ISAAC WATTS’RE-INTERPRETATION OF THE PSALTER FOR WORSHIP

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국대학선교학회
· 수록지 정보 : 대학과 선교 / 15호 / 303 ~ 324페이지
· 저자명 : 허도화

초록

This project is designed to gain clarity about the identity and the relevancy of the psalter for worship. To the end, in terms of describing, analyzing, and interpreting of the psalms and hymns of Isaac Watts, this project attempts to prove that they provide insight into how liturgy and culture may be effectively woven together in the worship experience. Broken from the old tradition of metrical versions which has a concern for a re-representation of the psalm, Watts’concern was for re-interpretation. Watts’re-interpretation of the psalter for worship brought about liturgical inculturation through congregational song. For what and how we sing in worship is a significant aspect of liturgical inculturation. In the seventeenth century, there were precious few English hymns. The seventeenth century had inherited from the previous century the Calvinist tradition of singing metrical psalms. The most common metrical psalters by Sternhold and Hopkins in 1562 and by Bay Psalm Book in 1640 reproduced the Hebrew psalms as accurately as possible in English rhyme and meter. Their philosophy of metrical psalmody in translating the Hebrew words into English language was that God’s Altar needs not human smoothy polishings of the verses (poetry), but a plain translation (fidelity to the Word of God). But Isaac Watts, while accepting the principle of the Word of God in song, nevertheless broke from the old psalm metrical tradition which was stifled by the almost monolithic, objective, biblical literalism of English metrical psalmody. He exposed weaknesses in the old tradition and then brought about psalms and hymns integrated by a subjective spirituality, a concern for poetry, and a New Testament hermeneutic. The revolution that Watts brought about was his insistence that Christian congregational song cannot be confined to the Old Testament psalms, but must embrace the totality of Scripture. In doing so he laid the foundation on which later English hymnody would be built. The hymns and psalms of Isaac Watts contributed to the dramatic changes in the content, and practice, of congregational song. He set a new direction for even the liturgical inculturation of the gospel hymns today. The twentieth century has been a time of renewed emphasis on Scripture through the production of modern translations, paraphrases, and lectionaries. It has also been a time of renewed emphasis on creedal statements.1 ) It is not coincidental, then, that this has also become a time of renewed interest in the creation of Christian song. As we are living in what has been called a hymn and hymnal explosion ,2 ) Watts reminds us of significant lessons that the songs the church sings should be based on Scripture but evangelically re-interpreted and freely composed, including criptural allusions and responses to the truths being sung. For he believed that only the re-presentation of Psalms, as valuable as they are in Christian worship, were insufficient to express the full range of Christian experience.

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