For years it has been a praiseworthy endeavor of Valparaiso University to sponsor Church Music Seminars under the leadership of Dr. Hoelty-Nickel. Under the general title “The Musical Heritage of the Church,” the specific topic “Church Music and Theology” has recently been under discussion.

It is well that our church musicians come to our theologians and that the theologians should go to the church musicians, to the gifted artists of the church. Both the Lutheran theologians and the church musicians must get together, for neither theology as a discipline alone nor church music as such can produce a proper Lutheran worship. We will seldom find enough musical experts who are at the same time professional theologians to give the church what it needs. Luther was (in spite of many things he seems to have said against ceremonies) the theologian who knew the place of music in worship. He was a theologian great enough to see where changes from the old rite were essential. One example only: He dared to move the words of consecration closer to the distribution by putting the Our Father before the Words of Institution. We must consider together the essence of worship and, in particular, the character of Lutheran worship. Let us ask our architects, our painters, our decorators to remember the Lutheran worship in the work they do. And let us above all together with our musicians find the proper form of worship. For whereas church buildings, church decorations, etc., may still be considered only a frame, music is much more! It is a gift and power so intimately joined to the proclamation of the Word that it must of necessity be sacred, be Lutheran. What this Lutheran music is in actual notes and measures, what the proper rhythm, the proper melos, the proper harmony for Lutheran worship, that is for the Lutheran Church’s musicians to say. And they will be able to tell us if they will forever remember it does not so much depend on the cantus but on the res quae canitur (that about which you sing).

Let us consider the question “What is the character of Lutheran worship?” keeping in mind the directives that are thereby given to the form and manner of our church services.

In Rom. 12:1 we have the word of our “reasonable sacrifices.” This reasonable offering, or service, or worship, is the logical result of the doxology in the verse immediately before, “for of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.” And Paul continues: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service [or worship].”

The reasonable worship-service is not a cult, not a formal act of presenting something before God, but it is the whole man, the living person, giving himself an offering to God. This sacrifice is not limited to a place, a form, a time, but is a total sacrifice; it is as such a total service, a logical, reasonable way of life. It is as such something unreasonable to man with his darkened reason, which has taken the form and the place of worship to be a thing and not the thing in our life. That can be eating, drinking, marrying, etc. But when man thinks of worship, he thinks of cutting out of his time and life a section to be subjected to the radiation of what we call “going to church,” in the hope that this irradiated piece may do for a while to preserve us from total decay. That is not logical, is not good reason at all. Therefore it has been difficult for people, even theologians, to realize the essence of true worship.

There have been and still are two views of worship which on the face of things seem valid. The first is the view of public worship as an educational or edifying act. The other is to consider worship as a demonstrative act.

Luther himself spoke very strongly of the educative force of worship. But let us state, without going into detail, this emphasis in Luther was only an accentuation of worship according to the needs of his day. Luther’s concept of worship was Biblical (Rom. 12:1). Again, we all know that edification, building up, is one of the effects of Lutheran worship, and in view of the ignorance of many who “go to church,” an ignorance of things spiritual, we all will feel the need of education in our services. Yet, as in Luther’s day, this cannot be the real essence of worship.

Nor is the second concept mentioned correct. Since Schleiermacher and his subjective concept of faith, it has become customary in the Western hemisphere to think of worship as an act in which the congregation demonstrates its faith. This seems very much like saying: “The congregation confesses,” but it is certainly not the same thing. According to Schleiermacher, faith is the subjective inner consciousness of the human heart, “the taste and feeling for the infinite,” and in worship man demonstrates this.

We can see that both these concepts see in worship a means to an end. Both seem to lead to something. Worship is only an exercise leading to something beyond worship itself. This does not sound strange to many, because it is and has been the idea of “going to church.” We go to church to do something or get something that will be useful to us on weekdays or on our deathbed or in judgment or in the battle against sin. This can be rightly understood, and this is the result of worship, but only if we know what happens “in church,” in the service and worship of God.

It must be emphasized: Proper worship is not a means to an end. A worship is not to be considered educative or demonstrative, but it is an event, a happening: something happens by the act of God; worship is an act of salvation (Heilsgeschehen). We will be able to see this only if we dare to look at it from the point of view of God. For it is God’s doing. God acts. God serves. What the act of God causes or creates in us is of secondary importance. The consequences are not the final aim and end of worship. It is important that a man of God live and act as a man of God, but of prime importance is God’s act. He acts first and must act first. And it is His act that defines and forms the essence of worship. “It is God that justifieth.” Justification gives us the theme and scheme of our worship. Of course, it must he remembered who is justified and who in consequence is sanctified.

The acting of God is of course not the repeated sacrifice of the Mass, as in the Roman Church. The Roman Church denies the efapax, the once and for all time.

We confess according to Scripture that Christ’s work of redemption was completed with the cry “It is finished.” But in our worship the power and grace of the Christ who died and rose again is active. In Him we die and live again daily. This not only in me but in the whole Christian church on earth (Third Article). The doctrine of the church is the doctrine of the Second Article applied by God to all believers. The church, the communion of saints, is the living body of Christ. This is more than just a figure of speech. We are the mystic body of Christ, and the worship of the church is the diaconia thV catallaghV, the service of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18). This is the message of the church. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. By this message the church lives and grows, and this living and growing goes on especially where the congregation is assembled for worship. And in all this we see God’s power active and acting. Let us say: Worship is an event. So we see, for example: Preaching the Word is an event. (Dynamic of the Kerygma.) The sermon is not just an essay or paper on God or about God. But God speaks. And when God speaks, something happens—God’s speaking is powerful. God’s speaking is eventful in the extreme. A decision is made every time God speaks. One does not go home to decide! Whoever hears, decides, or rather, God forces the issue. That is why the pedagogical theory is not enough. In this pedagogical concept of worship there is an overemphasis on the intellect and the human decision.

God, however, does not educate us into being believers. He makes us believers by His Spirit and the means of grace, e.g., we are made disciples by Baptism. So we remember to respect Baptism as an event, an act, as something done by God for Christ’s sake and through Christ’s death and life for the one being baptized.

So we also have a divine act in the Lord’s Supper. “This is My body, this is My blood,” is the almighty word of God that cannot be gainsaid, just as little as God’s word “Let there be light” could possibly be blocked, delayed, or annulled. There was light!

This acting of God happens in our midst and in our presence. Hic et nunc! Here and now! In our worship service, in our presence, God deals with sinful men. We see in Baptism how a man, a human being, is buried into the death of Christ and raised again to everlasting life. The real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper is not just a demonstrative act. The words “for you” make it God’s acting with me! Pro me et in me! It all is the event of worship. Our faith is God’s work, and all of it so marvelous beyond human reason.

And now we who are His by His act of grace must see our coming together to worship Him also as an event of salvation. And you and I are to give to our worship our gifts, not indiscriminately but in faith and in keeping with what we know of this worship.

Musicians, organists, singers, preachers—all believers, all are to give to worship what is in keeping with the dignity, yes, divine majesty of God’s service (Gottesdienst—divine service). There is a theology of music but not a theology for music; rather, there is a music for theology, for the glory of God. And what might that be? It must be the best, not the most popular, for as we all know, man in all his gifts only hesitatingly and unwillingly bows to law and order.

In the nineteenth century art was something to lift us out of the world to a higher reality (Platonic idealism). Our century has gone far to do the opposite; in the name of truth we dig down into the innermost secrets of man himself and find, as Paul said, “no good thing!” Let us just try to remember modern existentialist stories or pictures: ugly as sin, the garbage and the guts of rotten humanity. Some may say it develops into the question “Is final truth beautiful or ugly?” Yes and no. Ugly is the truth about man. Sin is ugly—so ugly that no devilish representation can really express it. But this truth is confessed in worship, not as an exhibition but as a confession, and the truth of God’s grace and mercy is beautiful beyond compare. It is our obligation to exercise what we bring to God and His worship. Is it the artist who pictures himself? Or is the artist telling of God’s beauty and grace? Is the music a rhythm that expresses emotions of man? Is church music a subjective statement of man or even of man’s opinion of God? Or does it convey man’s confession and God’s forgiveness? Luther brought out the duplicity or paradox of our Christian existence. Man is at the same time justus and peccator. Simul justi et peccatores we are who are Christ’s by His grace. Many, many mysteries become clear to me when I realize the paradox existence I lead. Divine worship is God acting with a sinner making him a saint, always by His means of grace and Spirit. Is this the basis for our church music?

Let us try to think of our hymns in the light of such a concept of worship. We could also think of every other place or aspect of worship, even of such little things as what type of clothes the worshiper should wear. (Cf.: Kings and royalty demand a certain court demeanor and dress; the pope will give audience only to people properly dressed.) The church, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, sings of Christ, of His work of salvation. The church in the spirit and life of Christ sings to Christ. Two demands are to be made of hymns: Hymns must be based on the revelation of God in Christ—the only source is Holy Scripture; and our hymns must be filled with the certainty of Christ’s presence in the congregation—a living, active presence. There are some limitations to consider: hymns should not be improvised; text and melody must be given. This is the task of poets and musicians. The essential characteristics of good hymns are these:

Hymns must be a confession of faith (justus et peccator).

Hymns must be a prayer in Christ to God.

Hymns must be a meditation on the Christ of Scripture.

Music and theology are more closely related than is usually admitted. “Music has its meaning not in itself, but in God” (Dedo Mueller). True music can only be described or defined theologically. Such music does not only want to be heard, but music wants to be something through which we hear, that is, hear what is beyond music. Music wants to let us listen to things, thoughts, and matters which are not so well heard by the ear of man. Therefore, music has the faculty of being used to hallow God’s name. Music can in its divine mystery express the inexpressible. If we use words or speak of the holiest and sublimest things, these words themselves tend to limit and devaluate the subject. Dedo Mueller says, “Beyond all speaking of God there still is making music of God.”

Luther practically made music a gospel in a form of nature. Luther says that der Geist wunderbarliche und grosse Geheimnisse anzeigt in der Musika. (“The Spirit indicates marvelous and great mysteries in music”). But music calls for something greater than man and his works. Music seems to call for divine themes, and we can say, properly, music needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ to fulfill its existence and office on earth. The natural place for music therefore is in worship. The place where music can serve best is in worship. The place where music can develop to greatest heights is in worship. But not to beautify, to decorate, to please man’s vanities but as a partner to the sound of the voice of man. For God after all has commanded man to speak of Him and His mighty works. The viva vox evangelii, the living voice of the Word of God, needs all the gifts of God to man to sound forth His message of salvation. The holy writers call on music, psalter and harp, to sound forth, to praise God. (Ps. 150)

Our Lutheran worship is theological. If it is not theological it isn’t worship and, of course, isn’t Lutheran. Theological doesn’t mean “of a theologian.” Theology is really properly defined: “Praise of God, ‘speaking’ of God.” There is another “speaking” of God, which is blasphemy. All true speaking of God is theology. And all theology is Christology. We know no theology without Christ. Without Him there is no praise of God, only wailing and gnashing of teeth. Therefore all our worship must have the Christological dimension.

This worship service exists only since the day of Pentecost, at the end of the way that God had chosen in order to bestow the blessings of perfect salvation on mankind. Unless God had “spoken unto us at the end of these days” in the incarnation of his Son, there could be no church service. Christ had to suffer and die and rise again before the Spirit was poured out, and only then did the congregation of the last days assemble for the worship service. (Peter Brunner)

This dimension of worship service is that which draws the horizontal line from Pentecost to Judgment Day. When Christ died, an eon had passed, and a new one had begun. It is this turning point on which the service of worship also turns. For, as we said, God acts, and the sinner dies and lives again. This is the occidendo vivificat, killing He gives life. That is the miracle of the New Testament, that is the Christology of a living Christ, living after dying for man. In our worship Christ’s work and Christ’s presence are the life and meaning of everything. And this is all in view of the coming of Christ, and in this interim of completed redemption and waiting for complete deliverance we conduct our worship. It is always “He has come,” the Word was made flesh, incarnatus est, and it is always also “He will come!” “Come, Lord Jesus.”

This Christological and Christocentric aspect of all our worship should in and by itself make such an impression on worshipers that in a most natural and self-evident way all the idols of men are discarded. That means, all the musical vanities of man should be trodden underfoot as music unworthy, yes, even Satanic, that grows from below, from the depth of man and out of his lust and pride; this music has no place in this most important and momentous interim, especially when the Christians, the Christ-bought and Christlike, assemble to praise and worship God. Certainly even the best we have is only to be tolerated inasmuch as it is all we have, inasmuch as it, too, with body and soul, is justified and sanctified through the Spirit. Certainly, what we have is not good enough. Nevertheless it is a gift of the Creator and as such can serve the Creator.

It cannot be that we do not discriminate but depend on God’s grace to make holy the unholy. The devil makes music and sets tunes. They are not so hard to recognize. (Some musical Kinsey should and could give us the lowdown, in a very pregnant sense of this expression, on modern popular music, its adulteration, etc.) But the devil also has some good tunes. Satan lays claim to all creatures: “This all will I give thee.” Luther said, in explanation of why he took some popular tunes of his day for church hymns, he was not going to let the devil have these nice tunes. Someone rightly said that the old folk tunes were not erfunden, but gefunden—not invented but found or discovered in nature itself. We are not only referring to obscene songs and sensual music. We refer, too, to what man, as sinful man, considers beautiful. His emotions, his desires, his “confessions,” all unsanctified, may be interesting reading and listening, but they are certainly in no way related to the recognition of the interim of this Christological dimension. Christian music is giving the right emphasis to the right word.

There is also the anthropological dimension of worship. Worship is man’s concern, specifically man’s concern on earth. We know of the worship of angels and also of the worship of all nature. But in our worship man is the partaker of God’s gift. To forget man in any way is to forget what God has done. God’s revelation is to man, Luther did not want to rationalize, intellectualize, and secularize worship. Many have so interpreted his position. But Luther in no way wanted to get away from theological reality; he wanted to make theology real in that he brought it so much closer to man. He introduced German into the service, not to rob it of its dignity but to make it what it ought to be. In this he was immensely practical and was concerned with the existence of man in the world and not with the perpetuation of some ideal.

We know that in our worship we want all who attend to participate; but how easily this is translated into the notion of doing something together in order to establish fellowship! Certainly the communion of saints becomes evident, but the anthropological must not be interpreted to read “sociological.” Where the theological is the dimension, the anthropological cannot create and “make” anything. Before any single person can worship, something must have happened to him. (“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” John 3:3). By Baptism God has given us the benefit of Christ’s life and death. Only then when we are regenerated, when we are children of God by His grace, can we worship Him. “Baptism is the foundation of worship service,” says Peter Brunner. But this is not all. We can fall from grace. We must be preserved by the power of God in His grace. To this purpose God has given the means of grace. As long as we live here we will need this constant act and power of God. And all this becomes so eminently important when we view man in toto, not only in all his essence, but also chronologically: birth, Baptism, and the years of his life on earth, and then what? Death and eternal life! Again we see that we have an interim to think about. We must think about the time from Baptism to the day we leave this world. In this interim we exist, we live as human beings.

Every believer has been puzzled, like Paul, who saw in himself active a twofold law. He found in himself “no good thing,” he found that the good he wanted to do he did not do. The evil he didn’t want to do he did. He cries out, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” But Paul also knows the answer. He knows himself just and righteous. He knows God has given him the victory in Christ! He knows he cannot be separated from the love of God. Paul accepts the paradox. Since Paul, many have suffered under this paradox, were puzzled, were led to wrong conclusions. But after Paul came Luther, and he in his anthropology, too, accepts the paradox and states it plainly: Simul justus et peccator, at one and the same time the believer is just and a sinner. Just—in and with Christ! a sinner—in his own weakness and sinfulness. In our church service we must therefore again remember it is interim music we must sing and play. A justified sinner sings praise to God with all the other justified sinners. And this confession of sins and receiving of absolution, though logically one follows after the other, yet is chronologically instantaneous and simultaneous.

We examine our worship and our worship music from that point of view; we ask the question: Has it that dimension? Music itself is a paradox. Music has its own laws, but it has its own liberty too. In between the two, true music grows. Neither one nor the other can be forgotten or denied.

Here it is not a question of beauty but a question of adequacy and propriety. We must educate our people to sing and speak out of Christian consciousness. Do we know we are justi and peccatores? Can we afford to indulge in sentimentalities? We who have died in Baptism and will soon die to the world, can we be satisfied to sing about this existence in music inspired by Satan? Similar questions will arise if we should take a look at another, the cosmological dimension of worship. There is the promise of a new heaven and a new earth. For this promise we live. But we are still living in the old world, and this world, the creation of God, is not unconcerned with the children of God. All creation longs for and waits for the revelation of the sons of God. This groaning cosmos, subjected to vanity for the sake of sin, is to have a share in our complete and final redemption. Ears, perhaps, are deaf to this groaning, and we seldom or never notice the expectancy of creation. We have no aerial or antenna to receive the glorious song of the sun, moon, and stars. Yet all creatures praise God! Human language is not their medium, but sometimes music is. And it is from this praise of God in nature that music takes all its nobility. Man in his degenerated state has succeeded in painting purple cows as well as making purple music. Man has “listened in to himself” and has tried to say what he heard. Ever so often such things are popular and find acclaim. But better it would be if man listened to God’s Word, which has so much to say about His glory in nature. We who have eyes that see beyond the sunset, who see in faith the new creation, can best realize how much worship could learn from God’s subhuman creatures, who are willing to be under our feet, as long as we are under God. The glory of heaven is not expressed with what man finds in his own nature. Only revelation can teach him that. But once it has been revealed to him and once he learns to listen to the harmony of God’s lesser but sinless creatures, he will realize that there, in this voice of nature, is the indication (Ahnung) of what is to be.

But there is in God’s creation another category. We know the cosmos is populated with spirits. In our worship we join angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. Yes, round about us stand the holy choirs of God, His hosts, who do His will as it ought to be done on earth.

We stand between both choirs, the angelic choir that is higher and that of the other creatures. In our worship we must know of this dimension also. We are not alone. We sing not alone. Worship music must reflect also this dimension.

All these deductions can be made spontaneously by the new man in Christ. Yet the better we know the dimensions of worship and the clearer we see ourselves as living in and with these dimensions, which take us far out into the infinite reaches of eternity, the more will we gravitate to that which is truly fitting, beautiful, and blessed.

May we all be filled with the Spirit of God, who teaches us and leads us into all truth, so that where our worship by God’s grace is one in spirit and in truth, there, too, our church music may match as far as it is possible in this imperfect world the perfect creation of God: His holy church!

Concordia Seminary
Springfield, Illinois

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume V (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1959). Copyright Concordia Publishing House. Printed by permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Concordia Publishing House.