Illuminations
Creator of the Stars of Night
by Anthony Esolen
As the music goes, so goes the church," said a friend of mine, a Baptist minister. What were the first Christian hymns like? We have one example in the mighty words wherein Paul describes the humility of Christ:
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God,
But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name,
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:5–11)
Let us note first what is not here. No sentimentality. No reference to our feelings. No nod to the wonderfulness of us, who honor God by thinking about him once in a while. This hymn is a song of theological and cosmic drama. We don't call Jesus the Son of God because he was a fine moral teacher; as if Jesus depended upon public opinion, that reed in the wind. We call Jesus our teacher because he is the Son of God. His gifts are precious because of who he is. I may admire George Washington. But let me never visit upon Jesus the indignity of admiration. I worship him.
Therefore the hymn teaches us who Jesus is: the eternal Son of God, the Word, who was in the beginning with God (John 1:2). Only because Jesus is the Son of God is there any surprising reversal, any stunning revelation about God's love, any drama in the Incarnation. The singers insist upon that drama. He made himself of no reputation. He took upon him the form of a servant. We descend still lower: he humbled himself, and became obedient. God, the Creator—obedient! And not only obedient, as Athena would obey Zeus when it suited her. This is true obedience, true hearing: Jesus is obedient unto death. Nor just any death. Jesus embraced a death that the Romans would not visit upon a citizen, no matter what the crime. His was a horrible, protracted death by suffocation, made acutely agonizing by the spikes driven through clusters of nerves, and the scourging that cut him to the spine. It was death upon a cross.
The hymn turns upon the Cross. It is the fulcrum of the world, the point where the weight of sin meets the conquering action of grace. Jesus says, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Matt. 16:24). For "blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake" (Matt. 5:11). The cross represents the most daring gift of all, not by a soldier who hopes for his country's esteem, but by a slave, without even the consolation of a good name to leave behind. The Son of God alone can fill such a death with glory.
That is why the hymn changes direction, through descent, to ascent. "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted" (Luke 14:11), says Jesus. But the exaltation is not extrinsic to the humbling. God doesn't pin the reward on as a medal. It is in the nature of humility to rise, by love. So we hear the two movements of the hymn as one. Despite being equal to God, Jesus humbled himself; because he was equal to God, he humbled himself. He is exalted above every creature in the cosmos: they bend the knee at the name of Jesus, now revealed as equal to the holy name of God. We proclaim that Jesus is Lord, not teacher, not great statesman, but the source and meaning and goal of all things. "I am the way, the truth, and the life," says he (John 14:6).
A Hymn of All Time
We see the same pattern of descent and ascent in the ninth-century Advent hymn, Conditor alme siderum, "Creator of the Stars of Night."The hymn spans all of time, from creation to final judgment. Again, Jesus is not reduced to an admirable person. He is the conditor of the stars, the God who set them in their place. Therefore he may shine his incomparably greater light upon us:
Creator of the stars of night,
Thy people's everlasting light,
O Christ, Thou Savior of us all,
We pray Thee, hear us when we call.To Thee the travail deep was known
That made the whole creation groan
Till Thou, Redeemer, shouldest free
Thine own in glorious liberty.
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 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) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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