Come Thou Apostles’ Creed

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦. Unsplash.

Yesterday, I wrote about how many of our favourite hymns are really just mashups, matching lyrics with melodies sometime after each was composed.

I noted that some people have tried to modernise the lyrics of older hymns. Some of the attempts are pretty decent, but they haven’t managed to gain much widespread acceptance.

What should we do?

A few people suggested that we need to do a better job of teaching and explaining these hymns. I think that’s a fair point. I’m quite sympathetic. But I’m also not sure that this will do the trick.

Let’s say your church sings Come Thou Fount three or four times a year.

Are you going to explain each of the tricky archaic lines each time you sing it? That’s kind of annoying for the regular members. “We know it’s not Ebenezer Scrooge, and we know it’s not fetta cheese. You told us that three months ago. And six months ago. And nine months ago.”

Or are you going to explain them once a year? But if that’s the case, anyone who missed the last explanation won’t understand.

And the newcomer? I know that church is primarily for the believer. But if you’re at a church that has five to ten newcomers every week, you have to factor them into your thinking.

And the person with English as a second language? Learning pronouns in any language is tricky enough. And then learning archaic pronouns? Really?

And what about weddings? I reckon I’ve sung Come Thou Fount at least five times at a wedding. The tricky words were never explained, and there were often dozens of non-Christians present.

The Apostles’ Creed to Nettleton

So, here’s my first re-appropriation idea: The Apostles’ Creed to Nettleton (aka, the melody that got attached to Come Thou Fount six decades after Robert Robinson composed the lyrics).

Here’s my attempt without footnotes (thus making it easier to read):

I believe in God, the Father, the Almighty up above,
The creator of the heavens, maker of the earth below.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our blessed Lord;
By the Holy Spirit conceived; of the Virgin Mary born;

Suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, to death he went.
He was buried, he descended, on the third day raised again.
Now he’s seated at the right hand of the Father up in heaven.
And from there he will return to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the holy worldwide church,
I believe in the communion of the saints throughout the world,
I believe in sins forgiven, in the body raised again,
I believe in the enduring hope of life, that without end.

I believe in God the Father, I believe in God the Son,
I believe in God the Spirit, praise our God the Three and One.

And here’s my attempt with footnotes:

I believe in God, the Father, the Almighty up above [1],
The creator of the heavens, maker of the earth below [2].
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our blessed [3] Lord;
By the Holy Spirit conceived [4]; of the Virgin Mary born;

Suffered [5] under Pontius Pilate, crucified, to death he went,
He was buried, he descended [6], on the third day raised again.
Now he’s seated at the right hand of the Father up in heaven.
And from there he will return to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the [7] Holy Spirit, in the holy worldwide [8] church,
I believe in the communion of the saints throughout the world [9],
I believe in sins forgiven, in the body raised again,
I believe in the enduring hope of life, that without end. [10].

I believe in God the Father, I believe in God the Son,
I believe in God the Spirit, praise our God the Three and One [11].

Translation Notes

[1] [2] I’ve supplied prepositions not original to the Apostles’ Creed to pad out the lines.

[3] This is the two-syllable “Blessed”, which should be pronounced here as “Bless-id” (or, /ˈblɛsɪd/, if that means anything to you).

[4] Normally the emphasis on “conceived” comes on the second syllable: /kənˈsiːvd/. In this song, the emphasis is equal on both syllables. CON. CEIVED. I reckon it works when you sing it. But it reads awkwardly. There is no synonym that fits and accurately conveys what the creed is communicating here.

[5] The subject of the verb is “Jesus Christ” from line 3 of the previous verse. I toyed with throwing in a cheeky “He” that doesn’t technically fit the 8.7.8.7. metre. But I decided against it here. I’ll break that rule in a moment, though.

[6] This omission was more stylistic than theological. I had to sacrifice some syllables somewhere to fit it into the melody. This is the kind of compromise you have to make when doing something like this. However, I don’t feel terrible. If I have understood the literature correctly, it seems that the Latin phrase “descendit ad inferos” (“he descended to hell/place of the dead”) was quite late. While the creed can be dated at least back to Ireneaus in 200 AD, we only first find the bit about the descent to hell/the dead in Rufinus in 390 AD. It doesn’t resurface again until 650 AD in Sacramentarium Gallicanum (at least, as far as I can tell). This being the case, and also given the contemporary debates over whether “inferos” should be translated as “hell” or “place of the dead”, I’m not too bothered with dropping the object of the verb to make the song work.

[7] This is one of my more sketchy translations. I wanted to retain the words “Holy” and Spirit”. But to make it fit the lyrics without the definite article (“the”), it would be “I believe in Holy Spirit”. That sounds too much like Yoda. So, I’ve slipped in a bonus ninth syllable into this line—the article “the”. But, it’s to be merged with the first syllable of “Holy” when sung: something like “th’Holy”. I know, I know.

[8] The Latin here is “sanctam Ecclesiam catholicam“. In many ways I wanted to retain the language of “catholic” because its meaning transcends both geography and time, whereas “worldwide” only transcends time. In my context, there’s a fair bit of hesitance to the term “catholic” because it sounds like “Roman Catholic” and we don’t want to give people the impression that we are Roman Catholics. Given this wasn’t a problem for the Reformers (the Catholic church was kind of a big deal back then, too), and it’s embedded into the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles, I’m pretty chilled with “catholic”. It can be a teaching piece for people as well (some churches put an asterisk next to it, which is kind of funny, but also helpful). However, I went with “worldwide” because 1) it’s two syllables rather than three, and 2) I thought it would be less unnecessarily controversial in my current context.

[9] In the Latin, this line is “sanctorum communionem”. The verb “I believe” is replicated from the previous line (“Credo in Spiritum Sanctum”), as it is in the following lines. The prepositional phrase “throughout the world” is also supplied, to pad out the line and make it (kind of) rhyme with “church”. Not original. Sorry!

[10] This line is a bit clunky too. The Latin is simply “vitam aeternam”—life eternal. I needed to pad this out to make it fit. I also ditched the “amen” at the end here because I couldn’t think of a syllable to connect it with what preceeds.

[11] I felt like the song needed an extra couple of lines (returning to the melody of lines 3 and 4 of the verse). So I added some extra bits.

Will It Catch On?

Will it catch on? Probably not. Maybe it sounds a bit too much like a systematic theologian trying to write a song. But, oh well. It was fun trying. If you’re keen to give it a go, you can click here for a PDF of the chord chat. You’ll probably get a fair bit of pushback if you try and introduce it at your church, though!