A Statement of Faith Against Rationalism

Charles Jennens intended Messiah as an argument, not only a devotional text. Writing to a friend in 1741, he described his purpose as answering the growing fashion for deism and rationalized skepticism about Christ's divinity by assembling scripture's own prophetic and historical claims about the Messiah into a single sustained case, letting the Bible's words carry the argument rather than paraphrasing them into contemporary theology. Handel's setting follows that structure exactly, moving from Isaiah's prophecies through the Christmas narrative in Part One, through the Passion and its Old Testament foreshadowing in Part Two, ending Part Two with the Hallelujah chorus at the announcement that Christ shall reign forever, and closing Part Three with the promise of resurrection. The Hallelujah chorus alone has taken on devotional life independent of the rest of the work, sung today in concert halls, cathedrals and public spaces, with a long-observed audience custom of standing for it. Messiah is not liturgy in the sense a hymn or a mass setting is; no church rite requires it. It functions instead as a recurring seasonal devotional event, performed in churches, concert halls and community sing along events every Advent and Easter season across the English speaking world, a pattern of use closer to a shared religious calendar observance than to ordinary concert programming.