ILLUMINATIONS
Anthony Esolen on Christian Hymns
In the Key of Christ
I have been wondering why I don’t care for the lyrics to modern hymns. Now, I’m not speaking of the smugly heretical, as in the truly embarrassing “Sing a New Church into Being,” or makin’-out-with-Jesus stuff, as in “Come Back to Me (Hosea).” I mean the lyrics to which one cannot object, because all they are is an unrhymed English rendering of one of the psalms. There’s something missing.
One might respond, “Yes, the art is missing,” and that’s true as far as it goes, because the artistic balance and parallelism of the Hebrew, and its play on sounds, do not often survive in the English, so that we really do need meter and rhyme, for hymns, in translations of the ancient poetry. But it’s more than that. The early Church read the psalms as referring to Jesus—as the Lord himself did. It’s no surprise, then, that the finest Christian hymns are Christological in that sense. If the poet is reading Exodus, he has the Last Supper in mind. If he is reading Daniel, he has the second coming in mind. It isn’t just that the Hebrew is made over into English, but that the whole of Scripture is transposed into the key of Christ. This is so common in the old hymns that it’s revealing to pause sometimes to cherish the subtle art and the profound theology.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Anthony Esolen is the author of over thirty books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House). He and his wife Debra publish a web magazine, Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com), on poetry, hymnody, language, classic films, and music. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
20.4—May 2007
A Short & Surprising History of Protestantism & Contraception by Allan C. Carlson
32.2—March/April 2019
Reality Shows, Even in a Popular TV Series by C. E. Smith
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
