And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory. (Is.6:3)

As a rule one does not begin a discussion with a footnote—although there are people who find footnotes the most interesting part of a book. I should like to begin this discussion with two footnotes, though, because they illustrate what we shall be trying to understand. The first of these footnotes is a comment by Guenther Baum of Berlin in an article on the “Problems of Modern Music,” that the public makes no effort to understand the rational musical elements that are the bases of modern composition. The second is a comment on what is meant by a concept of art.

Baum maintains that most people make no effort to understand the rational elements basic to modern composition because they think that it is a kind of sacrilege to try to understand music. Failing to understand it, they refuse it. He then goes on to say that the public in general does not know what is happening in the world of today, that there is very little general awareness of the new things the experts are doing to man in art, in philosophy, and in many other areas—things that had not been done for the past 4,000 years. They are excavating and rediscovering or uncovering the very foundations of society in order to reconstruct (in the sense of redesigning) the very foundations themselves. The public does not and cannot realize that analysis of the changes that are taking place in the world leads men to new forms and effects, not for the sake of mere newness or novelty but for fundamental reasons. And so the public is estranged and antagonized by modern music.*

*Universitas, July 1960, pp. 773 ff.

Baum is right. The public—this important and, at the same time, impersonal judge of art—wants to “enjoy” music, as it enjoys food, drink, a movie, TV, yes, even a sermon. (One of the trials of the clergy is having to face the weekly barrage of unintended insult from parishioners who “sure enjoyed your sermon, Reverner.”) People welcome novelty. Unfortunately they seldom ask for the reasons for new forms or effects. This discussion will not attempt to explain the foundations of modern music, which are, of course, often too complicated or technical for laymen to understand, but the point needs to be made that we must know something about these foundations before we can hope to appreciate the structures that have been built on them. Sacred song, church music, hymnology, hymnody, worshipful music, whatever you choose to call it, the fact that must be borne in mind is that it can be properly enjoyed only as we know upon what foundations it is built.

Foundations have a way of being where the house is, though often they are not visible at all. Visible or not, they are certainly important. In the case of hymnody or sacred music, the foundations are so all-important that the “house” itself is worthless without them. The title of this discussion—which at first glance may sound pretentious—was deliberately chosen. We must know what man’s destiny is before we can evaluate any of his functions. We must have a faith before we can confess it. We must have a theme before we can sing it. We must hear the Word before our hearts and lives can answer that Word. Knowing the foundations will not, in itself, solve all our problems, but if we, as Christians, know the foundation of the apostles and prophets and Jesus Christ as the chief Cornerstone, we know that on this foundation we can build something solid, something valid, something lasting. Standing on this foundation, we know that our mission in life is not only to sing, to play, to concertize, but also to preach, teach, and confess.

No one is entitled to moan and groan about the attitude of the public toward proper music and hymnody or to lament the lack of appreciation of the music of the church unless he has made a dedicated and persistent effort to uncover and show people the real foundation of the art of worship. The task of teaching people an appreciation of proper church music is made more difficult than it need be by our failure to show man his own real foundation and the destiny which God has willed for him.

And now a few comments on the second footnote. What is art? It is useless to talk about “good” art and “bad” art, for art is art when it is art. The essence of true art is not determined by a set of rules that may be applied to a man’s work; it is contained in the work itself. Rules, norms, standards, and so forth are established by men of a certain time or culture. They are not permanent and they do not define the essence of art. Man-made rules are subjective and therefore fluctuate, shift, even evaporate as cultural climates change. The norms that we consider permanent and valid are not a matter of rules but are a property of the thing itself. Something is true if it fulfills that for which it was designed by the Creator.

We need to be especially mindful of this fact when we speak of the destiny of man. In every work of art the revelation of truth is this, that something of the “soul” or essence of a person or thing is presented in such a way that it becomes audible or visible to the hearer or beholder and enables him to retranslate it for himself. Art is communication, and communication is much of interpretation. A real artist is one who can present an intended truth or fact in a visible or audible way. An artistically mature person is one who can, by hearing or seeing the work of an artist, grasp the intended meaning. Communication by art forms may break down, therefore, either because the artist does not show or say a thing properly or because the receiver of the message does not know what is being shown or said. Thus understood, art demands that nothing, not even the rules and the norms, detract from the basic principle of interpretation. Neither the skill of the virtuoso nor the perfection of his perspective nor the tempo of his presentation dare detract from the essence of the work. Michelangelo was well acquainted with the human skeleton, but the skeleton is concealed in his statues. True art is its own authority, has its own power of presentation, creates its own conviction.

Now apply these principles to the problem of man’s destiny and it will be obvious that only as man fulfills his destiny as a creature of God can he be what he should be and do what he should do. Only as a creature of God can he praise as he ought and sing as he should. If man is to be true to himself—that is, to the destiny that God has laid upon him—he must, first of all, know what he is.

All of this is by way of introduction to our discussion of hymnody as the beginning, middle, and end of man’s destiny. In the Lutheran Church we still have, by the grace of God, a good understanding of the foundations. We are still a doctrinal church, and our people still possess a considerable amount of doctrinal conviction and Scriptural knowledge. These are good foundations on which we can build our public worship. And so, if we all aim at the same goal from the same basis, it should not be too difficult for us to agree on what good Christian music is and how Lutherans ought to sing and play unto the Lord. It is not necessary that our people take courses in music theory to understand the value of the heritage of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, nor do we need a crew of theological and musicological experts to devise such courses. What is important is that each one of us must know for himself what the foundation is, what the destiny of man is, and must realize how intimately, how realistically, how existentially the destiny of man is intertwined with a proper hymnody, understood not in a technical sense but in the sense of the logos of praise to God.

What, then, is man’s destiny? It must be said, first of all, that man’s destiny is not a mere fate, but rather that for which God has created him and toward which God leads or drives him. This destiny is asserted over and over again in the Scriptures. Let us take a text from the very center of Scripture, the song of the angels recorded in Is. 6:3: “And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.”

This is the song of the seraphim as Isaiah heard it in a vision, and it has something basic to say about God’s creation. Isaiah represents every man, but especially man as the creature that is given the Word of God to preach and confess. The song contains concepts of such majesty and profundity that they simply cannot be comprehended by man; nevertheless the song is directed at man and it includes man as a creature in God’s creation.

We do understand, to some degree, what is meant by “the whole earth.” Actually, “the fullness of the earth is God’s glory” would be a more literal translation of the second part of this comprehensive sentence. Taken thus, this song is, then, a statement of God’s absolute “otherness” and of man’s responsibility. God’s program for “the whole earth” has not changed since He created the heavens and the earth, nor has there been any change in the role which God assigned to man in this creation. And what is this role? In the very first chapter of Genesis, v. 26, we are told that God said: “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion” over all things that are upon the earth. In thefollowing verse we read that “God created man in His image, in the image of God created He him.” And in v. 28 man’s destiny is clearly set forth: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.” Note here that the word “replenish” is, in the original Hebrew, the same word that the angels use when they sing that all the earth is to be full of God’s glory.

This blessing of God is to be understood, therefore, not merely as a command to make the earth the scene of man’s activity and to fill it with man’s progeny. No, it is to be taken as a plan of God to fill the world with His praise by filling it with creatures who retain His image. This blessing still holds good for fallen man. Man did, indeed, lose sight of his destiny by seeking to assert his own glory and by attempting to compete with God. But then God brought into play His plan of salvation: Man was yet to fill the earth with His glory, as our risen Lord emphasizes and reestablishes in His commission to His disciples (Mark 16:15): “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.”

This Great Commission is not new. It is the fulfillment and interpretation of the original command: “Fill the earth!” It is also the fulfillment and exegesis of the song of the seraphim: “All the earth shall be full of God’s glory!” The sentences may not look alike, but the theme and the aim are identical. Ultimately, when “all is said and done” as the saying and doing are summarized in our Lord’s “It is finished,” the new heaven and the new earth shall indeed be full of nothing but the glory of God, and the Trisagion, the Thrice Holy, shall be sounding in and through all of God’s creatures.

Without going into any greater detail, we may assert, therefore, that man as a creature made after the likeness of God was created to praise God. And man as the new creature in Christ—man as a believer, as the creature, as the only one who can praise God in the highest sense—will reach the goal of the eternal praise of the Holy One. The beginning and the end, the goal and the fulfillment, of man’s destiny is the glory of God, the singing of the song of the seraphim, the participation with the holy angels in the eternal hymnody and liturgy.

Let me digress here into a footnote which ought to appear, if at all, in very small print. There was once a fictitious student on our campus by the name of Hinkey Dormatts. Hinkey’s name used to turn up on class rosters, and the students got a great charge out of hearing his name called on roll calls. At the time I was instructing a class in Biblical interpretation, and a part of the required work was a term paper which consisted of an exposition of some text from the Book of Isaiah. When the term papers were handed in, sure enough there was one from Hinkey Dormatts. I still have it. He had chosen the song of the seraphim. His exposition almost caught the sense of the song, for it consisted of ten typewritten pages containing nothing but “Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy.” I had to give him an incomplete because he had only almost caught the sense of the song. He had made the mistake of placing a period at the end of the last page of holys. If he had written “etc.” at that point, I would have given him a grade, for the song does indeed go on forever.

But to return to our theme. Hymnody reflects not only the beginning and end of man’s destiny, but also the middle. By the middle I mean not the midpoint geometrically or chronologically but rather the interval between assignment and fulfillment. The German word Mittel, in the sense of a means, catches the etymological sense of the word “middle.” Between the soup and the mouth is the spoon. The spoon is a middle in the sense that it is the instrument, the means, by which something is brought from the beginning to the goal. Our life is between the beginning and the end, and it is in this “middle” that we find our real responsibility. This middle of our life is, however, determined by God’s creation and by the fulfillment of His glory in eternity. It is at this point that we find ourselves. It is between the intention of God and the goal of God (after all, they are the same thing) that we find the answer to the sense and essence of our hymns, our songs, our church music.

I know of no other human art or activity that comes closer than does music to the responsibility laid upon man by God. Yet this must be learned. Evidently many good Christians think of worship as something reserved or excluded from the general life of man. By the same token, hymns and the praises of God seem to occupy a reserved and little-recognized corner of the worship life. Even that term, “worship life,” seems to imply a life apart, an occasional digression from life as usual. Yet it should be clear that the glory and praise of God should be synonymous with life itself to a believer. Look again at the sixth chapter of Isaiah. Why does Isaiah respond to this vision of the glory of God and the song of the seraphim with a confession that he is a man of unclean lips and living among a people of unclean lips? Why does he single out lips for mention, rather than hands or heart or some other part of the body? Precisely because it had been demonstrated to him by the holy angels that life is nothing if it is not praise of God. Suddenly the full force of his responsibility for the praise of God fell upon him. Suddenly he realized that any life lacking this aim and purpose was not only not worth living but, worse still, worthy of damnation. “I am undone” is man’s true and logical conclusion in the presence of God’s holiness.

In the concept of true art, no part of the work of the artist dare make itself glorious at the expense of true art. Therefore man, as God’s creature, has the duty to put his everything into the assignment and destiny of praising God. That is man’s responsibility, we say, forgetful of the depths of meaning that that word possesses. The “re” signifies a return, or echo, and the “sponsible” comes from the Latin root spondere, which conveys the idea of a pledge. “Responsibility” could, therefore be literally defined as the duty to answer by a pledge The first and basic meaning of the statement that “man was made responsible” is that man was created to be able to answer to God and obliged to do so. That was the glory of man in his innocence, as God made him. The “image of God” was man’s God-given capacity to talk with God, to respond to Him, to answer Him. The enormity of man’s fall is nowhere more evident than in the fact that, in his first encounter with God after the Fall, he gave God a false and lying answer. Now that we have, by God’s forgiveness in Christ, been renewed in the image of God, we can and should respond to Him in praise. Isaiah recognized that he could not of his own reason or power sing the Sanctus. But when he had been forgiven by the fire from God’s altar, he cried: “Here am I, send me!” Basically this means: “I will now gladly sing the praises of God in all the earth!” Is it not obvious from this that the text before us has something fundamental to say about the singing and praising church? Man was created with the ability to speak the praise of God. Man lost it by the Fall. Man regains it through his conversion, which is the work of the Holy Spirit, and through God’s forgiveness, which is by faith in Jesus Christ. Man as a child of God is, therefore, gladly responsible—i.e., able to answer God.

When there is any question of the place and character of worship and of music in the life of man, we and our people must look for the answer to the fundamental concept of man’s destiny as a glorifier of God as it is revealed in His Word And we must apply the concept of true art also to our worship. No true Christian lives unto himself. As soon as his work begins to extol himself, his gifts, his name, even his art—at that point he becomes guilty of forgetting the aim of his existence. When hymns and song become exponents of man’s feelings, his glory, his ambition, his fame, they cease to be true worship forms, just as art ceases to be art when it does not communicate. Only as we realize for what purpose we have been placed into our niche of history—our “station,” as Luther called it—will we be free from the necessity that drives people to seek their own, and free to evaluate our life and work under the aspect of eternity. Then, and only then, will we be truly fit to choose what is good and acceptable to offer to God in praise of His holy name.

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; all the earth is to be full of His glory. We who have seen His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; we who have been made God’s children through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ—we join Isaiah and the whole company of believers of all times and all places in the Soli Deo gloria that echoes and reechoes through all eternity.

Concordia Seminary
Springfield, Ill.

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume VI (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1963). 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.