The Missing Verses to St. Patrick’s Breastplate

“I bind unto myself” — the English translation of the ancient text known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate — is the recommended by Anglican practice to be sung (at least) twice a year..

One obviously is today, on St. Patrick’s Day, in honor of the missionary bishop who brought Christianity to Ireland in the 5th century. The other is on Trinity Sunday, because — as Patrick intended — it taught the doctrine of the Trinity in an understandable form, 15 centuries before Donall and Conall did.

I previously blogged on this 7 (actually 6½) verse hymn that most readers know from Hymnal (1940) or Hymnal 1982. Even with the switch of tune on verse six, it is a long hymn to sing.  As I wrote in 2019:

In my interviews on church music practice last fall, it was a (slightly) controversial hymn: everyone loved the doctrine and the memories it evokes. However, the parishioners were split: most loved the complete hymn, but a minority complained that it was too long. (IIRC only one music director regularly abridged the hymn).

Still, I have sung it many times — even a capella for all seven verses in a church retreat. It is probably my daughter’s favorite hymn at this point.

However, in January I learned about the missing verses of the hymn, that both complete the hymn and make it longer. I heard about it from a priest who has been a mentor to me and my father, Fr. Lawrence Bausch, who was (fittingly) rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal (later Anglican) Church in San Diego. In 2010 I wrote about their last worship service at their original home.

At a January 11 service at their new home, we sang all nine verses of the hymn. Fr. Bausch said he learned about the missing verses decades earlier, and argued that since then, he has always scheduled all nine verses, because the extra verses make the crucial theological points that were set up by the rest of the hymn.

About those Missing Verses

The Hymntime website lists the history of the 1889 poem by (Mrs.) Cecil F. Alexander:

Alexander penned these words at the request of Hercules Henry Dickinson, Dean of the Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle:

“I wrote to her suggesting that she should fill a gap in our Irish Church Hymnal by giving us a metrical version of St. Patrick’s Lorica, and I sent her a carefully collated copy of the best prose translations of it. Within a week she sent me that exquisitely beautiful as well as faithful version which appears in the appendix to our Church Hymnal.”

Ralph Vaughan Williams arranged all nine verses to St. Patrick and Deidre for the 1906 The English Hymnal. Here are verse 5 (familiar to US Anglicans) and the missing verses 6 and 7:

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, His shield to ward;
The Word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death wound and the burning,
The choking wave, the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Fr. Bausch said (paraphrasing) that while verses 1-5 talk about obedience to God and his power, without verse 6-7, it doesn’t say why. Clearly, many “modern” 20th century Christians don’t believe in demons, temptations, holy powers, Satan, wizards and the like. But this is their fault: the world remains enchanted by the eternal presence of the creator, whether we recognize it or not.

As a fully-modernized rationalist, I am struggling to overcome this delusion of disechantment. And nine verses is a lot of verses, even for the most diehard parish. Still, any church that uses St. Patrick’s Breastplate as a catechetical tool (rather than a cultural artefact) should pull out the extra verses once a year &emdash; preferably when thereis support from choir and organ.

"My Way" as Highway to Hell?

Among the most theological of C.S. Lewis' books is The Great Divorce. Lewis uses the writer George MacDonald — who he considered “his master” — to explain how so many people end up in Hell.

The Great Divorce was the subject of one of four talks by Peter Kreeft last week at the Anglican Way Institute. Kreeft, a prolific author and Catholic philosophy professor at Boston College, noted that one passage of the book is more quoted than any other:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”

Kreeft considered this an apt summary of a doctrine of free will and salvation — as (during Q&A) did Fr. Lawrence Bausch, the outgoing head of Forward in Faith North America. In the end, this is just another manifestation of Pride, the first of the Seven Deadly Sins formalized in the 6th century by Pope Gregory.

The Pastoral Dilemma of Funeral Hymns

Hearing this summary of The Great Divorce suggested a potential pastoral problem. Sure enough: when I looked up the latest funeral hymn survey by a U.K. chain of funeral homes, this is what I found:

Based on the data and insights of our Funeral Directors and Funeral Arrangers, who conduct up to 100,000 funerals a year, we can reveal that our 2019 chart winner is... ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra.

The Sinatra song was tops not only in the 2019 survey, but also in 2016 and 2012. (It was briefly dislodged by “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” in the 2014 survey).

The problem is that, as Kreeft summarized, “Every time we choose ‘my will be done’ instead of ‘thy will be done,’ we choose hell.” In case people missed his point, Kreeft termed the Sinatra favorite as “the song people sing going into hell”. (While “My Way” has been the overall leader for most of the past decade, “Highway to Hell” was #5 on the Rock chart in 2016).

It’s a little too late to convert the heart of the deceased once he/she is in a pine box. So discussing funeral hymns seems like a catechetical opportunity for pre-need planning — at least for those who still want a church ceremony.

Bicentennial of John Mason Neale

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Mason Neale, the greatest hymn translator of the 19th century and a pioneer of the Anglo-Catholic liturgical revival that followed the Oxford Movement.

Neale (January 24, 1818-August 6, 1866) was the son and grandson of evangelical Anglican priests. His ordained ministry included being the rector of Sackville College (an almshouse founded in 1609) and, 1855, founding the Society of St. Margaret, an Anglican women’s order that provided nurses to the industrial poor (and today has chapters in England and Boston). Both groups are this week holding events marking the occasion.

As an undergraduate at Trinity College Cambridge, he cofounded the Cambridge Camden Society (later the Ecclesiological Society) which he headed for many years. The society focused on the aesthetics of church worship — both architecture and liturgy — and was credited with spurring the English gothic revival of the 19th century. Much of this was disseminated through the society’s journal (The Ecclesiologist), published from 1841-1868, for which Neale was one of the primary authors and co-editor.

Neale spent considerable time researching ancient and medieval liturgies of both the Eastern and Western church, publishing a five volume set: A History of the Holy Eastern Church as well as various Western liturgies in Latin and English translation. However, he made his greatest impact as a hymn writer and translator.

Neale’s Hymn Compilations

Neale was a prodigious author, translator and editor of hymns. The books of original hymns included

• Hymns for Children (1842) 
• Hymns for the Sick (1843)
• Hymns for Youth (1844)
• Hymns for Children, Third Series (1845) 

His compilations of translations (mostly his own) include

• Medieval Hymns and Sequences (1851)
• Hymnal Noted (various editions, 1851-1856)
• Carols for Christmas Tide (1853)
• Carols for Easter Tide (1854).
• Hymns of the Eastern Church (1862)
• Hymns Chiefly Medieval on the Joys and Glories of Paradise (1865)

Most of these books are on Google Books or the Internet Archive.

Lasting Impact

Neale is the top source of hymn texts for most US or American Anglican hymnals published from 1861-2000. He is listed as the author or translator of 45 texts in Hymnal 1982, and his influence was greater in Hymnal 1940, The English Hymnal (1906) and particularly Hymns Ancient & Modern in its various editions from 1861-1904.

Among the hymns Neale translated are

• All glory, laud and honor
• Christ is made the sure foundation
• Come ye faithful raise the strain
• Creator of the stars of night
• Good Christian Men, Rejoice
• Good King Wenceslas
• O come, O come Emmanuel
• O sons and daughters, let us sing
• Of the Father’s love begotten
• That Easter Day with joy was bright
• The Day of Resurrection

The accolades for Neale’s contributions are numerous, and I hope to summarize them another time.

Further Information

A good overview is provided by Julian’s A Dictionary of Hymnology; I have uploaded just the Neale entry here. Good capsule biographies are also found in HymnsAndCarolsOfChristmas.com and The CyberHymnal.

Two biographies by his daughters help considerably in understanding his history:

• Eleanor A. Towle, John Mason Neale, DD: A Memoir, London: Longmans, Green, 1907. Available at Google Books.
• Mary Sackville Lawson, ed., Letters of John Mason Neale, London: Longmans, Green, 1910. Available at Google Books and the Internet Archive.

They also supply the pictures that appear on Wikipedia and other websites (including the picture above from Towle’s memoir).

Because he died on August 6 (the Feast of the Transfiguration), the Anglican church remembers him on August 7. Anglican.org includes two prayers for Neale; the first appears taken from the Episcopal Church’s liturgies for lesser feasts and fasts:

Grant unto us, O God, that in all time of our testing we may know Thy presence and obey thy will; that, following the example of thy servant John Mason Neale, we may with integrity and courage accomplish what thou givest us to do, and endure what thou givest us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Almighty God, beautiful in majesty, majestic in holiness, who Hast shown us the splendor of creation in the work of thy servant John Mason Neale: Teach us to drive from the world the ugliness of chaos and disorder, that our eyes may not be blind to thy glory, and that at length everyone may know the inexhaustible richness of thy new creation in Jesus Christ our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Second Thoughts about Three Kings

This time seven years ago, I wrote a blog post skeptical of two seasonal hymns — the Christmas hymn “In the Bleak Midwinter” and the Epiphany hymn “We Three Kings“. After several years both to learn and mature, during today’s Epiphany I observance I feel compelled to modify that earlier position.

What do we know about the visitors from the East?

• Matthew 2 refers clearly to “wise men”
• We assume there were three of them because there are clearly three gifts. 
• There is no mention of kings

Rather than summarize the old post (available via the magic of hyperlinks), let me summarize the arguments as I now see them. Arguments against “three kings” are

1. There is no mention of kings and if there were really kings they would be mentioned
2. It is illogical to expect they are kings, either because multiple kings aren’t going to travel months (or years) to Jerusalem, or because “wise men” (magoi, μάγοι) aren’t going to be kings.

Let me come back to #1. For #2, one of our clergy points out that in some nations of the East, there would be multiple kings because a king is more like a governor, duke or prince than an emperor or pharaoh. Meanwhile, there are examples of wise kings in the line of David, and the rulers before Saul (the Judges) tended to be chosen for their wisdom rather than their inheritance.

Arguments in favor of the “three kings”:

1. Tradition, dating to the first millennium. This is enough for many Anglo-Catholics.
2. Predictions from the Old Testament

I was struck by the latter today, from both the psalm and old testament readings of morning prayer:

The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall give presents; * the kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring gifts. (Psalm 72:10)

A multitude of camels shall cover you,
    the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
    all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
    and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord.  (Isaiah 60:6)

So the question is: is this prophecy fulfilled by the birth of Jesus? Such argument would require

• Accepting the principle that OT prophesies are fulfilled by the NT
• Concluding that these prophesies refers to a coming Messiah and not some other event
• Deciding that this specific is fulfilled by the events of Matthew 2

The earlier posting was accurate in suggesting that many theologians and other Christians reject the idea of kings visiting Joseph, Mary and baby (or toddler) Jesus. It was inaccurate in suggesting that there was only one possible conclusion, because clearly more than one interpretation is possible. It also raised (but did not answer) the question of what doctrine should be presented in hymns if the theological issues are not conclusively resolved.

We believe as we sing

Although they have broken from the Episcopal Church, many AMiA and ACNA churches continue to be guided by the liturgical “reforms” of the Episcopal Church, including the theology that led up the 1979 prayer book.

In his article on the theology of worship in the standard textbook on Anglicanism, Prof. Louis Weil of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific states

Anglicanism gives force to the ancient adage, Lex orandi legem statuat credendi, ‘the law of prayer establishes the law of faith. (Weil, 1998: 61).

From this, he emphasizes the ongoing need to update the liturgy to keep it relevant (emphasis added):

[T]he Prayer Book plays a dynamic role in shaping a new liturgical mentality in which the odd [sic] truths are seen afresh. Such a transition never takes place easily, because there seems to be a natural conservatism in worshippers in regards to the rituals through which faith has been articulated. … [C]hange must come so that we may be faithful to the gospel as it speaks to the real world in which we live.  [66]

Singing is Liturgy

In their modest revision to Rite II of that prayer book, the ACNA rejected the most glaring doctrinal errors of the words of that prayer book. But as lex orandi makes clear, the experience of liturgy is not just words.

It seems as though (outside the REC and Continuing churches), there are many 21st century Anglican clergy who consider themselves theologically orthodox, and yet choose (or allow their music minister to choose) the most contemporary form of worship music, up to and including songs off the top 40 list of the Contemporary Christian Music radio station.

By any definition, congregational singing during the service is part of the liturgy and the liturgical experience. (At many evangelical churches, it is the only part that in which the congregation participates). And thus the nature of how we worship is not just the words we sing — the explicit hymn doctrine — but how we sing them.

Of course, today we instruments that didn’t exist in 1st century. The invention or improvement of instruments didn’t stop with the perfection of the pipe organ in the baroque period or even the invention of the fortepiano in the 18th century.

But the idea that we must constantly update how we sing and other aspects of worship means — by the principles of lex orandi — that we must constantly update what we as Anglican believe. The latter means that we are thus rejecting the idea of Anglicanism as being a Protestant manifestation of the historic, undivided church, in continuity with Christian beliefs throughout the millennia.

I am hoping that most readers of this blog would find the latter a step too far. I can’t claim that this principle means banishing all CCM from the nave, but at least it should cause the clerical and lay leadership of an orthodox parish to think about what it says to the culture — and the congregation — to choose such music for the weekly worship.

References

Weil, Louis, “The Gospel in Liturgy”, in Booty, John E., Stephen Sykes, and Jonathan Knight, eds., The Study of Anglicanism. Rev. Ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998, pp. 55-83.

11 Reasons to Keep Screens out of the Sanctuary

Blogger Jonathan Aigner at the Ponder Anew blog this week posted a list of 11 reasons why churches should not use projection screens in their sanctuaries.

Several of these points tie back to earlier points in this blog:

• “5. Screens have hastened the decline in musicianship in the church. …  those of us who can read music are limited by not having access to it.” Even if people know the melody, as I noted almost seven years ago, the lack of a hymnal means the lack of musical harmony for all but the privileged members of the choir.
• “7. Screens open the door to theological disunity.  Denominational hymnals contain songs that are considered, examined, and vetted for adherence to their theological tradition. ” Or as I said in 2010:

• “This is also another reason why hymnals are important: a hymnal codifies a church’s doctrine and minimizes deviations from doctrine. It doesn’t matter whether the hymnal is photocopied, oversewn or a PDF: what matters is that it has been vetted the same as any other part of the liturgy. As Anglicans, we don’t allow just anything to be read as scripture or prayer, so of course the hymn selection should be put to the same test.”

• “8. Screens have cost us an awareness of our common hymnody. Printing songs in a hymnal gives them legitimacy and permanence, especially when they’ve been included in volumes for decades or even centuries. Even when we don’t sing them, they remain there, and we encounter them in the pages. … Before long, we may lose the best of our musical heritage completely, simply because nobody’s ever seen them, let alone thought of recording them.” This is exactly the point I’ve been making since the beginning of this blog, emphasizing the importance of timeless hymns that provide “continuity across generations and the centuries.”

Aigner (and others) have predicted the imminent decline of praise music, but I doubt that the persistent rants of a few of us traditionalist bloggers will be enough to turn back decades of CCM. Still, the same principles that cause baby boomers to reject music largely from the 15th through 20th centuries would presumably mean that each generation would reject the previous — thus rendering obsolete the music that the boomers fought so hard to bring into the church.

Praise Songs with “Old Words”

There was a great post earlier this month on how praise bands update traditional hymns on Ponder Anew. The blog is by Jonathan Aigner, a Texas PCUSA choir director who regularly turns a skeptical eye towards the excesses of CCM.

Entitled “Modernized Hymns: Hymns, or Contemporary Songs with Old Words?” the post starts with a late 20th century example of such modernization at his Baptist youth summer camp by a praise song leader named Chris Tomlin (yes that Chris Tomlin). Even as a teenager it was clear that Aigner smelled something fishy about claiming that the new song — with bridges modulation and additional lyrics — was just a different way of signing the old hymn.

Are Modernized Hymns Actually Hymns?

Here is the crux of his argument:

But were we actually singing hymns?

I didn’t think so then, and I don’t think so now.

Of course, Chris Tomlin and other commercial worship songwriters have led a trend in the industry in which hymns are turned into commercial recordings, and then find a place in churches that practice contemporary worship. We see this even more in December, when everyone wants to hear their favorite carols and Christmas songs. So, all the biggest recording artists cook up their own versions of these songs, and church cover worship bands offer up their best imitations.

I hear from a number of contemporary worship apologists who proudly tell me they sing lots of hymns in their services, but that they are “refreshed” or “reimagined” in a modern style.

I think there’s a problem here. Though singing good theology is important, the way we sing it is also vitally important. Of course, that’s in contrast to the prevailing message of contemporary worship that says it’s all about taste, and that musical style doesn’t matter.

But it does matter. It’s about meaning, not preference. And music always carries meaning.

He continues with additional details of how to tell a hymn from a contemporary song with old words.”

When Was a Hymn Written?

This posting resonated with two other observations on a similar topic.

One was my own posting from last year asking “When was a hymn ‘written’?” Again, in other contexts people have claimed old words with modern music and performance styles qualify as an ancient hymn. It’s one thing to say that acoustic guitar or piano accompaniment does not change the character of an ancient or medieval chant. It’s another thing to claim that it’s a traditional hymn when you have the full-on rhythm guitar, electric bass and drummer accompanying your lead singer.

I think Jonathan and I have similar reservations about the efforts of praise band leaders to modernize traditional hymns while claiming the mantle of the long-accepted form of Christian praise and worship.

The Need for Reverence

The other thing that resonated with this theme was listening the same week to a May 24 podcast of Issues Etc. The topic was “Reverence in Worship,” an interview with Lutheran Pastor David Petersen. (The same topic had been covered seven months earlier in an interview with regular guest Rev. Will Weedon, director of worship for the LCMS.)

The interview drew on his article on the same topic published in (“The Journal of Lutheran Liturgy”). Alas, the journal hasn’t made it to the 21st century with articles (or at least a table of contents) from recent issues.

The arguments made by Rev. Petersen appealed to the authority of Lutheran and seminal Lutheran doctrine, notably the Book of Concord and the Augsburg Confession. In particular, he noted the admonition to worship “with greatest reverence.” But the actual conclusions were ones that should be shared by any liturgical Protestant.

One is that reverence is not (as some might claim) merely in the mind of the worshipper. Instead, it has an objective reality. As Rev. Petersen cited C.S. Lewis:

CS Lewis in The Abolition of Man tells a story about an English textbook, of a story of the artist Coleridge who overhears two tourists looking at a waterfall, and one says it's “sublime.” Coleridge says that is correct, while the textbook says that's not correct, that different people could have different opinions.

There is something objectively real in the waterfall that requires a response from us.

Rev. Petersen’s definition of reverence is

• virtue — a habit of the heart, developed through practice
• an attitude and feeling love towards God, tempered by respect, honor, fear, awe and shame

According to his conception, different attributes of this reverence wax and wane depending on where we are in the service.

However, to this conception, Petersen added a final element — joy — or a feeling of exuberance. This ties to the emotive element of music throughout the generations (including the sublime sacred music of composers such as Tallis, Bach and Mozart) without the excesses of CCM.

Hymns for the Great Banquet

At our (28 BCP) parish today, the gospel lesson was Luke 14:16-24, the Parable of the Great Banquet. This passage is for Trinity 2 in the 28 BCP, and also called out for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost in the 1962 Catholic lectionary (“in the Octave of Corpus Christi”).

We heard the KJV, but here is the ESV (the RSV is almost the same):

But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go oJesus, Breut quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”

This seems such a powerful passage regarding the nature of faith: all are invited but few (today ever fewer) will come. It also anticipates Revelation 19:9: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

In his commentary Luke for Everyone, NT Wright notes that beyond the two obvious levels of the parable is a third less obvious implication for the faith:

The party to which the original guests were invited was Jesus’ kingdom-movement, his remarkable welcome to all and sundry. If people wanted to be included in Jesus’ movement, this is the sort of thing they were joining.

Strangely, it is nowhere to be found in the Revised Common Lectionary (according to the Vanderbilt RCL site). Looking through tables of the 1979 prayer book, the passage is also skipped in the Sunday readings for Year C and only found in the daily lectionary. The ACNA trial use lectionary also omits this passage, as does the 1998/2002 Roman Catholic lectionary for the US. (I thought the point of the 3-year lectionary was to cover more Scripture, not less.)

Hymnal 1940, 1982

I was expecting to have a hymn today touch on this theme. Our communion hymn came the closest: “Deck thyself, my soul with gladness” (H40: 210; H82: 339), a 1649 German Lutheran hymn with a tune (Schmuecke Dich) by Johann Cruger and a text by Johann Franck.  Verse 3 of the translation by the great Catherine Winkworth says

Jesus, Bread of Life, I pray thee,
Let me gladly here obey thee;
Never to my hurt invited,
Be thy love with love requited;
From this banquet let me measure,
Lord, how vast and deep its treasure;
Through the gifts thou here dost give me,
As thy guest in heav’n receive me.

In fact, when I pulled out A Scriptural Index to the Hymnal 1982, this was the only entry in the book for this gospel passage (which confirms that the 1979 prayer book schedules the text only for the Daily Office).

But I also heard echoes of verse 1 from  familiar hymn that turned out to be an Easter season favorite (H40: 89, H82: 174), with the Jakob Hintze melody harmonized by J.S. Bach:

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing,
Praise to our victorious King,
Who hath washed us in the tide
Flowing from his piercèd side;
Praise we Him, whose love divine
Gives His sacred blood for wine,
Gives His body for the feast,
Christ the Victim, Christ the Priest.

Hymns Ancient & Modern

In my folder of PDFs of old hymnals, I used a PDF search to look for mention of “banquet” (which appears only 5 times in the NT — 4 times here and once for Herod’s banquet that brought the execution of John the Baptist). This offered a third hymn from Hymns Ancient & Modern, described in the 1914 companion to Hymns A&M as follows:

128. P.

The Lamb's high banquet (Neale), 1851.
Orig. ascribed (?) to S. Ambrose. It was used as the proper Vesper hy. from Low Sunday to Ascension, but without a doxology, which was taken from hy. 141 for all hys. in that metre. It was the custom of the early Ch. that Baptism should be solemnly administered to many catechumens on Easter Eve. These persons were now for the first time about to receive the H. Com munion, and therefore waiting to share that high banquet In garments white and fair, in reference to the chrisom-robes given at Baptism, and worn till Low Sunday, called  "Dominica in Albis." The tr. is slightly altered. Dr. Neale wrote "We await" for "called to share," and in st. 2,1. 3, he gave "roseate," afterwards altered to "crimson," and then to "precious." In a preface he specially drew attention to these alterations as spoiling the idea of the orig. "Though one drop of Christ s Blood was sufficient to redeem the world, yet out of the greatness of His love to us He would shed all. As every one knows, the last drainings of lifeblood are not crimson, but of a paler hue : strictly speaking, roseate. Change the word and you eliminate the whole idea. Besides which, Christ is the True Rose, is a second reason for this word."

As in the companion, my copy lists this as #128 but Oremus lists it (perhaps from an earlier edition) as #111. (Hymns Ancient & Modern had notable inconsistencies across the various editions). The first verse is:

The Lamb's high banquet called to share,
arrayed in garments white and fair,
the Red Sea past, we now would sing
to Jesus our triumphant King.

The rest of the hymn has more of a Revelation 19 than Luke 14 feel to it.

In conclusion, I’m surprised that this major passage of Luke has so little scriptural support. However, right now — beyond US Continuing Anglicans and the global Anglicans who use the 1662 BCP — this passage is not often being heard.

Do beloved carols teach the wrong lessons of Christmas?

Just before Christmas, First Things reposted a 2012 article (orginally written in 2009) about the importance of hymn doctrine in Christmas carols. It was the perfect topic for this blog -- the intersection of hymn theology and the most popular church hymns of the year -- but it was also at the busiest time of the year, the last few days before Christmas.

Now, on the 4th day of Christmas, I thought I'd use the article to interpret the Anglo-Catholic (Hymnal 1940) services we attended this year.

Our Christmas 2015

This year our family went to church twice to observe American Christianity's second greatest feast day, marking the Nativity of Our Lord.

The first was on Christmas Eve at our home parish, where our youngest was singing in the youth choir. As seems to be the norm for Protestant and Catholic churches nowadays, Christmas Eve is the main event: at our parish (like many others), there are two packed services, first around dinner time (for families) and the second around midnight (for adults). As elsewhere, the former was marked by lot of cute kids reenacting the Nativity scene, while the latter included the widest variety of Christmas tunes.

The second service said Mass with hymns)was a much smaller service (in terms of liturgy and attendance) held at 9am in the morning. As we have done every year since 2003, we visited Holy Trinity in San Diego with my wife's parents — first as an ECUSA parish in their long-standing sancutary, since 2011 an ACNA parish hot-bunking with Missouri Lutherans and led by the recently-named president of Forward in Faith, Rev. Lawrence Bausch.

The Wright Thesis

Provocatively entitled “How NT Wright Stole Christmas,” the article was by Peter Leithart, Reformed theologian and president of the Theopolis Institute of Birmingham, Alabama.

The premise of the article is that the theological writings of Scottish professor (and former CoE Bishop of Durham) N.T. Wright have ruined popular Christian interpretations of the significance of Jesus Christ.

Leithart argued that Wright first ruined movies about the Crucifixion, including The Passion of Christ:

I realized that N. T. Wright has spoiled every Jesus film.  Once you’ve read Wright, you realize that none of the movies get Jesus right.  … No film ever gives us what Wright says we should be looking for: a “crucifiable” Jesus, a Jesus who does something so provocative to make the Jews murderously hostile.  In the movies, Jesus is a hippy peace-child, a delicate flower of a man, a dew-eyed first-century Jewish Gandhi.  Why would anyone want to hurt Him?

He continued (in 2009):

Just this year, I had another realization.  N. T. Wright has spoiled Christmas too.

He made me see the fairly radical difference in tone and content between Advent and Christmas hymns.  Advent hymns, as you’d expect, are full of longing, and the language of the prophets.  Advent hymns are about Israel’s desperations and hope, and specifically  hope that the Christ would come in order to keep Yahweh’s promise to restore His people, and through them to restore the nations.
…
Advent hymns are about Israel.  They are deeply and thoroughly political.  Advent hymns look forward not to heaven but the redemption of Israel and of the nations, the coming of God’s kingdom on earth.

When we turn to Christmas hymns, these themes almost completely drop out.  How many Christmas hymns mention Israel?  Many refer to Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus, but Jerusalem?

Christmas hymns focus a great deal of attention on the details of the Christmas story, as is fitting.  There are shepherds and angels, Mary and Joseph and the baby in a manger, magi from the east. Sometimes the details are inaccurate (we don’t know there were three kings), Jesus did cry when He was a baby.  And Christmas seems to elicit some of the worst and most sentimental poetry ever written.

With this gauntlet thrown down, how did this year's services fare?

Christmas Eve

While the choirs performed various introits and anthems (including a version of “In the Bleak Midwinter”, #44 in H40), the congregation sang four hymns:

• 236 Once in royal David's city. This focuses on the details of the Christmas story, but does emphasize Jesus is fully Man and fully God.
• 42 Angels we have heard on high. Pretty much only about the Christmas story.
• 33 Silent night! Other than "Son of God," again a Christmas story.
• 27 Hark, the herald angels sing. While there are obviously angels and shepherds, the second verse seems to very clearly emphasize Christ the savior (even if it only partially links to the OT prophecies):

Christ, by highest heaven adored,
Christ, the everlasting Lord,
late in time behold him come,
offspring of a Virgin's womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see:
hail, the incarnate Deity,
pleased as man with man to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Hark, the herald-angels sing
glory to the new-born King.

Christmas Day

• 12 O come, all ye faithful. Other than the allusion to John 1 in verse 6 ("Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing"), clearly a version of the Christmas story.
• 775 Joy to the world! [Only published in the final revision of H40, this includes the familiar US tune, unlike #319]. Of all this year’s hymns, the clearest exception to the Leithart thesis.
• 36 What child is this? Very clearly the manager, shepherd & Magi story.
• 30 The first Nowell.  Ditto.
• 21 O little town of Bethlehem. As the title suggests, it is much like the two previous hymns. The exception is the final verse: contrary to the Leithart stereotype, Fr. Bausch asked the congregation to mediate on this verse, which is entirely about the meaning of the coming of our savior:

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in,
be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
our Lord Emmanuel!

Joy to the World!

The real exception for our observance this year was Joy to the World! For many years, I remembered it as the exit hymn for a Christmas eve service: at the parishes I was at, on Christmas (as at Easter) the rectors wanted to select something that captures the exultation of the great feast and (perhaps being cynical) leaves people all pumped up.

I don't really care for the melody, because of the great range, the voice leading and that it's at the high end of my range. It's a little more interesting when I have a hymnal with Lowell Mason's harmony (which I've learned) and the organist is playing that harmony. Still, between the tune and the lyrics, it seems like a simple hymn — less nuanced than some of the others.

However, in retrospect I was selling short the 1719 text by the great Isaac Watts

Joy to the world! the Lord is come:
let earth receive her King;
let every heart prepare him room,
and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven, and heaven and nature sing.

Joy to the world! the Savior reigns;
let us our songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
he comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found,
far as, far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
and makes the nations prove
the glories of his righteousness,
and wonders of his love,
and wonders of his love,
and wonders, wonders of his love.

Nothing of this year's services better fits Leithart's standard for an ideal Christmas carol: no baby Jesus, shepherds, angels or Magi. Instead, a song focused entire on the redemption of the world by coming of our King and Savior.

As the preface in morning prayer (at least in the 28 BCP) says from Advent 1 to January 13: “O come let us adore him.”

Jesus loves me … The Bible tells me so!

This morning a friend shared a newsletter mailing from Larry Warner, a professional Christian spiritual director she follows. The article began:

What if I told you that the children’s song, “Jesus Loves Me”, is a propaganda tool promoting a rationalist stance toward the Bible and subtly communicating that the Bible is not living, not active, not in need of the agency of the Holy Spirit to understand it. Rather, this song conveys that the truths of the Bible are arrived at by the applications of certain prescribed principles (hermeneutics), and a working knowledge of the original languages (primarily Hebrew and Greek) that leads to an intellectual assent to said truths.
…
Now, I have sung that song, encouraged others to sing that song on countless occasions. But in hindsight I now see it as heretical and unorthodox, for it deviates from the simple truth found in Romans 8 where Paul pens these words: “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father! The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God…” It is not the Bible but the Spirit that declares it to be so – the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit!
…
The irony of the song … is that [it implies our] ability to have a personal relationship with Jesus who loves us … is a matter of doctrine, the Bible says it, so I believe it, rather than a truth that has been communicated to us in a personal way through the Holy Spirit that indwells us and in fact is the agent of that very love (Romans 5:5).

(Emphasis as in the original). I don’t have room to reprint and respond to the whole newsletter — nor would this be fair use — so I encourage those who are interested to read the argument in its original.

Visceral Reaction

My initial reaction was that this attack on the time-honored children’s hymn was exaggerated for effect. Fortunately, I was on the way to the gym and had an hour to mull it over.

And yes, this also upset me, because of my fond memories of the song, particularly upon the birth of our first child. After a sometimes anxiety-producing pregnancy, my wife and I were greatly relieved when she was born healthy. When I held her in my arms — only a few minutes in this world — all I could do was sing “Jesus loves me,“ both to let her know of God’s love, and also to acknowledge our gratitude to Him for making this possible. (It was totally spontaneous, and I was embarrassed that I could only recall one verse.)

About the Hymn

Ian Bradley in the Daily Telegraph Book of Hymns writes:

It was written by Anna Bartlett Warner (1820-1915). … [It] first appeared in Say and Seal (1859), a novel on which both [Warner and her sister Susan] collaborated. It rapidly achieved immense popularity as a Sunday School and missionary hymn.
…
[O]lder church members…remember from their youth the original rather surgery tune, written by William Batchelder Bradbury (1816-68). A native of Maine, Bradbury turned out a large number of Sunday School tunes including Woolworth which is still used for Charlotte Elliott’s hymn ‘Just as I am.’

The Cyberhymnal quotes several examples from Asian missionaries who used the song effectively in reaching children in the 19th century.

My copy of the Baptist Hymnal (1975) lists as written in 1860, with an 1862 tune. It lists four verses, as does The Cyberhymnal, although they disagree over the last two phrases of the fourth stanza. The three verses where they agree:

Jesus loves me—this I know,
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to Him belong—
They are weak, but He is strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so.

Jesus loves me—He who died
Heaven’s gate to open wide;
He will wash away my sin,
Let His little child come in.

Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so.

Jesus loves me—loves me still,
Though I’m very weak and ill;
From His shining throne on high
Comes to watch me where I lie.

Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so.

Theological Defense

As I worked out at the gym, I wonder what this was due to some defect in the commentator’s view of the Bible. But on the website of the firm he founded, he states:

We believe the Bible to be the infallible, authoritative word of God, written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

We believe that there is one true God, eternally existent in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The other possible explanation is that such a strong emphasis on the Holy Spirit is rooted in a Charismatic — IMHO excessively so — interpretation of faith.

I am not a theologian nor professionally trained, so rather than argue it point by point, let me offer two theological arguments.

First, per Sola scriptura (and Warner’s statement of faith), we Protestant Christians hold to the infallibility and completeness of Scripture. As Article VI of the 39 Articles states, “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation.” So relying on the Bible is something we are commanded to do, as both Paul (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and Peter (2 Peter 1:20-21) attest.

Second, some Reformed traditions emphasize that our personal response, our works or something else that we do is essential to our salvation. The Lutheran (nay, Christian) response to this is that because we are imperfect — all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) — we can never be sure whether or not we are “good enough.” What kind of loving God would put us through such torture? Instead, per Sola gratia we are saved by God’s perfect grace.

Pedagogical Defense

If we were in the same room, I suspect Warner and I would find some common ground — points where we overlap, even if we are not in complete agreement. And perhaps we could both agree that “The Bible tells us of God and His promises, but it also invites (even commands) us to have a relationship with Him through his Son and the work of the Holy Spirit.”

I am certainly willing to stipulate that the theology of this children’s hymn presents an oversimplified view of God. For example, it’s not at all Trinitarian but focuses on the one member of the Trinity who was witnessed (and personified) on this earth two millennia ago.

So what? We're talking about a song for preschoolers and elementary school age kids. Are we suggesting that once they learn this song, they can stop reading their children’s Bible and going to Sunday School? Of course not.

Any teacher — or parent - will tell you that you have to start somewhere. Oversimplification is inherent not only in dealing with small children, but also with any primer — a first exposure to a new concept.

So learning of the love of God the Son seems like a perfect place to start with preschoolers, but no, we don’t want to stop there. There are plenty of other hymns — not to mention Scripture, scriptural meditations and even fiction by Lewis, Tolkien or L’Engle — that can educate, train and nurture them on their path towards adult Christian formation.

One child, three kings

On the Dec. 24 episode of Issues Etc., the first hour examined the Christmas hymn “What Child is This?” The show featured two LCMS pastors, host Todd Wilken and regular guest Will Weedon.

The show examined the three 19th century verses by William Chatterton Dix (1837-1898), set to the Elizabethan tune “Greensleeves” (H40: #36; H82: #115). Pastor Weedon noted it is one of three familiar Dix hymns — the same three that are in Hymnal 1940: “What Child” (#36), “As with gladness men of old” (#52 for Epiphany) and “Alleliuia, sing to Jesus” (#347, sung to Hyfrydol).

Rev. Weedon is a little more like me — an enthusiastic tyro rather than a scholar — than some of the show’s other experts like seminary professor Dr. Arthur Just. Still, like nearly all of the Issues Etc. episodes on familiar hymns, I enjoyed it immensely.

As it turns out, Dr. Just discussed this same hymn three years ago on Issues Etc. And two years ago, Pastor Wilken discussed the hymn in a discussion of listeners’ favorite hymns.

The discussion of the first verse was quite consonant with the earlier interview with Dr. Just: answering the question, who is Jesus of Nazareth and this baby in the manger? As Pastor Weedon notes, the first verse ties back to Luke 2 — by my reading, specifically Luke 2:15-16:

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

(Ironically, the other hour of the Dec. 24 show was Dr. Just talking about the Luke 2 account of the Nativity.)

The first verse also seems to evoke other hymns from this text, including “While shepherds watched their flocks by night” and of course “Hark, the herald angels sing.”

On the second verse, Pastor Weedon notes that the ox and ass are not in the New Testament, but are inferred (by Dix and others romanticizing the Nativity) from their presence in Isaiah 1:3:

The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know, my people do not understand."

Beyond this, two LCMS pastors emphasize Jesus coming to die on the cross. I suspect my regular reader jleebcd would argue this is an excessively Lutheran (or LCMS) fixation of making everything in the Old and New Testaments about the cross. But this reference seems more than just a Lutheran one — completely consistent with the 3rd verse of Charles Wesley (i.e. Methodist) hymn “Hark!”

Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die:
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.

In the third verse, Pastor Weedon notes that the text leaps forward to Epiphany, with its reference to the three wise men (or kings) of Matthew 2. (Listening to LCMS pastors is always a good way to improve my German cultural knowledge — here that Epiphany is “Dreikönigsfest” — literally, "festival of the three kings.”)

Again, Pastor Weedon ties the New Testament narrative back to an Isaiah prophecy, this one from Isaiah 60:1-3 (earlier used as the text of that wonderful Messiah aria):

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.

For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.

And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

This makes my third posting on Dix’s hymn — each time about a separate mention of the hymn on Issues Etc. Each time I’ve learned something new about the hymn and how it can be used to communicate Christian doctrine. This is one reason that no matter how busy my December or early January, I always make sure to listen to back shows of Issues Etc. that air during this season.

Episcopalians for H40

In looking for Advent hymns, I found a couple of unexpected tributes to my favorite hymnal in the blog of a TEC priest. Not a cradle Episcopalian, Fr. Daniel Martins notes the role that Hymnal 1940 played in his selecting ECUSA:

I became an Episcopalian in the early 1970s, and a semi-mystical experience with the Hymnal 1940 in a piano practice room at Westmont College played a big role in setting me on that path. I was so moved that I thought to myself, “Where have these hymns been all my life? If there’s a church that actually sings them, I need to be in it.” And so I am.

The first hymn he highlights is Hymn 451, which begins “Lord, forever at thy side Let my place and portion be; Strip me of the robe of pride, Clothe me with humility.”

In a subsequent posting, he talks about Hymn #438 (“Jesus, gentlest Savior, God of might and power”) by Anglican Catholic lyricist F.W. Faber. As it turns out, he has many posting on Hymnal 1940 across the years of his blog. It appears as though he’s a learned man of Anglo-Catholic tastes. The comments on his H40 postings seem to come from a mix of TEC and post-TEC Anglicans.

As it turns out, Fr. Martins is actually Bishop-elect Martins, 11th Bishop of Springfield — assuming he gets the necessary consents. Apparently having worked in San Joaquin has convinced some TEC leftists that he’s a closet schismatic, even thought the liberal faction of his new diocese takes him at his word that he won’t try (nor could he) take the diocese out of TEC.

There are certainly others like Fr. Martins. A few of my friends have stayed in the TEC; they haven’t changed what they believe, but don’t (as I do) think it’s a problem that the PB and the majority of the HOD and HOB key elements of the traditional faith. Or their institutional loyalty (or aversion to schism) outweighs any doctrinal differences with the majority faction.

I wonder if there will be a bridge for liturgy between Schism I, II and TEC near-traditionalists. The obvious stumbling block is gender-neutered language, supported by the high church faction of TEC and many in ACNA and adamantly opposed by the BCP28 Schism I. Still, I could see sharing hymns between us — although by definition, a BCP28 traditionalist isn’t going to be composing a lot of new hymns.

It may be that those of us who are theologically doctrinaire Anglo-Catholics will cooperate with those we left behind in TEC in South Carolina and a few other dioceses. Or perhaps when (if) Hymnal 1940 goes out of print, it will be up to a Schism I group to keep it alive forever as the politically incorrect language becomes anathema to TEC, even if it can make a buck from it.

Doctrine matters

Recently I had a new visitor to my blog, Pastor “Amberg,”† who suggested additional hymns for my list of recommended Advent hymns. Like fellow LCMS clergyman Josh Osbun, Pastor Amberg has his own blog. (Vicar Osbun, alas, has suspended blogging after the birth of his stillborn son.)

Pastor Amberg’s blog, Lutheran Hymn Revival, quotes Ambrose and Fortunatus (among others) in the sidebar: this is my kind of Lutheran, so I subscribed immediately.

Browsing recent posts to the blog, I was drawn to one entitled “Purity of Doctrine”. Some relevant excerpts:

The praise of the Bible is always talking about what God has done for poor sinners and when the psalmist does speak of his reaction to God, it is always for a didactic reason (e.g., Psalm 139:14,ff)

The praise of pop Christian culture rarely mentions the forgiveness of sins and often speaks of our (insert incredible adjective) reaction to how (insert awesome adjective) God is.  The author of "In Christ Alone", the best contemporary song I've heard, makes similar remarks in an interview.
…
And so I don't think we should be perfectly fine with Lutheran churches looking for worship songs from sects that deny that Christ wants to give the forgiveness of sins in His Supper and in Baptism, the very foundation for the Christian life.  This is not a matter of music.  This is a matter of identity.  The pure Word of God defines who we are. Wouldn't it be unwise at the very least and sinful at the worst to throw out rashly hundreds of years of time-tested music and words for the sake of satisfying the capricious musical cravings of a spoiled- (I pray not completely) rotten, entertainment-driven generation?  If I were to ask my 3 year-old what he wants to eat, he would choose chocolate cake every day.  This generation would choose over-emotionalized sweets.  But who has the real love to refuse them these sweets and give them the nourishment they need?  And we wonder why they never grow. …

Elsewhere in his blog, Amberg has criticism of the doctrine of specific Anglican or Methodist hymns.I don’t know that I’d share all his criticisms of these hymns, but I completely agree with his view on the importance of hymn doctrine and the general vacuousness of most CCM or other praise music.

This is also another reason why hymnals are important: a hymnal codifies a church’s doctrine and minimizes deviations from doctrine. It doesn’t matter whether the hymnal is photocopied, oversewn or a PDF: what matters is that it has been vetted the same as any other part of the liturgy. As Anglicans, we don’t allow just anything to be read as scripture or prayer, so of course the hymn selection should be put to the same test.

† Elsewhere the blog implies that the pastor‘s real name is Mark Preus

After 150 years, the perfect hymn for our time?

First of two parts.

Tuesday’s (Aug. 10) webcast of Issues Etc. examines the 1866 hymn “The Church’s One Foundation,” by Samuel J. Stone (1839-1900), with the 1864 tune Aurelia by Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876). It is really Issues Etc. — and an oral discussion of any hymn text — at its best. But then, this hymn deserves such a discussion, as it captures both timeless truths and the perils of the modern culture that threaten the church today.

Both of the participants in this discussion were LCMS pastors with special ties to the hymn. Host Todd Wilken chose it for his wedding 23 years ago because “The picture of human marriage is only a reflection — a beautiful reflection — of Christ and his bride.”

His guest, Dr. Arthur A. Just, Jr. of Concordia Seminary Ft. Worth, noted it was sung at his ordination 30 years ago. He flatly declared: “I sometimes call it the perfect hymn, because it does everything a hymn should do.” Later on, he added:

He obviously was a great theologian: Nobody could write a hymn like this without being a great theologian. And clearly — at least for this hymn — an incredible poet. I don’t know that there is any greater poetry in all the hymnody that we sing than this [first] stanza…

At one point, Dr. Just said that he could spend an hour discussing just one verse, and near the end he said the hymn’s “depths and its riches are almost beyond description.” (In fact, the hymn is so important that I’m going to offer my own thoughts in a future posting.)

He noted that the hymn is a product of the times of the Rev. Stone, an Anglican clergyman who served a working class East End church. (Wikipedia helpfully notes that the Oxford-educated Stone was a curate in Hackney when he wrote these words.)

Dr. Just’s remarks tie the work of Stone to a problem that is distressingly familiar to Anglicans today:

There was a theological controversy in the church of England in the 1860s. It was a controversy in which liberalism was threatening to destroy many of the cardinal doctrines of the Anglican Church. …

It was really for the humble folk of his parish: He wrote this hymn to reaffirm the central articles of the faith and to combat the skeptical liberal scholarship that was overcoming the church at that time.

Below are my annotated excerpts from the conversation, which was accompanied by the Wells Cathedral performance (on a CD I bought during my last visit to Wells.) The hymn text sung by the choir is the version published in The English Hymnal.

1. “The Church’s one foundation”: The centrality of Christ’s atoning sacrifice

A New Testament scholar, Dr. Just explained about how the theology of this verse ties to the entire New Testament. While as a Pauline scholar he saw “new creation” as being from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and the Galatians, it also draws on Ephesians, the Gospels, and Revelations. In addition, the core idea of the verse ties back to the Old Testament:

The entire Old tTestament looked towards the blood of the Messiah. ... As it says in Hebrews, there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood. ...

The idea of the Messiah shedding his blood for the sins of the people and dying for them — that is the heart of the Old Testament faith.

And so it shouldn’t surprise us that a pastor like Samuel Stone would see the that the way in which the new creation of the church by water and word comes about is by the coming of the bridgegroom to His bride and giving up His life for her. That's Ephesians language, that’s the langauge of Paul.

The idea of placing oneself in a position to sacrifice oneself for someonse else — “Greater love has no man than this than a man would give up his life for his friends” [as] Jesus says in John — that was just embedded in the Israelite mentality.

2. “Elect from every nation”: the unity of Christians in his church

This verse alludes to Ephesians 4:4-6:

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

As Dr. Just notes, this was a miracle of the church at the time of Ephesus, unifying all races, ages, male and female. He alludes to Galatians 3:26-28:

for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

3. …“By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distrest”

As Dr. Just noted in his introduction, Rev. Stone was upset by liberal heresies that both divided the church and took it away from the truth — just as Jesus was upset by the Pharisees.

He saw this verse as a call to Christians for patience and faith in the church, despite its failings due to the sinfulness of its members and the challenges of ongoing heresies:

If you love the church, and you love her Lord and you love its unity and you love its cofnfesion and its long confession that has left to martyrdom over those years, [then] it hurts deeply to see it rent asunder by those that are pushing it to be more relevant, to be something that it so not.

Dr. Just continued (after the second break):

He was living in a time when there [were] attacks on the church and they were fighting back, and it made them better. It made them better -- not even better apologists for the faith -- but deeper in their understanding and their living out the faith.

4. “Mid toil and tribulation”: awaiting the perfection of the end times

Stone, troubled by the heresies and tumult mentioned in the previous verse, offers a vision of a happier future. Or as Dr. Just said, “This is as beautiful a description of heaven and the end times as any in the church.”

5. “Yet she on earth hath union with God, the Three in one”

This verse promises “mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won.” This phrase resonated with Dr. Just, author of Heaven on Earth: The Gifts of Christ in the Divine Service.

Meanwhile, the phrase “we like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with thee” calls to mind the Beatitudes, which apparently were important to Rev. Stone. (Given his posting, it is easy to see how.)

The hymn begins and ends with a prayer for God’s grace.

Conclusion

In the final segment, Rev. Wilken played the entire Wells Cathedral performance from beginning to end, as he often does in a hymn study. Then Dr. Just read his closing thoughts. Here are some excerpts:

One of the things that this hymn really does remind us of is that we do live in a world that attacks the church, and that the church is under stress, under duress and needs to be loved like we love Jesus. Even in its darkest moments, we have to remember that the church is His body and what we get when we come to church is Him.…

These broken people who come for the gifts, they come because they know — even if they are not able to articulate it — there is something beyond themselves. There is this mystic sweet communion. They come for peace and they come for rest. They come to hear the glorious truths that the scriptures proclaim and they come to receive those gifts.

I wish that were broadcast on a Sunday morning: with an inspiration like that, why would anyone ever skip church?

PostScript: In Praise of Issues Etc.

During one of the commercial breaks, the show announcer encouraged listeners to listen online:

Listen at the gym, in your kitchen, in your garden, on your iPod, your computer, or in your car. The technology may be new but the truth never changes.

Listening to this episode on my computer Saturday night reminded me of why I find Issues Etc. a priceless resource. This is Issues Etc. at its best: I recommend the entire 55 minute discussion (with ads) to all my readers, and have added it to my permanent collection of Issues Etc. hymn podcasts.

Dr. Just is obviously very educated, articulate and thoughtful scholar, with two degrees with Yale and Ph.D. from the University of Durham. He is the author of the semi-official LCMS two volume commentary on Luke, published by Concordia. I will make it a point to listen to his other visits to Issues Etc.

There is only one thing I don’t get: this is #4 on the Top 5 hymns as voted by the show’s listeners, and I never even heard of the other four. The LCMS and its Midwest base are German-American Lutherans, so how about some Bach, or even ol’ St. Martin himself?

The importance of hymn doctrine

The SandyAnglicans Twitter feed reposted a tweet praising Anglican hymns — which brought me to the blog of Toby Brown, a theologically traditionalist member of the Presbyterian Church USA.

Sure enough, Brown lists The English Hymnal of 1906 as one of the two greatest (English language) hymnals of all time. The other was the 1835 Southern Harmony, a compilation of 18th and 19th century hymns that was the most used hymnal of the US South for the remainder of the century.

However, what really interesting (and instructive) was Brown’s quoting of an AP article about how the Southern Baptists appointed a committee of theologians to review the doctrinal content of the 650 hymns being included in the 2008 Baptist Hymnal.

To quote Brown quoting the AP story

Each song's suitability is based on these questions:

• Does the hymn speak biblically of God?
• Is it God-honoring?
• Does the hymn present a biblical view of man?
• Does the song help us to cover the depth and breadth of our theology?
• Does the hymn call us to true discipleship, service, repentance, witness, missions and devotion?
• Does the hymn speak biblically of salvation?
• Does it engage the whole person - allowing a person to express his deepest feelings?
• Does the hymn emphasize that Christ is the Christian's Lord, Master and King? (the idea of total submission)
• Does the hymn present an Americanized/Westernized gospel? (civil religion)
• Is there a balance with corporate and individual response in worship? (immanence and transcendence)
• Does the hymn speak biblically about the church, the body of Christ?

I am not sure that would be my exact list, but most ask the key questions that need to be asked for any Christian hymnal. Let’s hope the next North American Anglican hymnal goes through a similar process.

God and Country

One year out of seven, Independence Day falls on a Sunday. At this morning’s service, the rector at the church we visited chose three patriotic hymns from Hymnal 1982:

• 718: God of our fathers, whose almighty hand (H40: 143)
• 716: Gold bless our native land (H40: 146)
• 579: Almighty father, strong to save, a politically correct, Navy/Army/Air Force version of Eternal Father” (H40: #513 and #512 respectively)

I know the idea of mixing God and Country is controversial in church (not just in civil society), but the two were handled well across the entire service.

The readings were also for 4th of July (rather than Proper 9). The sermon tied to the Epistle (Hebrews 11:8-16), particularly the final four verses:

13. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

He used this to make a point similar to the Lutheran (or at least LCMS) idea of “two kingdoms” — the need to exist both in the man-made civil society and God’s heavenly kingdom. In fact, using the analogy of a foreign embassy, he argued that churches are like embassies of God’s kingdom: when you step into a church, you are on God’s territory, not an earthly one.

Of the hymns, the second verse of the opening hymn (“God of our fathers”) perhaps tied best to the sermon theme:

Thy love divine hath led us in the past,
in this free land by thee our lot is cast;
be thou our ruler, guardian, guide, and stay,
thy word our law, thy paths our chosen way.

The service and sermon were both uplifting and a little depressing. Fifty years from now, it’s hard to see how hymns combining God and Country will ever be sung, due to an unholy conspiracy of rock band contemporary liturgy and militant secularists.

Perhaps the linkage of God and Country in song peaked — with the Protestant Revival — in the 19th Century. But it seems as though it was a constant theme throughout the first 350 years of American settlement, a celebration of our God-given liberties that is fading from the collective memory. The hymns (as with all hymns) provided a way to celebrate, reaffirm and reinforce such a message — hymns that will be gradually pared from the TEC hymnals and ignored by the hymnal-free contemporary worship.

Traditional non-sense

January 2018: Slightly updated; see postscript.

Regular readers know how a major focus of this blog is preserving traditional hymns. I love the old hymns, and am particularly suspicious of changes in hymn doctrine that have occurred in the 30-40 years.

Tradition is even formally part of our theology, at least for Anglicans who argue that our theology is based on a “three legged stool” (scripture, tradition & reason) or “four legged stool” (scripture, tradition, reason & experience) attributed to Richard Hooker. (A minor problem with such formalizations is that they are a 19th or 20th century fabrication because Hooker never said that.)

Certainly tradition is certainly an important (if not more important) consideration for our Catholic and Orthodox brethren. At the same time, one of the major arguments for Luther and the other Protestant reformers was that Tradition had improperly subordinated the plain text of Scripture.

During the 12 days of Christmas, I’ve found two good examples where older, popular, long-established hymns do not make sense when laid against what we know from Scripture. As it turns out, on Sunday I sang both of the hymns in church — one twice at two different churches. (Providentially, these are the same two hymns that I selected on Christmas Day to blog about later on.)

Exhibit A is Epiphany’s greatest hit and certainly one of my childhood favorites: “We three kings of Orient are.” The antiphonal arrangement of Hymnal 1940 (#51) as opposed to more prosaic presentation of Hymnal 1982 (#128). The carol was written by John Henry Hopkins, Jr. in 1857 and published in his 1863 book of carols. (The 1872 edition is on Google books).

Various modern sources (correctly) note the dissonance between Hopkins and the story of the Wise Men given by Matthew 2. We know they brought three gifts, but there’s no direct Biblical evidence that they were three, let alone kings. In general, Many of today’s theologians might be comfortable with “Wise Men” or even “Three Wise Men,” but would say that the “kings” are a fanciful concoction. (In addition to scripture and tradition, we also have external astronomical evidence that suggests of a “star” that appeared over Bethlehem appeared around 2 B.C.)

So what should we do with the hymn that has misled (if not indoctrinated) generations of Americans into assuming that the visitors from the East were kings? It’s a fun song, but what if it’s unbiblical? Should a rector schedule this hymn believing that it is in knowing the error? Does it even belong in the hymnal? Or is it up to the PC police to bowdlerize the text for the next edition of the hymnal?

Exhibit B is the poem (ca. 1872) by Christina Georgina Rossetti: “In the bleak midwinter.” Certainly the major attraction of the hymn is that English composer Gustav Holst composed a tune for the poem for The English Hymnal (1906). While the details have more ambiguity, the condensed argument against the hymn is that “bleak” is a description of 19th century English winters, not 1st century winters in Palestine.

Bethlehem is only 6 miles from Jerusalem, and Wikipedia says both are at an elevation of 2500’: it seems reasonable to assume a nearly identical climate. Anecdotally, snow does fall in Jerusalem — occasionally dumping several inches on the city. However, such heavy snow is not frequent, according to a scientific study of the mid-20th century, and in recent times, the snow quickly turns to slush or melts off.

Of course, today’s TV-era climate is neither Rosetti’s 19th century or that of Mary and Joseph. In terms of long-term climate, we know that in the middle of the “Little Ice Age,” 1600 A.D. was more than 2°F colder than the 4000-year average, while 2-4 B.C. and 2009 are right near the average.

Even if there was an occasional snowfall 2000+ years ago in the ancient capital of Judah, the image conveyed by Rosetti implies a much deeper and more durable cold:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Based on my travels, “water like a stone” seems like a place with daytime highs below 32°F for several days. Nowadays, the median winter high in Jerusalem is in the 60s, even if the lows are in the 40s. While random variation would be outside this range, it seems highly unlikely that the Bethlehem high today (or during any similar climatic period) would be below freezing for any significant period.

Here, this is just an error of fact rather than doctrine. (As far as I know, no denomination has a doctrinal position about mean winter snowfall or low temperature in Bethlehem.) But is this also a case where a rector (or hymnal editor) should nix a hymn due to errors?

The rest of both hymns are less problematic: who can argue with a description of gold, frankincense and myrrh? If the suspect verses were buried later on, they could be dropped — but in both cases, these are the opening, most familiar, title verses.

I don’t have an answer to either case because I am personally torn: they have been such a part of my worship life for so long. Still, if a theologian, musicologist or cleric identifies a gap between lyric and doctrine (or lyric and fact), it seems dishonest not to advise the congregation of this. And if the song is flawed, how can you keep it and use it? I don’t want to lose either one, but on the other hand I don’t see how to keep them, either.

Protestant doctrine in hymn lyrics

Josh Osbun runs the most hymn-oriented Lutheran blog out there (or at least LCMS blog): Holy Holy Hymnody, successor to his earlier blog The Crazy Lutheran. On July, he went on a binge of posts about wedding hymns (i.e. his own), but recently the Concordia seminarian is now back posting about how theology peeks out in hymn lyrics.

Two recent posts look at hymns whose theology would not fit with LCMS (or earlier Luther) teachings. One a week ago looked at how a particular Lutheran denomination (Association of Free Lutheran Congregations) had adopted a law-based theology in hymns more consistent with a Pentecostal hymnal. A posting Monday noted not only the strong Marian worship in a Catholic hymnal, but also the phrase “ever virgin” as a side comment in a hymn about Joseph.

Of course, the whole point of the “both Catholic and Reformed” mantra of the COE is that in the 16th century, Henry, Cranmer and later Elizabeth were trying to split the difference between the Catholic heritage and the winds of Reformation blowing over England.

Unfortunately, John Calvin (with Reformed) theology was having more influence on the British Isles (e.g. Church of Scotland) than were Luther and Melanchthon. I say unfortunate, because I believe Lutheran thought would be easier to reconcile than Calvinism: despite the enmity to the "Bishop of Rome," much of the theology of Luther (the former Catholic monk) is Catholicism plus the primacy of the Bible (Sola Scriptura) minus a Pope. A few Lutherans even parallel Catholics and Anglo Catholics in their liturgical traditions.

So how would Anglicans (e.g. as bound by the 39 Articles) react to Osbun’s list?

The rejection of certain Reformed beliefs is clearest. While the Reformed put Law ahead of Gospel, Article XVIII explicitly rejects works righteousness and embraces Luther’s Sola Fide.

Although a strong tenet of Catholic and Orthodox faith, the 39 Articles are silent as to whether Mary remained a Virgin after Jesus was born or enjoyed normal marital relations with her husband. A recent Nashotah term paper renews the older argument that Anglicans should embrace perpetual virginity, because a) it’s not banned by the 39 Articles and b) there was a long church tradition supporting the idea.

Here Catholic and Lutheran theology are opposed: with sola scriptura, it’s hard for most Protestants to accept this dogma. (But again, Anglo Catholics are neither/both reformed and catholic). So I guess I need to scour all the Marian hymns in the COE/PECUSA hymnals and see what they say.

I had not realized that it’s the Evangelicals rather than the Anglo-Catholics that treat the 39 Articles as a statement of confession, analogous to Luther’s small catechism. At least, that’s what Ian Murray said in a review of the GAFCON events, said Evangelicals called themselves “confessing Anglicans.” Murray continued:

For centuries evangelicals have appealed to the Thirty-nine Articles as affirming the Protestantism of the Church of England, particularly the Articles which deny the ‘Romish Doctrine of Purgatory’ (22), other ‘sacraments’ (25), ‘the sacrifices of masses’ (31), and the jurisdiction of ‘the Bishop of Rome’ (37). For Anglo-Catholics those statements have long been the most serious barrier to any re-union with Roman Catholicism, and if evangelicals were to enjoy their partnership there was no way that commitment to all the Articles could be required.

Despite being a High Church Anglican, the willingness of some Anglo-Catholics to abandon the founding principles of our church is troubling. If some clergy are so keen on working for the Pope, they should jump now, as opposed to pretending that they want to create a new orthodox Anglican province.