Bring Many Names

This post was written by Charles Jonah, and posted on August 29, 2007 | Filed Under religion, music and religion | Double-click any word for more info | View other posts by Charles Jonah | | For info on this author, visit http://www.sdgmusic.org/voices/2007/07/31/introduction/

I thought I knew where I was going when I went wandering out on the internet looking for material for this week’s blog. Well, I ended up off track and will write about this side journey before getting back on track.

I started by looking up the words for the hymn “Bring Many Names” by Brian Wren (see text for the words) and I ran into some commentaries on the hymn that made me reconsider my thoughts on the hymn.

To quote from
a commentary on the new Canadian hymnbook

These types of changes and new texts represent precisely what is most troubling about the new hymn book. This hymn “Bring many names” by Brian Wren is a helpful sample of the theology behind the new hymn book. For this kind of religion, we name God, as it pleases, or suits, or helps us.For classical Christianity, God is simply beyond our naming, but indeed he has revealed and named himself, supremely by and in Jesus Christ. One of the early church writers and teachers, Justin Martyr provides us with a helpful correction and warning in this regard:

“For no one can give a name to God, who is too great for words; if anyone dares to say it is possible to do so, he must be suffering from an incurable madness.” (Apology in Defence of Christians).

So the new hymn book would have us ‘bring many names’, and sing and name God as:

Womb of life, and source of being,… Mother, Brother, holy Partner; Father, Spirit, Only Son: we would praise your name forever.

and from another commentary there are questions about this hymn; how can one refer to God as a Mother; the Bible (almost) always refers to God as a father?

The beginning lines of the 2nd through 5th stanzas are:

Strong mother God,
Warm father God,
Old, aching God,
Young, growing God,

But they are not names for God; they are descriptors for God. They help us understand the nature of God by letting us relate to what we know. This certainly is not new – think the 23rd Psalm; does anyone really see God as a Shepherd guiding sheep? No, we see this as a metaphor to help us understand God’s nature. To most of us in modern society, a shepherd is someone we know only intellectually – but a mother, a father, a God that takes on the worlds problems and a God that leads us into new ways is something we can understand.

Finally, I want to quote the entire last stanza – isn’t this something we all agree on?

Great, living God, never fully known,
joyful darkness far beyond our seeing,
closer yet than breathing, everlasting home:
Hail and hosanna, great, living God!

This is clearly well outside my competence – it isn’t chemistry or physics, it isn’t even choral music directly. But it is hymns, a song of praise to God in some of his many natures. Note, I am not fond of this hymn for singing; while it perfectly diatonic, the meter is strange and often the notes are what I refer to as “yes, I guess one could use that pitch there”.