In follow up to an earlier post on this blog, we asked Dr. Paul Grime to offer his reflections.  Dr. Grime is our Dean of Chapel and professor of liturgics.  But prior to coming to CTS, he was the chief architect for our synod’s newest hymnal.  His comments are below (Stieg).

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It’s almost ten years since work began in earnest on the Synod’s latest hymnal, Lutheran Service Book. Among the many big issues that we knew would challenge us was the matter of language. What style of language would we use? An older style? An updated style? Something in between?

Just 18 months after we began, the Roman Catholic world was rocked by the release of a new instruction on liturgical language. Liturgiam Authenticam, published in late the spring of 2001, called on translators of liturgical texts to adhere more closely to the original, Latin version. I remember very well one ecumenical gathering where some prominent Roman Catholics openly worried that the liturgical reforms of the last 30 years were about to be turned back. By the tone of their voices, you wondered whether they were headed back to the stone age.

As far as our work on LSB was concerned, we felt somewhat vindicated by the direction we were taking, which was to aim for a literal translation of texts wherever possible, yet to strive for translations that weren’t stilted or wooden. Of course, that is easier said than done. Our most difficult challenge concerned the old “Page 15” service from The Lutheran Hymnal (now Setting Three in LSB). With a full one-third of our congregations still using TLH, we knew that this service needed to be treated carefully. We actually went through three or four “test” versions that we tried out in congregations that were using TLH. We toyed with updating the language and providing dual translations, but eventually settled on a fairly conservative course. For those parts of the service where text was wedded to music, we kept the text “as is,” in other words, using the archaic language as found in TLH. But, for the spoken parts of the service, we gently updated the language, something that many pastors were already doing in their spoken parts. For the most part, reception of this service has been good.

If you’re interested in reading more about the new directions in the Roman Catholic Church, go here where you can see examples of the changes that have now been approved—seven years later.

If you want to see the language guidelines that were used in the development of LSB, go here. Take a look at the discussion on page 4 concerning “Archaic and Obsolete Language.”

Paul Grime
Dean of the Chapel, CTS
LSB Project Director (1999-2007)