Te Deum

The Te Deum is an early Christian hymn of praise. It dates from before the year 400 and has been used in Matins for many centuries. Luther particularly loved the Te Deum.  He saw it as a grand confession of faith and may have translated it already at the time when he produced his Catechisms in 1529. The title is a translation of  its opening in Latin, Te Deum laudamus, "Thee, O God, we praise". 

The Te Deum follows the outline of the Apostles' Creed. It uses a poetic vision of the heavenly liturgy as a setting for our confession of faith. It names all those who praise and worship God.  This includes all the earth, the angels, the apostles, the prophets, the martyrs and indeed the entire Church throughout the world. Therefore the faithful already in heaven and we, still in the world, together acknowledge God and His plan of salvation made real in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The Te Deum then makes our statement of faith, telling of Christ and his birth, suffering and death,  resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God. It concludes with a prayer that we who have been redeemed with Jesus’ precious blood would be numbered with the saints forever in heaven. May God grant this to us all!

Pastor Quardokus

From Luther’s Works:

The Te Deum is one of the grandest hymns of Christendom. It combines a confession of faith with a song of praise and a prayer for help. Its beginnings go back to the first centuries of the Christian church. At one time it was credited to Ambrose and Augustine, supposedly improvised by them at Augustine’s baptism. Modern research, however, suggests that it was not “composed” by a single author, but rather grew from many traditional strands, though possibly it received its final form from Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana (in what is now Yugoslavia), a contemporary of Jerome. At any rate, the Te Deum was tremendously popular in the Middle Ages. It was regularly sung at Matins and at innumerable other occasions, such as the election of a pope, consecration of a bishop, coronation of a king, or the conclusion of a council. The saying went, “The church sings this hymn whenever she has been favored by God with a great blessing.”

Luther loved the Te Deum. In his book The Three Symbols or Creeds of the Christian Faith, 1538, he named the Te Deum in third place after the Apostles’ Creed and Athanasian Creed and said: “The third symbol is said to be of SS. Augustine and Ambrose, and is supposed to have been sung at the baptism of Augustine. Whether that is true or not—and it does no harm whether one believes it or not—it is nevertheless a fine symbol or creed (whoever the author) composed in the form of a chant, not only for the purpose of confessing the true faith, but also for praising and thanking God.”

In the same book he offered a prose translation of the Te Deum. But almost ten years earlier he had published a rimed paraphrase of the Te Deum. The earliest extant print of this version is in the Andrew Rauscher hymnal of 1531. Since Rauscher reprinted Klug’s 1529 hymnal, it was probably the first hymnal to publish Luther’s Te Deum.

Luther's Works, 53:171

If you travel to Grand Rapids, Michigan  you may wish to worship at Our Savior Lutheran Church.  A magnificent mural of an artist’s rendering of the Te Deum encircles the entire sanctuary!