Doxology

A doxology (Ancient Greek: δοξολογία doxologia, from δόξα, doxa 'glory' and -λογία, -logia 'saying') is a short hymn of praises to God in various forms of Christian worship, often added to the end of canticles, psalms, and hymns. The tradition derives from a similar practice in the Jewish synagogue, where a variant of the Kaddish serves to terminate each section of the service.

Trinitarian doxology

Among Christian traditions a doxology is typically an expression of praise sung to the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is common in high hymns for the final stanza to take the form of a doxology. Doxologies occur in the Eucharistic prayers, the Liturgy of the Hours, hymns, and various Catholic devotions such as novenas and the Rosary.

Gloria in excelsis Deo

The Gloria in excelsis Deo, also called the Greater Doxology, is a hymn beginning with the words that the angels sang when the birth of Christ was announced to shepherds in Luke 2:14. Other verses were added very early, forming a doxology.

Gloria Patri

The Gloria Patri, so named for its Latin incipit, is commonly used as a doxology in many Christian traditions, including the Roman Catholics, Old Catholics, Independent Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, Baptists and United Protestants. It is called the "Lesser Doxology", thus distinguished from the "Great Doxology" (Gloria in Excelsis Deo), and is often called simply "the doxology". As well as praising God, it was regarded as a short declaration of faith in the equality of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity.

The Greek text,

Δόξα Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ καὶ Ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι

καὶ νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀμήν.

is rendered into Latin as,

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

which is literally translated

Glory [be] to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning, and now, and always, and into the ages of ages. Amen.

"In saecula saeculorum", here rendered "ages of ages", is the calque of what was probably a Semitic idiom, via Koine Greek, meaning "forever". It is also rendered "world without end" in English, an expression also used in James I's Authorised Version of the Bible in Ephesians 3:21 and Isaiah 45:17. Similarly, "et semper" is often rendered "and ever shall be", thus giving the more metrical English version,

... As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

A common version of the Liturgy of the Hours, as approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, uses a newer, different translation for the Latin:

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

UPDATED 2026: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.

The most commonly encountered Orthodox English version:

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, both now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen

The modern Anglican version found in Common Worship is slightly different, and is rooted in the aforementioned translations found in the Authorised Version:

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow"

Another doxology in widespread use in English, in some Protestant traditions commonly referred to simply as The Doxology or The Common Doxology, begins "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow". The words are thus:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;

Praise Him, all creatures here below;

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

These words were written in 1674 by Thomas Ken as the final verse of two hymns, "Awake, my soul, and with the sun" and "Glory to thee, my God, this night", intended for morning and evening worship at Winchester College. This final verse, separated from its original hymns and sung to the tune "Old 100th", "Duke Street", "Lasst uns erfreuen", "The Eighth Tune" by Thomas Tallis, among others, frequently marks the dedication of alms or offerings at Sunday worship.

The traditional version of the Doxology is recited in most congregations of the Methodist Churches, such as the Free Methodist Church and Global Methodist Church. The popular Hawaiian version Hoʻonani i ka Makua mau was translated by Hiram Bingham I and is published in hymnals. Many Mennonite congregations sing a longer and more embellished setting of this text known as "Dedication Anthem" by Samuel Stanley. In Mennonite circles, this doxology is commonly known as "606" for its hymn number in The Mennonite Hymnal [1969], and colloquially known as the "Mennonite National Anthem". Students at Goshen College stand and sing the Doxology when 6:06 remains in a soccer game – as long as Goshen is winning the game.

Some progressive denominations have adopted altered versions of the Doxology in the interest of inclusive language or other considerations. For example, some Disciples of Christ congregations eliminate the masculine pronouns. Some denominations, such as the Anglican Church of Canada (Common Praise), the United Church of Canada (Voices United), and the United Church of Christ (New Century Hymnal), replace "heavenly host" with a reference to God's love. The United Church of Christ version reads:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;

Praise God, all creatures here below;

Praise God for all that love has done;

Creator, Christ, and Spirit, One.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) accepted this version of the Doxology for inclusion in the 1990 The Presbyterian Hymnal and the 2014 Glory to God: the Presbyterian Hymnal. This version was written by the Rev. Neil Weatherhogg, pastor of both the First Presbyterian Church of Kerrville, Texas, and the Harvey Browne Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. This version maintains gender neutrality as it does not refer to God in gender specific terminology, and reads:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;

Praise Christ, all people here below;

Praise Holy Spirit evermore;

Praise Triune God, whom we adore.

Eucharistic doxology

In the Catholic Mass a prose doxology concludes the eucharistic prayer, preceding the Our Father. It is typically sung by the presiding priest along with any concelebrating priests. The Latin text reads:

Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso, est tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti in unitate Spiritus Sancti, omnis honor et gloria per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen. (1. Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours almighty Father, forever and ever Amen. and 2. Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, forever and ever. Amen.)

The equivalent passage in the Book of Common Prayer (1549) of the Church of England reads:

By whom and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory be unto thee, O Father almighty, world without end. Amen.

Lord's Prayer doxology

Another familiar doxology is the one often added at the end of the Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen." This is found in manuscripts representative of the Byzantine text of Matthew 6:13, but not in the manuscripts considered by Catholics to be the most reliable. According to Scrivener's "Supplement to the Authorized English version of New Testament", it is omitted by eight out of 500 or so manuscripts. Some scholars do not consider it part of the original text of Matthew, and modern translations do not include it, mentioning it only in footnotes. Since 1970, the doxology, in the form "For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and for ever", is used in the Roman Rite of the Mass, after the Embolism. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1914) claims that this doxology "appears in the Greek textus receptus and has been adopted in the later editions of the Book of Common Prayer, [and] is undoubtedly an interpolation". In fact, the Lord's Prayer doxology is often left away by Catholics, such as in the Liturgy of the Hours, or when, which is quite often outside Mass, a Hail Mary follows immediately (e. g. in the Rosary where the Gloria Patri serves as doxology).

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this doxology takes up

the first three petitions to our Father: the glorification of his name, the coming of his reign, and the power of his saving will. But these prayers are now proclaimed as adoration and thanksgiving, as in the liturgy of heaven. The ruler of this world has mendaciously attributed to himself the three titles of kingship, power, and glory. Christ, the Lord, restores them to his Father and our Father, until he hands over the kingdom to him when the mystery of salvation will be brought to its completion and God will be all in all.

Other doxologies

In the Epistle of Jude, the last two verses (24 and 25) are considered to be a doxology and are used by many Protestant Christians, especially in public worship settings:

"Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen." (KJV)

At Matins, Orthodox worship specifies a Great Doxology for feast days and a Small Doxology for ordinary days. Both include the Gospel doxology of the angels at Christ's birth (Luke 2:14: "Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will"). The lines of this doxology are the opening lines of the prayer Gloria in Excelsis recited during the Roman Catholic Mass.

Pentecostal

A popular doxology in African-American Pentecostal and Baptist churches is "Praise Him, Praise Him", written in the 1980s by famed African American Gospel singer and minister Reverend Milton Biggham.

Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him! Jesus, blessed Savior, he's worthy to be praised.

From the rising of the sun until the going down of the same, he's worthy, Jesus is worthy, he's worthy to be praised.

Glory! Glory! In all things give him glory. Jesus, blessed Savior, he's worthy to be praised.

For God is our rock, hope of salvation; a strong deliverer, in him I will always trust.

Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him! Jesus, blessed Savior, he's worthy to be praised.

From the rising of the sun until the going down of the same, he's worthy, Jesus is worthy, he's worthy to be praised.

Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him! Jesus, blessed Savior, he's worthy to be praised.

Iglesia ni Cristo

In the Iglesia ni Cristo, the Doxology is sung before the Benediction and Concluding Rites during worship services. It reads:

Unitarian Universalism

In Unitarian Universalism, "the Doxology" typically refers to Curtis W. Reese's adaptation of "From all that dwell below the skies", an 18th-century paraphrase of Psalm 117 by Isaac Watts:

"From all that dwell below the skies

let songs of hope and faith arise; (Or, alternatively, let faith and hope with love arise)

let peace, goodwill on earth be sung (Or let beauty, truth and good be sung)

through every land, by every tongue." (Or in every land, in every tongue.)

While many congregations who use a doxology use these words and sing them to the tune of Old 100th, there are nine different lyrics that congregations may choose to use, along with three tunes (Old 100th, Tallis' Canon, and Von Himmel Hoch) listed in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal Singing the Living Tradition.

These doxologies appear in Unitarian Universalist services as short songs of communal praise and connection, placed in the service much as Trinitarian doxologies are placed in a Protestant Christian service.

Derivations

Because some Christian worship services include a doxology, and these hymns therefore were familiar and well-practiced among church choirs, the English word sockdolager arose, a deformation of doxology, which came to mean a "show-stopper", a production number. The Oxford English Dictionary considers it a "fanciful" coinage, but an 1893 speculation reported in the Chicago Tribune as to the origin of the word as one of its early attestations:

A writer in the March Atlantic gives this as the origin of the slang word "socdollager", which was current some time ago. "Socdollager" was the uneducated man's transposition of "doxologer", which was the familiar New England rendering of "doxology". This was the Puritan term for the verse ascription used at the conclusion of every hymn, like the "Gloria" at the end of a chanted psalm. On doctrinal grounds it was proper for the whole congregation to join in the singing, so that it became a triumphant winding up of the whole act of worship. Thus is happened that "socdollager" became the term for anything which left nothing else to follow; a decisive, overwhelming finish, to which no reply was possible.

See also

• Greater doxology

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

In general this word means a short verse praising God and beginning, as a rule, with the Greek word Doxa. The custom of ending a rite or a hymn with such a formula comes from the Synagogue (cf. the Prayer of Manasses: tibi est gloria in sæcula sæculorum. Amen). St. Paul uses doxologies constantly (Rom., xi, 36; Gal., i, 5; Eph., iii, 21; etc.). The earliest examples are addressed to God the Father alone, or to Him through (dia) the Son (Rom., xvi, 27; Jude, 25; I Clem., xli; Mart. Polyc., xx; etc.) and in (en) or with (syn, meta) the Holy Ghost (Mart. Polyc., xiv, xxii, etc.). The form of baptism (Matt.,xxviii, 19) had set an example of naming the three Persons in parallel order. Especially in the fourth entury, as a protest against Arian subordination (since heretics appealed to these prepositions; cf. St. Basil, "De Spir, Sancto", ii-v), the custom of using the form: "Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost", became universal among Catholics. From this time we must distinguish two doxologies, a greater (doxologia maior) and a shorter (minor). The greater Doxology is the Gloria in Excelsis Deo (q.v.) in the Mass. The shorter form, which is the one generally referred to under the name "doxology", is the Gloria Patri. It is continued by an answer to the effect that this glory shall last for ever. The form, eis tous aionas ton aionon is very common in the first centuries (Rom., xvi, 27; Gal., i, 5; I Tim., i, 17; Heb., xiii, 21; I Peter, iv, 11; I Clem., xx, xxxii, xxxviii, xliii, xlv, etc.; Mart. Polyc., xxii, etc.). It is a common Hebraism (Tob., xiii, 23; Ps lxxxiii, 5; repeatedly in the Apocalypse: i, 6, 18; xiv, 11; xix, 3; etc.) meaning simply "for ever". The simple form, eis tous aionas, is also common (Rom., xi, 36; Doctr. XII Apost., ix, x; in the Liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions, passim) Parallel formulæ are: eis tous mellontas aionas (Mart. Polyc., xiv); apo geneas eis genean (ibid.); etc. This expression was soon enlarged into: "now and ever and in ages of ages" (cf. Heb., xiii, 8; Mart. Polyc., xiv, etc.). In this form it occurs constantly at the end of prayers in the Greek Liturgy of St. James (Brightman, Eastern Liturgies, pp. 31, 32, 33, 34, 41, etc.). and in all the Eastern rites. The Greek form then became: Doxa patri kai yio kai hagio pneumati, kai nun kai aei kai eis tous aionas ton aionon. Amen. In this shape it is used in the Eastern Churches at various points of the Liturgy (e.g. in St. Chrysostom's Rite; see Brightman, pp. 354, 364, etc.) and as the last two verses of psalms, though not so invariably as with us. The second part is occasionally slightly modified and other verses are sometimes introduced between the two halves. In the Latin Rite it seems originally to have had exactly the same form as in the East. In 529 the Second Synod of Vasio (Vaison in the province of Avignon) says that the additional words, Sicut erat in principio, are used in Rome, the East, and Africa as a protest against Arianism, and orders them to be said likewise in Gaul (can. v.). As far as the East is concerned the synod is mistaken. These words have never been used in any Eastern rite and the Greeks complained of their use in the West [Walafrid Strabo (9th century), De rebus eccl., xxv]. The explanation that sicut erat in principio was meant as a denial of Arianism leads to a question whose answer is less obvious than it seems. To what do the words refer? Everyone now understands gloria as the subject of erat: "As it [the glory] was in the beginning", etc. It seems, however, that originally they were meant to refer to Filius, and that the meaning of the second part, in the West at any rate, was: "As He [the Son] was in the beginning, so is He now and so shall He be for ever." The in principio, then, is a clear allusion to the first words of the Fourth Gospel, and so the sentence is obviously directed against Arianism. There are medieval German versions in the form: "Als er war im Anfang".

The doxology in the form in which we know it has been used since about the seventh century all over Western Christendom, except in one corner. In the Mozarabic Rite the formula is: "Gloria et honor Patri et Filio et Spiritui sancto in sæcula sæculorum" (so in the Missal of this rite; see P.L., LXXXV, 109, 119, etc.). The Fourth Synod of Toledo in 633 ordered this form (can. xv). A common medieval tradition, founded on a spurious letter of St. Jerome (in the Benedictine edition, Paris, 1706, V, 415) says that Pope Damasus (366-384) introduced the Gloria Patri at the end of psalms. Cassian (died c. 435) speaks of this as a special custom of the Western Church (De instit. coen., II, viii). The use of the shorter doxology in the Latin Church is this: the two parts are always said or sung as a verse with response. They occur always at the end of psalms (when several psalms are joined together as one, as the sixty-second and sixty-sixth and again the one hundred and forty-eighth, one hundred and forty-ninth and one hundred and fiftieth at Lauds, the Gloria Patri occurs once only at the end of the group; on the other hand each group of sixteen verses of the one hundred and eighteenth psalm in the day Hours has the Gloria) except on occasions of mourning. For this reason (since the shorter doxology, like the greater one, Gloria in Excelsis Deo, in naturally a joyful chant) it is left out on the last three days of Holy Week; in the Office for the Dead its place is taken by the verses: Requiem æternam, etc., and Et lux perpetua, etc. It also occurs after canticles, except that the Benedicite has its own doxology (Benedicamus Patrem... Benedictus es Domine, etc. -- the only alternative one left in the Roman Rite). In the Mass it occurs after three psalms, the "Judica me" at the beginning, the fragment of the Introit-Psalm, and the "Lavabo" (omitted in Passiontide, except on feasts, and at requiem Masses). The first part only occurs in the responsoria throughout the Office, with a variable answer (the second part of the first verse) instead of "Sicut erat," the whole doxology after the "Deus in adjutorium," and in the preces at Prime; and again, this time as one verse, at the end of the invitatorium at Matins. At all these places it is left out in the Office for the Dead and at the end of Holy Week. The Gloria Patri is also constantly used in extraliturgical services, such as the Rosary. It was a common custom in the Middle Ages for preachers to end sermons with it. In some countries, Germany especially, people make the sign of the cross at the first part of the doxology, considering it as chiefly a profession of faith.

ERMELIUS, Dissertatio historica de veteri christianâ doxologia (1684); SCHMIDT, De insignibus veteribus christianis formulis (1696); A SEELEN, Commentarius ad doxologiæ solemnis Gloria Patri verba: Sicut erat in principio in his Miscellanea (1732); BONA, Rerum liturgicarum libri duo (Cologne, 1674), II, 471; THALHOFER, Handbuch der kath. Liturgik, I, 490 sq.; IDEM in Augsburger Pastoralblatt (1863), 289 sq.; RIETSCHEL, Lehrbuch der Liturgik, I, 355sq.; KRAUS, Real-Encyk., I, 377 sq.

External links

• Hymns of the Spirit Three Contains numerous "doxologies" to the tune "Old Hundredth" used in the Unitarian, Universalist and liberal Christian traditions, in English, Spanish and French.