Israel's Creed: Sung, Not Signed

Extract

In his introduction to the volume, Letters of Principal James Denney to His Family and Friends, James Moffatt records among a somewhat exiguous collection of Denney's obiter dicta these words: ‘The Church's Confession of faith should be sung, not signed.’ Though Denney was in some ways a champion of orthodoxy, he was also, on occasion, something of a trial to the orthodox; and it may be that there are those who judge that the remark is only what might have been expected of a man whose wife could say to him: ‘James, I think your preaching style has greatly improved since you took to reading those French novels.’ However, it is not my present intention either to defend or to impugn the orthodoxy of Denney's dictum. Since Moffatt has given no indication of the context in which it was uttered, I have taken the liberty of applying it, in the title of this address, to the Old Testament. So to apply it is to echo what the late Dr H. Wheeler Robinson once wrote: ‘the Book of Psalms is not only the living and passionate utterance of Israel's piety at its highest, but also supplies the data for an epitome of Old Testament theology.’ The elaboration of that theme, so far as that may be attempted within the limits imposed by the present occasion, is the task which I have set myself in this Presidential Address.