A couple of summers ago I took a summer course on teaching hymnology. The instructor, a very knowledgeable Calvinist, said that there is very little paradox in hymnody. He thinks that the reason for this lack is the brevity of the form. Lines of hymns are ordinarily short; more crucially, by convention hymn writers are conservative about dividing phrases among multiple lines.

My sense is that my teacher did not go back far enough in time to the older Latin hymns, in which paradox is very common.
Right now I’m translating a 10th c. hymn for the Ascension called Aeterne rex altissime. The Latin of vere 4 is sublime in its treatment of the word “flesh.” The Pauline flesh is here, as is its opposite, the Johannine, and then the actual fact of Jesus’ current situation caps everything:

Tremunt videntes angeli
versam vivem mortalium
culpat caro, purgat caro,
regnat caro Verbum Dei.

my initial translation:

The angels tremble at the sight.
How altered is the human plight!
For flesh has sinned, but flesh atoned,
And God in flesh is God enthroned.

An older translation:

Yes, Angels tremble when they see
How changed is our humanity;
That Flesh hath purged what flesh had stained,
And God, the flesh of God, hath reigned.

When I see one of these abundant instances of paradox in the old hymns, I feel as though we are nowadays a very prosaic people. Current hymns, for example, are usually very straight-messaged. They don’t stop and wonder; hymns never gaze. They often preach. We make no puns…