Hymns and Hymnwriting     •     Echoes of Creation

Logically, the four songs labelled "Songs of Creation" may seem to precede the other songs, but that is not the way I learned to sing them. The two songs that most explicitly describe the act of creation were among the latest to be written. I began by looking for a context in which songs about heaven could make sense,¹ a context in which songs about restoration or redemption could make sense,² and ultimately, a context in which songs of praise could make sense.

One recurrent theme in the Psalms³ is that Creation exists to praise God: to inspire (in detail!) a sense of wonder at His wisdom and power. And so, I thought, I ought also to look at creation, and marvel. James Montgomery's Songs of praise the angels Sang showed, in detail, how praise is the purpose of the whole creation. And Fred Pratt Green's widely-respected When in our music God is Glorified^3a proclaims that singing is a blessing given by God. Even so, In the beginning God Sang adds something to the argument: that singing is a reflection not just of creation but of the divine nature. And I am uncomfortable with part of Pratt Green's argument: when we sing, he says, "it is as if the whole creation sang." I would rather say with Montgomery (and with the psalmist) that the whole of creation shouts 'Glory to God!' whether we listen, or join in, or not. And Breath of the Lord declares that new revelations from creation ought to be welcomed into the universal pæan, and shows new revelations being so welcomed: "God rides the cherubim" above all storms!

Creation is the source and context of praise, and for that matter, for all talk about God. And so all twelve of these songs are "echoes of creation"; that theme is carried through all the songs, as each section includes a psalm imitation in which creation praises its king (here, Ascribe to Jehovah); important symbols (the Garden of Eden, the Cherubim, redemption and restoration) are carried through all three sections; and several songs carry their particular theme from creation to eternity. Only in this way, I would argue, can the language of John's apocalyptic vision have any meaning at all.

Again, creation is the context of the divine redemptive acts. "Salvation" is rescue from a trap; reversion to the situation before we got ourselves entangled: and so, over and over, the Bible speaks of God's actions as "restoration" of the original state (as described in the primeval Garden). This is a key to the songs about eternity: the language of prophecy and promise, from Abraham to John, looks (simultaneously) back to the beginning, and forward to the culmination, of God's activity. And so all four of these songs look forward to a "perfect" creation, just as all four songs about eternity look to "creation" (the thing or the event.)

Finally, creation is part of human nature, because humanity was created in the image of a Creator. In the simple act of creating music I recognize a divinely-approved way of imitating God. So it is profoundly fitting that we should praise God the source of all joy and beauty, by joyful beauty-making; and so In the beginning God Sang demanded to be written as part of closing the cycle. Now I considered suppressing my impulse to attempt poetry--I am not a skilled nor facile poet! But my desire to create beauty is given by God; and so I instead asked myself whether there were any aspect of praise which satisfied these criteria:⁴ (1) our traditional corpus was defective, and (2) I could not readily provide the remedy from other material with which I was familiar.

For instance, as an expression of one of my recurrent concerns, Before the floodgates of the world were sealed continues an attempt to shift theological language⁵ away from the "substance/attribute" model of the ancient pagan philosophies towards the "functional/behavioral" model of the scientific world (which, I would argue, better corresponds to the modality of divine revelation anyway.)

One might say all this represents a large mural begun with a small palette; but if it merely points other people towards areas where more research and creativity is needed, it will be worth doing all over again.

Notes

¹See Shadows of Eternity.

²See Seasons of Restoration.

³See, for instance, Psalms 8, 19, 24, 29, 65, 89, 90, 92, 93, 98, 100, 103, 104, 136, 146, 147, 148, 150; and in particular, Psalm 18, which impelled the second song to be written, Breath of the Lord.

^3aBoth of these fine hymns are naturally not in our hymnals. Our editors evidently felt we hated singing and had to be incessantly hectored to do it anyway: so a typical book has half a dozen or so imperiously imperative songs wherewith we can demand that each other "sing" (usually "to me" rather than to God) "of" something or other. If instead, the editors had provided songs worth singing, about whatever they thought worth singing about, they wouldn't have to nag us! We could simply proceed to sing "with grace in our hearts" (or, as one could say in English, "with heartfelt gratitude"--"grace" for "gratitude" is a graceless Graecism) towards God.
So my approach is to look for songs that can be sung "with heartfelt gratitude towards God": here, that means expressing gratitude to God for song, and for the "duty and delight" (as Erik Routley put it) of being able to sing. And someone who can heartily sing that won't have to be nagged to sing praises!

⁴The metric psalms obviously satisfy criterion 1 but not criterion 2. So do the insipid tunes our hymnal editors churn out to fill their own pages. In vivid contrast, the attitude of talented musicians like Ralph Vaughan Williams and Erik Routley was awe at the number of "gorgeous" tunes that we have as a legacy from previous generations, and regret that we can't use more of them.

⁵An attempt begun in the earliest of these songs to be written, Zion is a Shadow.

This text, © Stephen Hutcheson, 2005, and offered freely for use under a Creative Commons License. These studies are created by members of the West Allen Church of Christ in Allen, Texas