Month: June 2021

We believe in God the Father

Wall painting of The Apostle’s Creed dating from 1683
Church of St John the Baptist, Stokesay
© The Carlisle Kid, licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.

Today’s hymn is the last in the series for Trinity week, and the third in a row for hymnwriter Timothy Dudley-Smith.  It’s a paraphrase of the Apostle’s Creed (the shorter of the two forms of the creed usually used in church). The suggested tune is Lux Eoi, by Arthur Sullivan, perhaps better known for his light operas but who also composed some good church music.

The Creed summarises the beliefs of the mainstream churches: those who agree on its wording generally accept each other as fellow Christians, even if they don’t always extend this acceptance to recognising each other’s ministerial orders and sacraments, but that’s another matter.

Although the words refer to all three persons of the Trinity, the bulk of them are about Jesus the Son of God, which probably reflects the difficulty the early Church had in understanding him.  Where people agree on something, often only a short form of words is needed, so “We believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth” is short enough to convey what we understand by the Creator.  The “how” of creation didn’t really get debated until long after the Creeds were agreed.

When people disagree on something, however, it usually leads to writing rules down in great detail, so there is much here about exactly what the Church (i.e. the original Eastern church) thought about Christ. We have his sonship of God, born of a virgin by the Spirit, crucified, dead, buried, risen and ascended, and coming again in future to judge us. The Nicene Creed goes into much more detail (God from God, light from light, very God of very God).  If you disagree with this, you’re a heretic. Some churches still find any dissent from this difficult to accept within their ranks; others are more open to debate on those issues (perhaps especially on the virgin birth and the nature of Christ’s future reign).

The Apostles’ Creed simply states in regard to the Holy Spirit that we believe in Him.  This lack of further description of the Spirit’s work compared with the obsession with the detail of the exact nature of Christ’s relationship with the Father, does make me wonder whether the Church Fathers actually experienced the Holy Spirit for themselves?  We will probably never know.

Affirm anew the three-fold name

A confirmation service in the Church of England.
Image from the Diocese of Blackburn website.

Today’s Trinity hymn from Sing Praise is by the same author as yesterday’s: Timothy Dudley-Smith. This time, he turns on its head the usual pattern of such hymns (Father, Son, Spirit and a final verse about the three-in-one) by starting with the unity – “Affirm anew the three-fold name of Father, Spirit, Son” – and then breaking down the Trinity, as it were, into his constituent parts in subsequent verses: the all-embracing Lord, Christ the Life, Truth, Way and Rock, and the ancient fire of the Spirit.  

Notably, each verse starts with an imperative verb: Affirm, Declare, Confirm, Renew. The first two verses are addressed to each other (if sung as a congregational hymn) as we urge each other to affirm and declare our faith.  The latter two would seem to be addressed to God himself, asking him to confirm our faith, and renew us by his Spirit. In fact I wonder whether the hymn was written with a confirmation service in mind, rather than Trinity Sunday?

Coincidentally, and as writing the previous sentence reminded me, it was forty years last Sunday that I myself was confirmed by the late Bishop Stephen Neill. Perhaps it is time, forty years on, for me to affirm, declare and ask God to renew my own faith.

The suggested tune, which John used, is an old 18th century one, but there is a suggestion that Kingsfold (I heard the voice of Jesus say) could be used instead. If anything I might prefer to sing this to something more rousing, especially as the last verse asks the Spirit to inflame our hearts, renew, restore, unite and inspire us.

Christ pours his grace upon his own

Today’s Trinity hymn from Sing Praise is “Christ pours his grace upon his own” by Timothy Dudley Smith to a bespoke tune by Anne Harrison. It differs from most such hymns in placing the Son/Christ first, before the Father/Creator, and is also much more original in its wording than yesterday’s, as befits TDS’s reputation as a leading hymnwriter. 

One of the tensions I find in any discussion of the Trinity is between an insistence that they are equal in divine nature and all existing since before time (as an old hymn puts it, ‘consubstantial and co-eternal’), and a hierarchy in which the Father begets the Son and both together send forth the Spirit.  If all of them have existed as persons in the same unity since before time, does it matter what order they go in, just because the son was incarnate at a particular time, and the Spirit appeared immediately after the Son’s departure? (immediately? well, what’s ten days in ten billion years?)

Anyway, if the link phrase on Monday was ‘the way’, today’s is the phrase ‘to him [or God) be glory’.  In verse one, it is in response to the grace given by Christ thorough his death; in verse two, to the changeless love of the Creator; and in verse three to the work of the Spirit is making us one. The refrain of the last verse is repeated: “to God be glory from us his children, throughout all ages” which takes us back to the co-eternal. Glory is a quality of God and the basic meaning of the word may be something more like ‘honour’, see my previous post ) : we honour God in response to his grace, love and abiding presence with us.

Father, Lord of earth and heaven

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise, like yesterday’s is a Trinitarian one beginning “Father, Lord”.  In this instance it’s “Father, Lord of earth and heaven” by James Quinn.  The structure of the words seems to be based on the phrase from the Nicene creed that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son” (which allegedly was the reason for the Roman Catholic church splitting from Orthodoxy a thousand years ago, though I’m sure it was more complex than that).  Otherwise, the words, to me, were rather predictable as it regurgitates familiar ideas rather than coming up with any new insight.

It also doesn’t come with its own tune, and although the 87.87 metre would fit any of numerous tunes in a standard hymnal, the suggested tune (Stuttgart) is not very exciting either. So I didn’t get much from this hymn to share with you, other than that having asked the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to come to us, in the last verse we ask them/him to “stay among us and dwell within us”. Knowing God and receiving the Spirit should be a state of being rather than an occasional encounter, although few people could claim that is their everyday experience.