Singing the Solas
by Darren Moore
I hope that you have enjoyed listening, watching and reading about the Solas (Soli for pedants), in our recent ‘5 Blokes, 5 Solas’ live stream extravaganza. We have had a couple of interesting responses. One was when I noticed a debate on Facebook. I know wisdom says: “leave it,” but I posted the first YouTube 5 min Sola (by myself) as a response. Someone replied, “don’t send links give us your opinion - typical liberal, posting links from others”. I pointed out it wasn’t just my opinion, but me! Thus demonstrating the foolishness of saying anything on the bottom half of the internet.
The other one was someone quite dismissive, “Oh dull booky Theology, I’d far rather…” Ironically, went on to say some highly theologically loaded terms. Are these 5 Solas just for geeks? Well, you know where we’re going with this. Theology proper is about knowing God (everyone is a theologian, the question is good or bad). But these Soli are about the core of our faith, to the glory of God. As such, they should move us deeply. I hope we have given some cash value as we have gone along about how we live this out.
It is also worth saying that a normal Christian response to what God has done for us is to sing about it. Partly as they move our hearts. Partly because singing imbeds our theology. As someone once said: “keep your theologians, give me the hymn writers, they will be the ones who will shape what people believe.” With that in mind let me commend to you some hymns shaped around the 5 Soli. The first two are from Sovereign Grace, we sing them both here at Chelmsford Presbyterian, the other we found a bit harder.
The first Sovereign Grace one you can find here. It explains the thinking behind it, scroll down for the audio file and various music scores in different keys. They then did this follow up one, video and score are here. And just look at their smiles! Surely it must be good for you! What we found useful about these songs is they have quite a traditional hymn style, work on just a piano and they are very singable. Both tackle two Sola either side of a chorus to God’s glory alone (no verse on it, shame - but there are plenty of old hymns on that). The final one, also with great words, is a little harder to pick up and here (with video and scores). Warm your congregations hearts with these great truths, to the glory of God!
