By Julian Williamson

Shiloh and the Resurrection of the Dead

I am compelled to immerse myself in landscape. A West Tennessee farm boy, I spent most of my time outside. In summer I sunk my toes into warm dust the texture of talcum powder. In winter I sled down a long curving driveway in front of our home and across the bridge that led into a field. I visited abandoned houses and touched engravings on forgotten tombstones. I helped a cow birth her calf in a chill and slant February snow.

A powerful voice called me to Shiloh -- a vagabond mourning restless under the earth; a genealogical echo clattering down a long line of kin. Also a persistent Great Question tugs at me, encompassing heritage, allegiance, and the destiny of soul and body.

Alone, I set out walking a tree-canopied path older than the War itself: The Sunken Road, where some of the most violent fighting of the Civil War took place. It is a most expectant and hopeful time of year -- almost exactly the anniversary dates of the battle, which took place on April 6 and 7, 1862. The giant willow oaks sprout a crown of foliage delicate as tatting laid over a massive trunk. The water oaks have formed their rust-colored pollen strings, but these have not yet fallen. Redbuds appear regal purple instead of the characteristic rich red. The Holly has not yet bloomed. Sunlight mottles cedars into layered green light blocked against near featureless black shadows. A lone and slender ash lifts its limbs heavenward.

Shiloh: “Place of Peace” in Hebrew. Two days of Hell, and then a more lasting peace than anyone could forsee.

The battle began at daybreak the morning of the 6th as a surprise attack by the Confederates under General Albert Sidney Johnson. The army of the Mississippi -- about 44,000 men -- aimed to rout the 40,000 Federal troops encamped around the tiny log Shiloh church under the command of Ulysses S. Grant. Hoping to trap them in the swamp that lay hard upon the river just south of Pittsburg Landing, the Confederates slowly advanced, forcing the Union back upon succesive defensive positions at Ms. Sarah Bell’s peach orchard (in bloom then -- as it’s replica is now), then at water oaks pond, and finally along this trace. The battle stuck along The Sunken Road -- the Union determined at all costs to hold at last this position, the Rebels determined to make them yield.

How “sunken” is the road? Not very. Were I at this spot on that day, I would wish it a good deal more sunken. It is, however, muddy and narrow. Sweetgums and Hickories gather close on either side, their arms locked overhead in long and secret conference. Leaves rustle. Birdsong punctuates the unexpected serenity. Markers of cast bronze and iron march along charting every advance, retreat, deed of valor and ultimate sacrifice during the several stages of battle. Granite monuments incongruous and heavy as landlocked ships repose every few hundred yards. I draw near and smell the weight of sorrow.

With a bloodcurdling yell the Rebels storm an entrenched position on the Sunken Road where furious musketfire earns it the name “Hornet’s Nest”. General Benjamin Prentiss’ grim Illinois regiment repels the attack. Again and again. Every 45 minutes the Confederates yell, charge, fire, retreat, reload. Hours pass. General Johnson now rallies and leads the Rebel charges personally on horseback. He is shot and falls. The bodies of those in the vanguard lie unnaturally twisted upon one another, ovverun and trampled by each succeeding attack.

The day grows warmer.

Is it from lack of determination or unwillingness to sacrifice that the Rebels are failing? Do they not fight like men? Have they not prayed to God for his favor and protection? Has the Almighty nevertheless taken up camp with the Federals? Does God choose sides in a battle? Is there any way to know?

Philosophically and theologically overwhelmed, I do what I usually do in such circumstances: pull out my pipe. Immediately I realize I must make an important decision: on which side of the Sunken Road do I have my smoke? Like Native Americans, I do not share tobacco lightly. I smoke with friends only; the incense seals a covenant: a treaty of peace more important and lasting than my signature.

I veer left through the bitter fighting at the Hornet’s nest, skirt a narrow treeline along Duncan field, and hunker down against a hickory at the rear of Bankhead’s Tennessee Battery. I pack my pipe with determination, cup my hands and breathe in the flame. Tobacco’s dry and burns hot. The varnish on the pipe blisters and cracks.

Sharp reports issue from cannon amassed on this hilltop. A trebling and thunderous concussion rolls over as 64 Confederate artillery pieces launch a hail of cannonball and grapeshot above the heads of their own charging infantrymen and into the Federal line only 300 yards away. The Confederacy’s finest hour at Shiloh is at hand: outgunned and flanked by the Rebels, 2000 Union soldiers under Major Prentiss surrender. The Hornet’s nest is taken; the Federal line falls back to Owl creek and the last ridge before the escape route to Pittsburg landing is cut off.

A great victory seems near at hand.

I bang out ashes against the trunnion of a cannon made by Quimby and Robinson in Memphis. It flakes rust. I sit and smoke here with my Confederate fathers and brothers not because their cause is just (I can never imagine slavery so), but because it is Lost. I run my hand along the inside flange of the muzzle, fingers lightly tripping over the worn rifling. I am a Southern man, a compatriot of those who swabbed, packed, and fired this weapon against all hope. Clothed in the prayers of their families and communities, convinced of the Almighty’s favor, they would yet taste defeat. This loss binds our communion.

At long last, fighting ceases for the day. The Northeners retreat to their mangled camp to nurse their wounds, eat, and repack musket charges for tomorrows assault. The Army of the Mississippi goes to bed hopeful, but endures a sleepless night as Federal gunboats fire salvos from battleships stationed on the Tennessee river, disguising the noisy clamour of Buell’s 14 ,000 reinforcements arriving in the dead of night.

The next morning Grant’s command, reinforced by Buell, sweeps the field like the vengeance of God. By the end of the day, the Confederacy surrenders the ground hard-won yesterday, leaving their fallen behind enemy lines.

Between the two armies, almost 24,000 killed, wounded, or missing. It has been the bloodiest battle in American history. On account of the warm weather, Grant orders his troops to bury the dead immediately. Union soldiers, identified by regiment and name, and Confederate soldiers, unable to be identified, are interred in seperate mass graves.

The War grinds on.

At long last, Lee surrenders at Appamatox. Workers return to Shiloh, disinter the Union heroes, and place them in individually marked graves. They rest in a beautifully laid out and manicured cemetery on the grounds of Shiloh National Military Park.

The Rebels, hastily buried the evening of the battle, remain in the trenches. There are 5 known and numerous unknown locations where over 1,700 bodies lie stacked like cordwood. For many minutes I stand motionless next to the largest of these. The day itself grows still.

A phlanx of middle-schoolers on field day breaks the silence as they bustle about excited to be released from their sunless classrooms even if to visit a graveyard. They clamber around old man George’s log cabin, throw pinecones at each other, giggle and run heedlessly here and there. Markers and monuments stand unheeded and unread...they’re deaf to the echo of musketfire, or the stomach-sickening concussion of cannon. Radiating freedom and joy, their faces are the only flag of truce to be found here. They swarm around me, pass, and clamber back on their dazzling yellow bus before I’m wholly aware of what’s happened. The bloody Shiloh silence descends like a curtain.

“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of a valley which was full of bones... and, lo, they were very dry...”

Despair stalks me. It is the fear I’ve come here to face. I come alone because a companion’s presence dulls it. Death is the destiny of every man, but there is more than death in my despair: A solitary Union grave may contain enough of the original raw material to miraculously be reanimated, but the dust of my countrymen is mingled among that of his fellows to such an extent that it defies faith to imagine how individual physical resurrection might be possible. In this trench 700 bodies lie head-to-toe 7 layers deep. Even the resurrection is more complicated if you fight on the losing side.

I feel the digits of decaying men clutching at me. I feel the digits of my own faith blindly groping for substantial hold.

Late afternoon. Near Rhea springs lies a smaller and lesser-known Confederate burial trench that is not on the guided park tour. It is in a cedar glade. Striped pink and purple flowers smaller than a fingernail bloom all over the site -- but not in the surrounding field. I pick a few, apologizing. Exhausted, I down my last drought of water.

A clear yet faintly warm sunlight blossoms around a dogwood hovering before a row of gnarled and ancient cedars. I light the last pipe of the day and move closer until the tree fills my vision. The steam-locomotive voice of the Lord screams over the rails: “Son of man, can these bones live?”

A blue ribbon curls about my head and away. Dogwoods explode like cannon in the woods and treelines... I wonder as I slowly circle the trench, quoting the Apostle’s creed aloud from memory. Acrid tobacco-incense, the Prayer, and the cedars’ prickly aroma braid together and rise. A bit self-conscious, I pause to lift my hands at the conclusion: “I believe in the Resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”

Evening shadows descend. Beauregard retreats to Corinth, Sherman in hot pursuit. A lonely and tragic peace settles on Shiloh as I retrace the Sunken Road past the markers and memorials, the resplendent dogwoods, and on toward home.

This Body of Life Part I

By Ben Williams

Last night, I ran into a friend who I haven't seen in a while. Small talk ended quickly when I asked him about a ministry he had started a few years ago. His tone saddened when he told me they shut it down about a year ago.

The Prayer Center was a store-front that held a continual meeting of praying and worshipping believers from all denominations. That was the idea, at least. If all went well, there would be at least one individual within its walls 24-7, praying for the city. This, hopefully, would spark revival. Not only that, but there were regular scheduled times for singing of hymns and songs. However, after a few years of striving for these goals, the Prayer Center closed its doors due to lack of interest and/or commitment. Our hour-long conversation was not enough time to discuss in detail the demise of the Prayer Center but it did lead us to discuss some bigger issues.

My friend is from Nepal. His parents are active, indigenous missionaries whose stories and experiences look more like the apostles' than our two-week, third-world church-building mission trips. My point is not to bash mission trips, they are wonderful, but to tell you where he is coming from. Denominationalism and organized religion are as foreign to him as his accent is to me. He grew up in a church that had to rely on the Holy Spirit for her unity and strength. As a result, he experienced an active church life in a strong church, seeing things that we think the Apostle's, alone, saw. I'm talking about amazing conversion stories, healings and miracles, demons and angels. This is front-line, spiritual warfare. Sadly, these are experiences that we debate about because we never see them. I am only trying to reiterate how foreign our church culture is to him. Should we expect him to quietly become a cessationalist after living such an awesome and spiritually active church life? How could we? So, when told of his desire to unify the church in our city by prayer, breaking down denominational barriers, we are pleased and encourage him, saying, "Go for it, brother." After all, who would argue against the unification of the church? So why didn't I participate after being asked several times to join in the effort?

As you have probably guessed, my friend is a charismatic. I have my own preconceived ideas of the charismatic movement. I also have my own preconceived ideas of Catholics, Baptists and Methodists. I admit, I stereotype them all based on what my experience has been. Some pass my test, some don't. I know this is wrong and the reason it is wrong is because I see each "branch" of the church as a group I either agree with or don't; I do not see them as a member of the body. There are some things I love about Catholicism but because of its weaknesses, I have no desire to become a Catholic. Any given Catholic might be able to say the same about another member of the body. I think that this is supposed to be. God designed the church to function in this way. What my friend has had a hard time dealing with is that the church doesn't seam to function together at all.

I have come to the conclusion that we are one body as Jesus prayed; that is, we all believe in the gospel. If we find unity beyond that, great, if not, don't sweat it. Be content that we find unity in the gospel. However, I understand my friend's frustration: our church culture is not conducive to unity beyond the gospel. In other words, there is no reason why unity in the church beyond the gospel is not possible. Our mentality is that we could never worship with those who are different than we are. To answer my own question about my lack of involvement, I saw the Prayer Center as a charismatic endeavor that sounded good but I wasn't willing to make it a priority. I don't know that I would make it a priority if the Prayer Center's doors were still open. I am more interested in my inability to worship anywhere other than my own church.

This conversation prompted me to ask a question to which I thought I knew the answer: How united can the church be beyond the gospel? I do not have an answer, but at least I am asking the question which means we might be more unite-able than I thought. If this is so, the Prayer Center, even in closing its doors, was more successful than it appeared.

COMFORT IN SIN’S PRISON

By Craig Davis

Part of the church fathers’, indeed Paul’s, indeed Moses’, theology holds that mankind is encumbered by a sin nature passed down from Adam, common to everyone. The biblical evidence for this argument is plentiful. But modern American evangelicals often seem to miss this point, and instead emphasize on the sinful behavior of the unsaved and saved alike. As a result many Christians are overwhelmed by the individual sins they see in their lives and wrestle constantly with the assurance of their salvation. What follows are preachers who evangelize in worship services, talk about “nailing down your salvation” and multiple baptisms. If we could get our minds around our sin nature, we
would be freed from this spiritual roller-coaster.

We will not be splitting hairs to draw a distinction between sinful behaviors and the utter sinfulness of man, what Paul called the believer’s “old man.” Let’s look into mankind’s sin nature as simply this: orthodox doctrine. “But we are all like an unclean thing. All our righteousness are like filthy rags.” Isaiah speaks not of his sins, but his righteousness; he doesn’t single out a few pitiful attempts at righteousness, but all of them. God does not distinguish between various levels of filthiness; you either are filthy or you’re — well, you are. Here is the biblical testimony:

“Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Ps. 51:5.

“The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies.” Ps. 58:3.

“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one …” Job 14:4.

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned.” Rom. 5:12.

“He that believes on Him is not condemned; but he that believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” Jn. 3:18-19.

There’s more, but you get the point. For brevity’s sake, let’s concentrate on only the final passage. Not only is every man and woman born with a natural bent toward sin, but by nature we are born not believing. With the possible exception of John the Baptist (and I would dispute that point as well), as babies we are completely without knowledge of Christ and the redemptive work of the Cross. You can not believe what you do not know. Since nobody was born before the Fall, it is impossible to know what kind of relationship babies were supposed to have with God, but this is how it is in the fallen world. Not only that, but scripture tells us that no one even seeks God, so if left to ourselves, we would happily remain in our unbelief, the root of our sinfulness.

So what is God’s remedy? Throughout the Old Testament, as He laid out the foreshadowings of Messiah, God’s message for Israel was simply to believe:

“And (Abraham) believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness.” Gen. 15:6.

“And the Lord spoke unto Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.’ ” Num. 20:12.

“Likewise, when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying ‘Go up and possess the land which I have given you’; then you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and you believed Him not, nor hearkened to His voice.” Deut. 9:23.

“Because they believed not in God, and trusted not in His salvation …” Ps. 78:22.

“Who has believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” Is. 53:1.

“Then was the king exceedingly glad for him, and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God.” Dan. 6:23.

When God charged Israel to obey His law, word, statutes, etc., this is what He meant: Believe Him. Individual sins sometimes were punished (but the vast, vast majority weren’t even recorded) in the OT record: Our overt sins are the testimony of our fallen nature, and outright chastening because of them is the testimony of God’s justice. However, individual sins are the symptom, not the illness: The judgment that fell upon the nation Israel, as we have seen, was the result of unbelief, the natural state of man, as John said in his gospel. In turn, God smiled upon simple faith.

“For until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” From Adam to Moses death reigned, because every individual was cursed with the sin nature — but not a single person had broken the law, because the law hadn’t been given yet. All the people wiped out in the flood, all the people who ever lived and died before Moses, had not a single act of direct disobedience counted against them, and yet they suffered the wages of sin.

Here are some of the traps we can fall into by emphasizing behavior: I have heard stories about dear children of Christ being reduced to tears because they never had one big sin to repent of and be saved. One guy told me once, “God didn’t bless my paycheck because I didn’t tithe out of it first. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Many Christians go through periods when they’re sickened by a seeming increase of sinful activity; never mind that becoming more aware of one’s sinful state should be a natural result of growing in grace. We beat ourselves over the heads because we’re not as good as Christ. Concentrating on all these things is works religion, and it turns God into a glorified bean-counter. Is your God really this small?

On the other hand, if we could take hold of the idea of man’s completely sinful nature, it would release us from this idea that we’re only one sin away from displeasing God. We would no longer think, “Boy, if I’d just avoided that one big sin I’d be OK.” On the other hand, if on the off chance we manage to avoid a particular sin, we’d be less likely to take pride in that (d’oh!) We would be able to focus not on our behavior before God — always to remain tainted until the resurrection — but on our relationship with Him, the covenant God has declared and sealed through the blood of the Lamb. This is what God cares about.

“And they shall be my people, and I will be their God; and I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me forever, for the good of them, and of their children after them; and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good, but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me.” Jer. 32:38-40.

God sees the depths of your heart, and it is a total abomination to Him. There is nothing you can do that will make you look any worse to Him, and there is nothing you can do to look better. Rejoice in this! “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus took the punishments of Hell for you, knowing full well the depths of your corruption before and after. He has regenerated your heart; He has planted the fear of Him so that you would always regret your fallen state and yet not depart from Him.

I used to work with a man who grew up in the Philadelphia/New Jersey area. After moving to West Tennessee, he said his biggest surprise was that the people didn’t use “casual profanity.” He had relatively small children at the time, and was happy to raise them in such an environment. I appreciate the South’s genteel sensibilities, too, and I suspect they are left over from the Victorian Age and holiness movement of the late 1800s. Gentleness is a good thing, a fruit of the Spirit, and anyone who can control the tongue is a real champion.

But, having said that, we evangelicals would do ourselves a big favor if we recognized our behavior is not a measurement of God. We were condemned because we were born, we are saved only because God has granted us faith, and He is not some heavenly terrorist looking for an excuse to stick it to us. All the more reason to love and honor Him, and bring forth fruit fit for repentance.

Puritans and Politics

by Craig Davis

At this writing I am reading through the latest issue of Christian History and Biography, which focuses on the Puritans in England, particularly Richard Baxter. I am no great scholar of church history, so a lot of things are new to me, but as I go through the magazine I’m struck by the many ways Puritanism in its purist form was like the
monastic movement some 1,000 years earlier.

Both movements were efforts at reform and described a life entirely enrapt by relationship with Christ. They shared these goals and practices: Seeking holiness, dedicating the passage of the entire day to God, finding God in even the most mundane experiences and work of the day, laying aside of fine clothing and lifestyle, seeing value in physical labor, the singing (chanting) of the Psalms, emphasis on reading Scripture (although in the monasteries this had fallen to the wayside at least by Luther’s time), emphasis on worship in community (for Puritans this usually meant family time spent in prayer and study), the desire to separate from society at large.

Both of these movements ring true to the apostolic church described in The Acts and epistles, although Puritans not surprisingly went off on a few typically Protestant tangents. Still, both movements are orthodoxy illustrated, the focus of the believer taken off himself and the material aspects of his life, and instead directed at the Christ of the
gospel. Many Western evangelicals would much desire such a devotional life even today.

So that’s all fine and dandy as far as “orthodoxy” goes, but where does the “southern” part come in? The downfall of the Puritans occurred when they took the rightful popularity of their movement and turned it into political power. The Puritan movement began in earnest around 1570, with the goal of a spiritual reformation from within the church, and by 1645 they had taken over the government. The belief that their obvious moral superiority over the rest of society made them best qualified to decide the
direction of their nation led to incredible arrogance and abuses. Oliver Cromwell, the leader of non-royal England (he executed the king), was an incredible Jekyll-and-Hyde character, demonstrating sincere devotion and humility in his private life but making monstrous decisions as a public official, including massacring thousands of opponents. The Puritans’ political activity did not destroy their spiritual work, but it was a
mighty distraction.

This scenario should ring with a creepy familiarity for us. American evangelicals are in much the same situation, particularly in the South. The region has turned conservative and Republican over the last 25 years or so, and so that’s the political bent Southern Christians seem to expect of everyone. The evangelical vote is consistent, not only to the
right end of the spectrum but also in faithfulness, so we are a highly coveted voting bloc. This all puts us in a tenuous position concerning the purity of our devotion to Christ.

Jesus’ best-known comment on His relationship with the government was, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s …” In America that means be involved in the process: Pay your taxes, vote, pray for our leaders. In this country we get to tell the government what we want it to do. We do this by voting for people who share our values, opinions and goals, and sometimes they win and sometimes they don’t. Evangelicals are right to take this responsibility seriously, and we (as well as everyone else) are right to complain when the government does not act in ways we like.

But does this mean we can really expect a secular government to behave in a Christian manner? No, and we really shouldn’t want it to, either. The ideal Christian response to violence is to turn the other cheek, but in an incredibly wicked world, for a nation to adopt that attitude would be suicide. Paul testifies to the fact that national leaders are
appointed by God to protect their people from wrong-doers; by definition, that requires the use of force. Government is God-ordained, and leaders who don’t protect the people they lead aren’t doing their job.

Beyond that, evangelicals shouldn’t want the government involved in the practice of our faith. Our response to the government should be, in all cases, hands off! We should not give a second thought to the people who want to take the Ten Commandments out of county courthouses, because scripture has no effect on us or anybody by being obscurely stuck on a wall. On the other hand, we should fight tooth and nail to make sure the
Ten Commandments are not banned from public property, either, so the little blue-haired lady can keep a Bible at her desk if she wants to.

Now, I fully realize the church has been used through the years by all the various political parties and ideologies. Some of these efforts have been honorable, and some despicable, but in my book they were all cynical. I don’t want to dwell on the past here: I just don’t care about it. I want to address modern evangelicals, because while we can’t change
the past, we can change our attitudes now and in the future. It is the orthodox evangelical movement that I feel confident is part of the body of Christ, and therefore should be concerned how it reflects Christ.

So, when we enter the voting booth, should we ask ourselves, WWJD? Vote Republican, right? No. Our real question should be, how could I be so arrogant as to think I could guess what the Lord of Lords would do? “The life you have in Christ is a thing of infinite sacredness, far too high and holy for you to know how to act it out.” (Andrew Murray, “Abide in Christ”) Does the way we vote make us righteous in His eyes? “There is none righteous, no not one; … there is none who seeks after God.” Only our relationship with Jesus makes us righteous, and that was a relationship instigated and sealed by Him alone, and we have nothing to offer Him. When we decide that we’re voting for Jesus instead of some schlub who hardly knows how to keep his wife happy, we enter into the same arrogance the Puritans fell into.

I once saw a t-shirt that said “Proud to be a Christian.” I’m sure the maker, and wearer, thought they were saying “Not ashamed to be a Christian,” but that’s not what the shirt said. It is perhaps the worst statement of faith I’ve ever seen. We must be humbled by our
Christianity, humbled that the Almighty God, Creator of Universes, Holiest of Holies would consider us in mercy, humbled that He does not destroy us when we presume to speak for Him.

As Southern evangelicals, we must rejoice that we live in a time when orthodoxy is regaining its place of importance among some Protestants. We must take the flags down from our altars and worship only Christ. We must elevate Christ as God the Son Himself, Creator of all that was created, the Lamb crucified from before the foundation of the world, and not treat Him as a political expedient. Elephants are sacred to Hindus, not to Christians.

Vote early and often, and vote your conscience, but whatever you do, don’t think you are storing up treasures in Heaven. We would do well to be careful not to trade in our spiritual orthodoxy for political orthodoxy.

The Work of John Mason Neale in Orthodox Hymnology

by Chris Johnson

From time to time throughout church history, a movement arises somewhere within Christendom to dust off the hymns of the earliest church to make them appeal to current ways and styles of worshipping. In the mid-1800s, one such movement took place through the work of a man named John Mason Neale. Many Anglicans in England and their American Episcopalian counterparts will be familiar with many a number of Neale’s hymns. And to some extent, nearly every mainline Protestant denomination has experienced reverberations of Neale’s work in their hymnology. The Lutheran Book of Worship contains twenty-one of his works; the 1991 Baptist Hymnal contains seven. Since Neale himself was Anglican, his work has had its most impact within the Anglican community. While hymn writers such as Issac Watts, Charles Wesley, and Fanny Crosby are well-known to non-Anglican American Protestants, a very important part of Protestant hymnology would not be in place today if not for the work of the lesser-known John Mason Neale.

John Mason Neale

But the fact is, Neale did not actually write many hymns. His contribution was in the large body of early church hymns that he translated into the vernacular. Neale was arguably one of the most linguistically gifted people that ever lived; by the end of his life he had a working knowledge of at least twenty languages. This, coupled with his strong belief that the Church should not lose the richness and depth of early church hymns, resulted in his translating dozens of songs that would no doubt have faded into obscurity as historical Greek and Latin curiosities. As a proponent of high-church worship, Neale was by no means opposed to the use of classical languages for the hymns and liturgy. In this, he was motivated not by rebellion against tradition, but rather by the realization that early hymns and liturgies might in fact die out if not translated into the vernacular. As a result, dozens of early church hymns are still used in worship today.
While doctrinal orthodoxy of belief was indeed a part of Neale’s legacy, it is the orthodoxy of the hymns that he translated which left a greater mark on the church. This influence is because Neale took great care in his translating to ensure that the truths presented in the hymns of the early church were carried over to the vernacular. Early hymns, particularly after Nicea, were often rich with orthodox doctrine. Not only were they sung as worship songs, they served as a tool for the church to carry out orthodox teaching to the masses. This stands in contrast to the main use of worship music today, which often serves the more singular purpose of simple praise. But the early church drew less of a distinction between these two realities (praise and orthodox doctrine)—orthodox truth was a statement of praise in and of itself. To the early church, an affirmation of the Trinity in song or liturgy was a powerful statement of worship. Indeed, in the heavenly worship we read in Isaiah and Revelation, it is the affirmation of the Triune God being given in praise to Christ in the form of Trisagion (“Holy, Holy, Holy”). The early church understood this well and considered orthodoxy and worship not as separate entities, but as one and the same. This would hold true for many aspects of orthodoxy such as the Incarnation and Christ’s con-substantiality with the Father.

Examples of Orthodoxy in Neale’s Translations

John Mason Neale recognized the importance of ensuring that these truths were carried over in his translations. The difficulty of accurate hymn translation cannot be overstated—not only is it typically impossible to maintain an original poetic rhythm in such a translation, a challenge also exists in the fact that hymns were originally written for a musical style that would be very foreign to modern Western music’s ears. The ability of Neale to maintain the integrity of the hymn’s orthodoxy, while also making into a “singable” form is a testament to his talents and determination.
Neale made over 100 hymn translations, so there are many examples of orthodox statements carried over in his translations. While they all maintain Biblical truth, the hymns have varying degrees of richness and depth of doctrine. Some are rich with sweeping affirmations of orthodoxy, while others focus on more simple, less crucial realities. For example, “Jerusalem, the Golden” is filled with the imagery of heaven, which is indeed Biblically orthodox, but not necessarily an identifying and central truth of orthodoxy. And yet there are also many examples in his work of hymns containing key orthodox truths.
In the well-known hymn “Christ is Made the Sure Foundation,” we see the following:

Laud and honor to the Father,
Laud and honor to the Son,
Laud and honor to the Spirit,
Ever Three and ever One;
Consubstantial, co-eternal,
While unending ages run.

Neale maintains several orthodox truths from this 7th century hymn. There is the doctrine of the Trinity found in the first four lines. Then there is a statement in the fifth line declaring Christ as consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father and Spirit. The 6th line is a statement about the eternal nature of God as Trinity. These are all definitive truths of orthodoxy, originating with the church fathers.

In Neale’s translation of St. Ambrose’s 4th century “Aeterna coeli gloria” which in the vernacular is titled “Eternal Glory of the Sky,” we find statements about the eternal nature of Christ, along with Christ’s redemptive work and status as the only-begotten Son. It also ends with a statement of the sinless nature of Christ as well as the virgin birth.

Eternal Glory of the sky,
Blest Hope of frail humanity,
The Father’s sole begotten One,
Yet born a spotless virgin’s Son!

Yet another example of the integrity of orthodoxy is in “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” a translation from a hymn by Aurelius Prudentius of the 5th century.

He is found in human fashion, death and sorrow here to know,
That the race of Adam’s children doomed by law to endless woe,
May not henceforth die and perish
In the dreadful gulf below, evermore and evermore!

O that birth forever blessèd, when the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving, bare the Savior of our race;
And the Babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face, evermore and evermore!

In the first listed stanza above, we find statements about Christ as humanity—the incarnation, and the doomed nature of humanity due to sin. The next stanza reveals the virgin birth in the first line, along with the redemptive work of Christ. The last stanza of the hymn also contains a rich orthodox statement of the Trinity and final victory of Christ:

Christ, to Thee with God the Father, and, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
Hymn and chant with high thanksgiving, and unwearied praises be:
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory, evermore and evermore!

These are but a few of the examples of orthodox Christianity playing out in early hymns, and therefore becoming examples of orthodoxy being carried on to the more modern church. One can scarcely read the hymns of the early church without being struck by the reality that they were simply filled with the depth and richness of sound Christian doctrine.

Neale’s Own Orthodox Beliefs

As mentioned earlier, Neale himself penned only a few original hymns, but enough to give glimpse to his own orthodox beliefs. There is no doubt that Neale took orthodox doctrine very seriously and held to the very beliefs espoused by so many of the hymns he translated. He therfore recognized the importance of maintaining doctrinal integrity. In his children’s hymn “Christ is Gone Up,” Neale demonstrates the truth of Christ’s ascension into heaven after the ressurection. He also writes of Christ’s “one holy Church”. This is not unlike the affirmation of the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church found in the Apostle’s Creed.

Christ is gone up; yet ere He passed
From earth, in Heav’n to reign,
He formed one holy Church to last
Till He should come again.

And now we haste with thankful feet
To seek our Savior’s face;
And in the holy Church to meet,
His chosen dwelling place.

In his masterpiece “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” (really written by Neale although containing themes pulled from medieval sources), he affirms the incarnation as being the prophesied Savior to ransom the people of God thereby showing his belief in Christ as a sacrifice of atonement.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high,
Who orderest all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
And teach us in her ways to go.

It is also noteworthy that He refers to Christ as “Wisdom,” affirming the tradition of the church fathers in viewing the wisdom literature of the Old Testament to ultimately be pointing to Christ Himself.

Christian Service as Orthodoxy

There is another aspect to orthodoxy that comes through in Neale’s life and hymn translations: Christian ministry. The church fathers never really separated doctrine from Christian ministry. Basic Christian service as an aspect of orthodoxy seems often forgotten, dwarfed by the curiosities and theologies of doctrine which have an attraction all their own. The writings of the apostles, the Didache, is very much focused on Christian service, not so much doctrinal specifics which became organized and affirmed over time to defend against heresies. This does not mean, of course, that orthodox truths such as the Trinity were not always there, but rather that orthodoxy always held Christian service alongside doctrine.

Neale himself spent a great deal of his life in Christian service to the poor and needy, founding a Christian order of nurses called the Sisterhood of St. Margaret. The order provided the best nurses in all of England as was in great demand as a result. Its purpose was to "minister to the bodily, and then to the spiritual, needs of the sick and suffering poor -- going to their homes whenever called for, living with them, sharing their discomfort & refusing no difficulty, and adapting themselves to all circumstances." Through the founding and work of the Sisterhood of St. Margaret, Neale ministered to the poor, destitute, and poverty-stricken.

It is therefore no surprise to find hymns responding to the needs of human suffering among his canon of translations. Examples are “Jerusalem, the Golden,”—a popular hymn about heaven, “O Happy Band of Pilgrims” which offers encouragement to be steadfast, “Safe Home, Safe Home in Port” by Joseph the Hymnographer—a hymn offering solace and encoragement in Christ, “They Whose Course on Earth is O’er”—about eternal reward and deliverance from suffering, “We Have Not Seen, We Cannot See”—about walking by faith, and “Blessed City, Heavenly Salem”—another imagery-filled song about heaven. The obvious comforting message of such hymns for the suffering can be seen in the words of his translation “The Hymn for Conquering Martyrs Raise”:

Fear not, O little flock and blest,
The lion that your life opprest!
To heavenly pastures ever new
The heavenly Shepherd leadeth you;
Who, dwelling now on Zion’s hill,
The Lamb’s dear footsteps follow still;
By tyrant there no more distrest,
Fear not, O little flock and blest.

These are not hymns sporting grand doctrinal themes (although they often contain doctrinal affirmations here and there), but rather offering spiritual encouragement for those suffering and struggling in their faith. It is a focus on service and ministry to the needy and the destitute. This is the other side of orthodoxy; an indispensable side espoused by the apostles and church fathers, but all-too-often forgotten and ignored by the modern seeker of orthodoxy.

Conclusions

The early hymns tell us a great deal about the early church, what they believed, and how early they were proclaiming their beliefs. Indeed, the orthodox truths confirmed at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD were already being sung “in the pew” long before. It gives great encouragement that orthodoxy was alive and thriving not just among clergy and the elite of Christian leadership, but flowing from the lips of the common people in worship services. It reveals itself as binding glue for the community of early believers; they sang orthodoxy with each other in worship.

But perhaps the most notable realization from all this is that through Neale’s translations, the work of the early church continues. The priority of orthodoxy by those Christian leaders of long, long ago remains effective because of the priceless work of Neale and others who have given great effort to accurately translate early church hymns. Neale has allowed the work of the early church to continue on into the 20th and even 21st centuries, because his translated hymns are still sung today. The early church recognized the need for its songs to be filled with the rich truths of God, even though they also taught those truths through verbal teaching and liturgy. In some unfortunate instances today, hymns and songs may simply be the only available means of modern Christians to receive orthodox teaching where such verbal teaching is lacking, so the importance of these translations cannot be emphasized enough. These early hymns contained the very truth of the gospel itself: the good news of the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Bibliography

Church, F. Forrester and Terrence J. Mulry. 1988. The MacMillan Book of Earliest Christian Hymns. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company.

Nelson, Dale J. 1997. John Mason Neale and the Christian Heritage. Mayville, North Dakota: Mayville State University; available from http://www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/n/e/a/neale_jm.htm

Project Canterbury. 1933. John Mason Neale. London: The Catholic Literature Association. Available from http://anglicanhistory.org/bios/jmneale.html

The Christian Praise Hymnal. 1992. Nashville, Tennessee: Genevox Music Group, Broadman Press.

The Hymnal Noted, Parts I & II. 1856. London: J. Alfred Novello. Published under the sanction of the Ecclesiological Society.

The Lutheran Book of Worship. 1978. Fortress Press.

What is the Gospel?

I was a little nervous. I had only met him once. He was well respected and well learned. "I'm a biblical moron," I confessed to him. "We all are, really," was his reply. I had been quite disappointed when he decided we would study the book of Romans because his teaching of the Song of Solomon sounded so much more exciting, naturally. Or Ecclesiastes sounded good, too. But no...just boring old Romans.

"What is the Gospel?" he asked.

I began racing through my brain and tried as quickly as I could to recite a rote presentation I had been taught. I started explaining how lost we are apart from God and I was interrupted with a wave of the hand as if to tell me to shut up.

"Turn to 1 Corinthians 15," he instructed.

In the coming months I would be taught by an economics professor what the Gospel is and what it isn't. Although I had believed it for years, I didn't really know how to say it. I made it much more complicated than it should be. I would also learn how miraculous and ridiculous it is to believe.

As stated below, Southern Orthodoxy is concerned with this very question. It is founded on the fact that our unity is in the Gospel alone. But what is the Gospel? Certainly, culture obscures the truth. American culture. Southern culture. Church culture. Is it possible to weed out the dross and speak the Gospel clearly and simply? Can we humble ourselves enough to admit our prejudices and define this thing we call the Gospel? What is the Gospel?

Please comment on this post and tell me what the Gospel is. I would like to hear from pastors, preachers and teachers as well as laymen from the southern region of the United States regarding the definition of the Gospel. Please comment and tell me who you are and what city your are from.

-Ben

ortho-dixie

A catholic friend of mine made a comment, once, about the church he attends putting visitor cards in the pew. At the time, the church I attend, a small evangelical protestant church, began incorporating liturgy into our services. His comment was that the Catholic church was becoming more Protestant and the Protestant was becoming more Catholic. How does the body of Christ become so diverse if we believe in one Gospel? I live in a Southern Baptist haven. Many of my baptist brothers believe in the gospel and I know of at least one catholic that believes in the same gospel. Much of what divides us is cultural. I'm not sure that theological differences should divide us as much as they do. Southern Orthodoxy is about finding the common thread between a diverse protestant South: the Gospel. What is the Gospel? What is it about our southern church culture that deems the consumption of alcohol sin, that condemns the Catholics to hell, and ordains the isle-walk as the primary means of salvation. Not only that, but what if we, as a southern church culture, began to dig up the roots of the faith and read the chruch fathers. What if we sought to preach Christ directly from the scriptures? What if we, as a church, culled our differences in search of orthodoxy? That is what Southern Orthodoxy is all about.