John Ahern recently made the case on this site for having shorter hymnals. “I believe hymnals should be shorter than they are”, he says. “Much shorter. 100 hymns at most.” Swap hymnal for “repertoire”, or “hymns” for “worship songs” and it all still applies.
A big part of John’s argument was that our hymnals should be trimmed because we should give a much greater role to the psalms. As I imagine many regular Theopolis readers were, I was nodding along and agreeing heartily. The necessity of reviving the reading and singing of psalms in worship is self-evident to many of us, and one of Theopolis’ fundamental emphases.
Yet, as I nodded along, my inner Theopolitan felt something jar.
The revival of the psalms is a long-running, well established stream of Theopolitan thought. Yet it seems to butt up against another: the mature role of the prophet.
Throughout the Old Testament, God leads Israel on a journey of maturation. Specifically, they mature in their relationship to God’s word.
The first age of Israel is the priestly one, under Moses in the wilderness. This is the most juvenile relation to God’s Word. Priests are given the Word in the Law, and simply do what it says, to the letter. There is little need for interpretation or leeway. Things are clean or unclean, pure or impure. This is the spiritual equivalent of a child learning their scales on the piano.
The second age is the kingly one, once Israel enter the land. This is perhaps the “adolescent” or “young adult” relation to God’s Word. Here, Israel have to begin exercising wisdom and judgement when the administration of the Law is not clear. Solomon is the peak here – able to deal with tricky situations which the law, when read by the letter, simply can’t handle, with the prostitutes arguing over the baby being perhaps the chief example (1 Ki. 3:16-27). This is the spiritual equivalent of a teenager being able to sight read new pieces of music without any practice.
The third and final age is the prophetic one, arriving in the late kingdom era around the exile. This is the mature relation to God’ Word. Prophets don’t simply follow the Law’s instruction like the priest, nor do they simply wisely adjudicate difficult situations like judges and kings. The prophets rather speak God’s Word – not in rote repetition, but in the thunderous poetry of prophetic oracles, through the mysterious tandem process of divine inspiration. God’s word has truly inhabited them: Ezekiel eats the scroll, Jeremiah’s lips are touched, Isaiah has the coal put to his mouth. This is the spiritual equivalent of an adult composing and improvising music.
Now, in the New Covenant, we live in the true prophetic age. The New Covenant people all know a spiritual maturity which Israel never did: we are all prophets, with the Spirit poured out on us (Joel 2:28-29). And the Spirit is not merely on us, but in us. We truly feast upon God’s Word as we feast on the fully revealed Christ. We are no longer servants, but friends (John 15:15). The gift the Apostle most eagerly desired for us was prophecy (1 Cor. 14:1). Whilst we are also priests serving Christ and kings reigning with him, this is only so because we have finally reached prophetic maturity.
Yet here comes the tension: if we are mature prophets, why should we be bound to primarily singing the psalms? Isn’t the whole point of prophetic maturity that you bubble up with fresh articulation of the truth? That we take the word of the psalms into ourselves and bear fruit from it? Why should worship in the prophetic age sound much like it did in the kingly age? If the Old Testament prophets absorbed God’s Law and so were able to deliver new oracles reflecting maturely on it, how much more should we as New Testament prophets compose hymns reflecting upon the psalms?
Didn’t we learn the scales so we could compose something of our own?
The answer, I think, is yes. But with important qualifications.
Toward A Theopolitan Hymnody
Let me suggest a Theopolitan definition of hymnody: songs of mature reflection. This definition, rather than pitting prophetic maturity against the necessity of psalm-singing, rather frames psalm-singing within the New Covenant era of prophetic maturity.
Let’s take it as read that the Church should, primarily, be singing psalms, but that our own hymns should also comprise part of our worship. Those hymns, I’ll suggest, should be songs of mature reflection, based upon the grand sweep of Scripture.
We know that the New Testament itself contains non-psalm hymns. The “Christ Hymn” of Philippians 2:5-11 is the most famous. Colossians 1:15-20 is likely another, as is John 1:1-17. We should presume that these were penned by early Christians who would have also been singing the psalms in their worship.
We could view each of these passages as an instance of “mature reflection”. The writers surveyed the territory of God’s revelation, and sketched upon it the map of these hymns. Each one deftly weaves the Old Testament in with the full revelation of Christ (e.g. Phil. 2:11 riffs on Isa. 9:6 and 45:23; John 1 is a masterful midrash on Genesis 1). This should be the model for our hymnody: maturely plumbing the depths of what God has done in Christ, considering its grandest sweep and most fundamental aspects, which are attested to from many different angles throughout the Scriptures. We can stand back from the parts, and reflect upon the whole. We can take all of God’s Word into ourselves, meditate on it day and night, and then in this season of the New Covenant bear the fruit of songs of prophetic maturity.
Although the Psalms are “a little Bible”, as Luther said, containing in some way everything that we find elsewhere in Scripture, it doesn’t do them a disservice to say there are things that they do not give us directly or perfectly cleary when read aside from the explicit New Testament revelation of Christ. That which we cannot get directly from the psalms themselves, but rather deduce as good and necessary consequence by our mature reflection as the New Covenant people, should surely be what comprises those 100 hymns in John Ahern’s slimline hymnal.
Is David Among the Prophets?
We should consider an objection at this point: aren’t the psalms already songs of prophetic maturity? In Acts 2:30, Peter calls David “a prophet”, using Psalm 16 as evidence that David “foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ” (2:30-31). If David is a prophet, then aren’t his songs already ones of mature reflection? And if the psalms are already songs of prophetic maturity, then what role is there for hymns? The peak seems to have been reached.
We could respond in a number of ways. Peter may perhaps be referring to David as a prophet in the narrow sense of one who knows the future. If this is the case, the need for prophets as those who relate most maturely to God’s Word remains.
However, more than this seems to be in view. Both Abraham (Gen. 20:7) and Moses (Dt. 18:15, 34:10) are called prophets also. In fact, Psalm 105:15 seems to refer to all the patriarchs as prophets. This does not seem to be because they know the future. Rather, it’s because they have God’s ear. This is what James Jordan identifies as the true mark of the prophet: “a member of God’s Divine Council.”1 God treats them as conversation partners, speaking and deliberating with them directly. So Abraham petitions God over Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:22-33). The LORD, of course, “used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to a friend” (Ex. 33:11). David sits directly before the ark of the covenant, responding to God’s covenant promises (2 Sam. 7:18, 1 Chr. 17:16), and it’s this that Peter also refers to in Acts 2 when making the case for David’s status as a prophet (2:30).
And so David’s status as a prophet (and that of other pre-Prophetic Era figures) is not something minimal, confined to specific instances of foreknowledge. It’s something more maximal, referring to his close counsel with God. He knew God’ covenant promises, and reflected upon the grand sweep of his plans, before erupting in prophetic song to the people of Israel. We cannot shy away from David as a prophet, and the psalms as a prophetic book.
But does this undermine the priest-king-prophet maturity paradigm?
I will say no – no more than the presence of firstfruits undermines the reality of a crop heading towards harvest. Abraham, Moses, and David are all exceptional figures, the apotheoses of their respective ages. Their closeness to God is remarkable in their contexts, and so they are spiritually precocious. Each one is a foretaste of where the whole of God’s people are heading in the end, but have not yet reached in the Old Testament. We can imagine their presence in Israel as being like some special area in which a child is advanced beyond their years, whilst being thoroughly of their age in everything else. We cannot deny that the overall sweep of the Old Testament clearly evidences a priest-king-prophet progression, and the psalms arise from the kingly era – though begin leaning into the prophetic, especially since their final form is clearly post-exilic.
The psalms, then, have a hybrid status: they are both kingly (arising firmly from the kingdom era), and prophetic (maturely reflecting upon God’s work in fresh speech). This being the case, they are both the content and the model for our own mature prophetic reflection in hymnody.
Songs of Mature Reflection
What, then, does a song of mature reflection look like? Consider the first verse of “And Can It Be?” by Charles Wesley:
And can it be that I should gain
An int’rest in the Saviour’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, should die for me?
This is mature reflection. It begins with a question of response, and so contemplation of what God has done in Christ is already assumed. The questioning continues, pushing continued reflection. Wesley knows that Christ’s death was not simply caused by him (evoking Isa. 53:5), but that he pursued Christ to death, as if placing himself among those yelling “Crucify him!” (Mt. 27:23, Mk. 15:13, Lk. 23:20, Jn. 19:6). The final question marvels at the startling fact that “my God” should die (perhaps an echo of Thomas in in John 20:28). The New Testament never puts things quite as bluntly as saying “God died” – talk of God’s blood in Acts 20:28 is the closest we get. However, that is simple Chalcedonian Christology, which is itself a mature reflection upon the words of Scripture.
I’ve taken this slightly verbose hymn as my main example, but songs of mature reflection don’t necessarily have to be this dense. Rather than multiplying words, mature reflection will also distil things down into their most fundamental aspects. It’s mature reflection on the Law which allows one to discern that all the law and prophets hang on the greatest commandments to love the LORD your God, and to love your neighbour as yourself (Mt. 22:36-40).
Our church has been preaching through Revelation, and after a recent sermon on Revelation 5, the service concluded with this simple praise chorus:
All hail the lamb,
Enthroned on high,
His praise shall be,
Our battle cry,
He reigns victorious,
Forever glorious,
His name is Jesus,
He is the Lord.
Paired with the right passage, a chorus like this amounts to a mature reflection. It discerns the thing on which other things hang. Arguably, a strong hymn like Wesley’s stands as mature reflection on its own, whereas a praise chorus only really lights up when paired with the right passage. But I think the point still stands.
Now, we must say: the point of hymns is not to leave the psalms behind, as somehow deficient or lacking. The kings and prophets didn’t produce wisdom and prophecy based on what the Law lacked, but based on what it contained, but had not yet applied. So too with hymns: they should not be written as if the psalms were lacking Christ, but should rather bubble up with all the ways Christ is contained in the psalms. Were this so, we’d without doubt have many more hymns of lament, or choruses about God’s judgement upon his enemies.
The issue is, of course, that many of our hymns, worship songs, and choruses, don’t amount to mature reflection ever, regardless of what they’re paired with. They quote Scripture, but don’t weave it into a greater whole. Rather than being simple, like the best choruses, they are simplistic, listing disconnected truths about salvation which are so bland it’s almost impossible to think of where exactly in Scripture they may have come from. Such songs fall far short of mature prophetic reflection, or even of kingly discernment or priestly obedience. They are spiritually infantile. Dumping those kinds of songs would certainly take us a long way toward John’s 100-song hymnal.
So, if we are in the business of winnowing our song selections, this may be a helpful criteria for deciding what makes the cut. There are other considerations of course – variety, the church calendar, honouring the particularities of the congregation we serve. But a clear idea of what sets a hymn apart from a psalm aside from being non-scriptural is surely essential to that task. Viewing hymns as mature, prophetic reflection upon the words of the Lord seems a wise, and thoroughly Theopolitan, place to start.
Rhys Laverty (BA, GDip) works part-time for The Davenant Institute, alongside studying Davenant’s MLitt degree. He writes a weekly blog for Ad Fontes and co-hosts the Ad Fontes Podcast. He also podcasts about film and TV on For Now We See. He lives in Chessington, UK, with his wife and two children.
- James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing A Biblical View of the World (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999), 138. ↩︎