By Conrad Gempf
I don’t think it’s all in my head; I think some of the language of worship has changed since I was little.
I feel like we say Holy Spirit a lot more than we used to. My memories from the old Lutheran Hymnal are always of the Holy Ghost. Some confusing liturgical terminology has been explained—a welcome little note at the foot of the page reminds us that the phrase Lord of Sabaoth in the Sanctus refers to the Hebrew phrase Lord of Hosts and God’s greatness, not to the similar Hebrew word Sabbath or day of rest. (It’s not that God isn’t the God of the day of rest; just that, in the Holy, Holy, Holy we’re talking about God as the mighty Lord of heavenly armies…)
Other terminology has also been slightly modified, notably the clause in the Creed that used to refer to the catholic church—the small c signifying we were using the adjective meaning universal rather than invoking the name of Roman Catholic denomination. Now we confess the whole Christian church, but we mean the same thing…
In the worship service this morning, I found myself noticing that we’ve preserved the use of Thou, Thy, and Thine in some of our singing, such as the Gloria in Excelsis (“We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee…”). When I was growing up, these pronouns from the church service and the King James Bible always seemed to me a very exalted, formal, even holy kind of language. It was some time later before I learned the truth about thou in Early Modern English language.
Perhaps it was when I was first studying German. Like Early English, German has two different forms of you: formal and familiar. When speaking to a stranger or someone to whom one wishes to show deference or respect, the German pronoun Sie is used; the formal you. But when speaking informally, to friends and family, the familiar du is used instead. Sie is for your professor or doctor or for strangers; du is reserved for your friends and family members.
It seemed to me obvious, therefore, that in English, it must be that thou is the formal you and therefore appropriate when talking to God, while our everyday you is the familiar form.
I was shocked to find that this is not actually the case at all.
When King James was shooting the breeze with his pals, the form thou was the familiar form of the word, not the formal one! Jimmy’s loyal subjects would have used the formal you to their king, and the familiar thee when talking to their loved ones.
To refer to God as Thee and Thou reminds us that we do not serve a God who is far off and distant, but one who has always wanted a close loving family relationship with us.
But, that’s not the whole story. Because in Early Modern English, thou-thee-thine is spelled with lower-case t. The Lutheran Hymnal, like the King James Bible, consistently uses an upper-case T: Thou-Thee-Thine.
This is just perfect, isn’t it? We don’t use distant formal language for God. Instead, we use the intimate family form of the words, but we upper-case them to remind ourselves that the One we’re addressing is unique and worthy of respect and awe.
Glory be to Thee, O, Lord!