Saturday, August 31, 2019

Ambrose: Teaching the Church through Song


Ambrose of Milan (339-66), painted by Mattias Stom (17th c)
Ambrose, the bishop of Milan in the 4th century, is remembered for how he guided the church through the Arian controversy. The Arians, in contrast to the orthodox Christians that Ambrose shepherded, believed that the Son of God had a beginning. In other words, this heresy maintained that Christ was created by the Father at a certain point in time, thereby making the Son one of God's creatures (albeit the most important one). Ambrose was committed to the truth that Christ is co-eternal with the Father (John 1:1), and he taught that the second person of the Trinity is not less than the first person. Although Ambrose has history on his side, he was actually in the minority at the time, with Arius leading many people away from the church's official teaching. The Arian heresy was denounced by the bishops who convened the council of Nicea in 325, but Ambrose had to spend a considerable amount of time and energy winning over opponents who weren't convinced by the council's vote. Ambrose wrote brilliant theology in his quest to guide heretics back to the truth, but one of his most effective teaching strategies came through songs.

In this way Ambrose was fighting fire with fire; Arius had grown so popular, in part, through singing. The Thalia, for instance, was sung in a variety of settings, probably at weddings and other occasions for drinking. Its lyrics taught some of the primary points of Arius's heresy, declaring that the Father created the Son as a creature. There are no existing copies of the Thalia that remain today, but we have Athanasius's criticisms of it. This other orthodox church leader not only disliked the content of the lyrics, but he felt that the song's musical components were themselves debased, thereby linking the Thalia to idolatry and various forms of immorality. His arguments against these tunes sound very much like fundamentalist attacks against rock music in the 20th-century. These songs did not simply reflect poor taste—their melodies and rhythms were seen as inherently bad.

Ambrose knew that he couldn't just criticize Arius's songs; he needed to respond with better songs of his own. Brian Dunkle, in his book, Enchantment and Creed in the Hymns of Ambrose of Milan, tells how Ambrose used songs as weapons in his fight against the heretics. Like Athanasius, he thought that music had great power that could be wielded for good or evil. So he did not simply create rally songs with doctrinally sound lyrics that could be used as propaganda against the Arians. Rather, Ambrose set out to create hymns of high quality, knowing that teaching orthodox theology was only a secondary outcome. Of primary importance was the fact that these songs should honor God with an inherent beauty. Ambrose set a new course for music in the church, composing songs were more than musical containers for theological content. They would not only teach accurate theology, but their beautiful melodies and rhythms would also spark the singers to worship the true God.

Ambrose's tunes haven't survived, so we don't know what they sounded like. But the fact that we still have some of the lyrics indicates that the hymns were beloved by many successive generations. The United Methodist Hymnal contains one of them, translated to English in the 19th century and set to a tune from the 18th:

O splendor of God's glory bright,
O thou that bringest light from light;
O Light of light, light's living spring,
O day, all days illumining.
 
O thou true Sun, on us thy glance
let fall in royal radiance;
the Spirit's sanctifying beam
upon our earthly senses stream.

The Father, too, our prayers implore,
Father of glory evermore;
the Father of all grace and might,
to banish sin from our delight.

  To guide whate'er we nobly do,
with love all envy to subdue;
to make ill fortune turn to fair,
and give us grace our wrongs to bear. 

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