4th century BC
Plato
- Idealism — forms over particulars
- The Republic ethic: “God is not the author of evil”
Notes
Track 1 of Hand It Down, the album's foundational hymn -- operational idealism in compact hymnody. Common Meter (8.6.8.6), five short verses, no chorus, in the traditional English hymn line of Amazing Grace and O God Our Help in Ages Past. The catalog's compact hymn version of A Thought in the Mind of God (Sweet Release) -- same doctrine, hymnal form, singable in a kitchen.
Source: Acts 17:28 (in him we live and move and have our being), Hebrews 1:3 (upholding all things by the word of his power), Colossians 1:17 (in him all things consist), and the book's central thesis of operational idealism.
Doctrine: God does not wind a clock and walk away; He thinks creation moment by moment, and the same Mind that thinks the world thinks the saint into being, holds the saint without distance, and will think the resurrection through.
Form: Common Meter, female lead with sparse three-part family harmony under the back half of each verse. No chorus to memorize -- the hymn carries doctrine in five tight verses that build from creation to resurrection to the saints carrying the singing forward.
Lyrics
[Verse 1]
Before the morning had a name,
Before the stars were strung,
A Mind was thinking all that is,
And held it on His tongue.
[Verse 2]
No clock the Lord wound up to spin,
No engine left to run,
He thinks the world from breath to breath,
The thinking is not done.
[Verse 3]
He thought me into where I sit,
He thinks me where I rise,
Not far away across a gulf,
But closer than my eyes.
[Verse 4]
The grave will lose its grip on me,
The Mind that holds me now
Will think the resurrection through,
And raise me from the ground.
[Verse 5]
So sing it plain, the saints of God,
And sing it through the years,
We were not lost, we are not gone,
We're held within the Mind.
Commentary