite sides of the same thought.

I don't understand what you mean by this: what is the thought that the parallel statements are expressing opposite sides of?

It's a prayer for protection from bad things.

It functions in a similar way to a statement which says "Don't lie down in the face of oppression, but stand up and fight for the right." The single idea is about resisting oppression. It is given rhetorical effect by first stating it in negative and then in positive terms.

So in the Lord's Prayer "do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from evil" expresses first negatively and then positively a prayer to be protected from evil.

Posted by Jammy Dodger (# 17872) on :

In the story of the Unmerciful Servant in Matt 18 Jesus uses financial debt as an analogy for much wider issues of "sinning against" and "forgiving wrong" (not just letting people off money owed).

Then in Mark 10:45 Jesus refers to his own death as a "ransom" which is a financial sum paid.

Feels like Jesus used this analogy of debt=wrong done elsewhere so maybe that helps our understanding of this terminology in the Lord's Prayer.

[ 20. October 2015, 16:44: Message edited by: Jammy Dodger ]

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Hmm, tossing a wild pre-caffeine thought into the ring -- forgive us for our having gotten into debt which makes us slaves to the need for money and focused on worry about losing it all, instead of focused on God and enjoying freedom to delight in life?

I think the "being enslaved" part of indebtedness is very real, though it's probably not the need for money per se. In our societies it's an enslavement to a system that piles loads of expectations on our shoulders - which are mostly, in part, material and require money to achieve. So, it's not money that enslaves, but money could well be the chains that hold us.

My understanding of the ancient world was that indebtedness was of a different character, and quite often the slavery very real. AIUI, if you were forced to borrow money and failed to repay it then one of the common ways to repay that debt was through indebted servitude, to literally be a slave of the person you owed until such a time as the work you'd done was deemed sufficient to have paid off the debt. One way out of that was for a wealthy benefactor (usually a close relative) to pay a ransom, paying off the debt and releasing you from forced servitude. Which is, of course, one of the images the NT uses for salvation.

However, the problem with the Lords Prayer is that "forgive us our debts" is to say that we owe God, because God can't forgive debts we owe to others (only they can do that) - although He can pay off those debts on our behalf, that isn't the same as writing them off which is what most of use think of when we pray that. But, the Bible suggests that we aren't enslaved to God, the debts we owe are not to God but to other forces.

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

If I may, I might re-iterate a thought I raised on here a while back; I usually pray as if I am saying 'forgive us...IF we forgive those who...' - but the word is 'AS'.

As well as implying that God's forgiveness of us hangs somehow on our forgiveness of others (however the causality works in that correlation - for me on a good day it's God's forgiveness which is the cause of my own) the 'AS' also implies for me an equivalence of the *manner* of that forgiveness - its nuts and bolts.

So - I can't unilaterally forgive my wife for being such a pain in the hole in loud and magnanimous fashion without f*cking her off royally. She has to ask for forgiveness, or it won't stick and do anything for her. This helps me understand why I must approach God and repent, if I am to stand any chance against my own rapacious little ego.

[ 04. November 2015, 11:19: Message edited by: mark_in_manchester ]

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
...As well as implying that God's forgiveness of us hangs somehow on our forgiveness of others...

This ties in with Luke 6:37-38

quote:
‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.’

Moo

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