A Rose By Any Other Name?
June 6, 2019
In William Shakespeare’s famous play, “Romeo and Juliet,” the two young lovers each belong to rival families. Juliet lamented that Romeo was from the house of Montague while she was from the house of Capulet. She said, “What’s in a name? Would a rose by any other name still smell as sweet?” You may have seen in the news today that the Pope has “changed” the Lord’s prayer. In Matthew 6:13, the Pope changed “lead us not into temptation”, to “do not let us fall into temptation.” The Italian church missal will be changed accordingly. My intent today is not to bash the Pope, nor is it to disparage the Catholic church. My point today is that I love the word of God, and I don’t care who you are or what office you occupy, no one can ‘change’ scripture. If the Pope said he favored a different interpretation, I would have no issue. Scripture can be subject to different interpretations by fallible humans. But scripture cannot be changed.
Most of you know that there is a field of study called textual criticism. It is used to examine the more than 5000 Greek manuscripts and 20,000 manuscripts of the New Testament in other languages that have been discovered. Textual criticism is used to try to understand why some differences (called ‘variants’) exist in the various manuscripts, and to recover the original text. Within the science of textual criticism are techniques called external criticism and internal criticism. In external criticism, the student asks which variant is supported by the earliest and most reliable manuscripts. Internal evidence looks at the manuscript itself and asks why a scribe might intentionally change the manuscript from which he was copying. Sometimes a scribe would make changes to ‘smooth out’ what he thought was a difficult or long text. Sometimes the change would reflect a cultural belief. Scholars can detect these changes by understanding the original author’s style or by knowing where the manuscript came from and knowing the particular beliefs of that area. Sometimes a scribe might make an unintentional copying error that can be detected through textual criticism. As a result of textual criticism, we know with near certainty and with very few exceptions, the exact text of the New Testament, including Matthew 6:13. Scholars by and large agree that the text reads, “Lead us not into temptation.”
I understand why the Pope wants to ‘change’ Matthew 6:13. The connotation of the verse is that God is responsible for leading us into temptation. The Pope believes that God can’t lead us into temptation. Satan is the tempter, and in our sinful flesh we are prone to fall into temptation. I agree that Satan is the tempter and that we are prone to fall into temptation, but the Bible does speak of times when God tests us to see if we will be faithful. Gen. 22:1-2: After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” Exodus 16:4: Then the Lordsaid to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. 1 Cor. 10:13 indicates that God is both the source of temptation and the means to endure it: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be temptedbeyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
On the other hand James 1:13 says: “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.” God may not tempt, but He does test as we see from the above scriptures. He also grants Satan the power to tempt, test and try us as we learn from reading of the torment of Job, or by Satan’s temptation of Jesus’ in the wilderness. Satan can’t do anything to us without God’s permission. So we might say that God does test, and indirectly allows temptation even when He is not the direct cause of it. Based on all of the above, I believe the Pope has it half right. We can’t ignore that God tests directly and allows temptation at least indirectly. My interpretationof Matthew 6:13 is that our prayer should be to ask God not to allow Satan to tempt us, or allow us to enter into situations where we are most susceptible to fall into sin, and to protect us if we do. Whether you agree with my interpretation or not proves my point. It’s like when fans of different football teams see the same play differently. Even though we have instant replay evidence from every conceivable angle, fans of the one team think the receiver clearly caught the ball before he went out of bounds. Fans of the other team are convinced that he was out of bounds before he caught it. They are both looking at the same unchangeable evidence, but interpreting it differently. The Bible is the same way. We all have the same evidence, and it can’t be changed, although we may interpret it differently. A rose by any other name DOES still smell as sweet, and scripture is scripture even if a man says he has changed it.