Things temporal and things eternal
O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that with you as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not our hold on things eternal; grant this, heavenly Father, for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.1
This prayer, which I quoted in my homily two weeks ago, is found in the liturgy of the fourth Sunday after Trinity in the Church of England. It is based on a Gregorian collect, translated by Thomas Cranmer (and since modernised),2 and it expresses in many ways what I try to express in this blog. Fr. Thomas Plant wrote some reflections on this in a since deleted tweet, and inspired by this, and an article by Eamon Duffy,3 I aim to reflect on what this prayer can tell us about how we relate to God and to the world.
The central part of the prayer is, I think, this phrase, that “with [God] as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not our hold on things eternal.” This tells us how to relate to God. But what does it mean to “pass through things temporal”? According to Eamon Duffy, this should be read in an Augustinian fashion, reading it through the lens of the Latin (Gregorian) original:
It is a prayer that ruled and led by God, we may pass through the good things of time, so as not to forfeit eternal life. Transeamus per bona temporalia—The world and all that is in it are good, yet we must pass through, transeamus, not settle down in it. Cranmer does not render the full paradox, because he doesn’t quite render the strength of “bona temporalia”. The original is not world denying, but it emphasises that we are travellers, pilgrims, in a world in which we are not quite at home. That world holds in existence, and is itself good and holy, only because it issues from the hand of God, and its value for us depends on its remaining transparent to Him. The whole imagery of the prayer is that of a great journey, carried out under the protection of God, our leader—dux—towards whom we travel in hope, in the world, but not of it.4
While I agree with this, it must be said that this “passing through” is not a dismissal of creation but rather the acknowledgement of its utter dependence on God (its transparency to its Creator). By emphasising that without God “nothing is strong, nothing is holy,” the prayer tells us that God is the source of all strength and all holiness, but further than that, it alludes to the basic fact of all reality, that God is Creator, we are created. God gives, we receive, and we even receive our status as receivers. Without God, nothing is. God is the One, we are the Other.5 Our interpretation of the difference between “things temporal” and “things eternal” must be balanced between utter rejection on the one extreme and overemphasis on the other. And the best way to illustrate this is through two passages by St, Paul, one from 2 Corinthians 4, the other from 1 Timothy 4.6
In 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, St. Paul discusses the life of faith, and emphasises the difference between our “outer man,” who is temporal, and our “inner man,” who is eternal, not in himself but only through God (“without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy”). He says:
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer man is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
Here, the emphasis is less on the temporal things, more on the eternal. But note an important point: while the things that are seen are “transient,” temporary, they still are. And since we, also, are seen, as bodily creatures, they are central to our journey towards the One. We see through them. As Duffy puts it, the value of the world, as temporal, “depends on its remaining transparent to Him” (to God).7 This means, yes, that the world is not eternal and neither are the means of grace. We will not be reading Scripture, baptising people, or celebrating the Eucharist in heaven. But they are still absolutely central, precisely because they are, and because Christ has instituted them as the channels through which we ascend to God. This is what Fr. Thomas Plant emphasised in his now deleted tweet. We pass through things temporal, not despite them. And this is where we need to balance it with St. Paul’s discussion of our life of faith in 1 Timothy 4.
In vv.4-5, the Apostle says that “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” This tells us that all things in creation, “things temporal,” are good, as they are created by God. The context is that some people “will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and enjoin abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” (vv.1-3). The Gregorian original says, after all, that they are “temporal goods” (Lt. bona temporalia). It is precisely by passing through these temporal goods (“consecrated by the word of God and prayer”), that we “lose not our hold on things eternal.” If we ignore the things created by God, and given us to our salvation, we cannot find our eternal end. As Fr. Plant notes, the prayer is of a creature to the Creator, who gives us grace. Though we use things temporal to get to things eternal, this work is God’s. It is theurgy, which through us becomes hierurgy, the priestly and sacramental participation in this divine work.8
Things temporal are so good that they can be consecrated, made holy, by the word of God and prayer. This is why we, in the Lutheran tradition, follow St. Augustine in emphasising the use, and importance, of Christ’s words in the sacraments. As the Saint says, “the word comes to the element and so there is a sacrament” (Lt. accedit verbum ad elementum, et fit sacramentum).9 Through the divine word, temporal things are turned into channels through which we can reach that which is eternal, which is an remains a grace.10
When the prayer ask God to “increase and multiply upon us [His] mercy,” this is the logical prayer to the One without whom nothing is. Creation itself is mercy, a grace, a gift. But as the prayer indicates, this grace is dynamic. It can both increase and multiply. What this means, I think, is not that the grace itself changes, as grace is participation in God, but that our participation changes. On the one hand, our participation can increase, as we grow deeper in our relationship with God, as we come closer and closer to “things eternal,” and on the other hand, we can get more graces, which are more ways to participate in the One grace who is God Himself.
So the paradox is this: that while we are supposed to transcend things temporal, to travel towards things eternal, we do so through these things temporal, not despite them. It is neither a denial of the world nor a clinging to it. It is the sacramental way.
Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England (London: Church House, 2000), 410.
Cranmer’ translation is found in The Book of Common Prayer, standard ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, hereafter: BCP), 162 (cf. Common Worship, 482): “O GOD, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal: Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ's sake our Lord. Amen.”
Eamon Duffy, “Rewriting the Liturgy: the theological implications of translation” (New Blackfriars 78, 1997): 4-27.
Duffy, “Rewriting the Liturgy,” 22.
This is emphasised especially by Norwegian philosopher Egil A. Wyller. See my homily from 20th January.
If not otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations follow the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (abbreviated RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling. See The Ignatius Bible: Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2006)..
Duffy, “Rewriting the Liturgy,” 22.
For a good discussion of this, see Clelia Attanasio, “Dionysius’ Application of the Role of Theurgist on the Figure of Moses,” in Platonism and its Heritage: Selected Papers from the 19th Annual Conference of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, eds. John F. Finamore, Ioanna Patsioti, and Giannis Satamatello (Chepstow: The Prometheus Trust, 2023): 131-145.
Augustine, In Iohannis Evangelium, tractatus 80:4, Opera 8, Corpus Christianorum 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 529, translated by Gordon W. Lathrop, Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1998), 164, cf. 164-169.