The Theology of Johnny Cash: Part 2, Sinner & Saint

Martin Luther's famous formulation was simul justus et peccator. We are simultaneously both sinner and saint. We are sinners but we are also righteous in that we are saved by grace.

And while I might be stretching the idea beyond what Luther intended, I think simul justus et peccator is a great summary of the theology of Johnny Cash.

In 2000 Cash put out a 3-album compilation of hand-picked songs looking back over his career. The compilation was entitled Love God Murder. (A fourth album Life as added later.)

Few recording artists could have produced such stark juxtapositions looking back over their career.

For the Love album Cash picked love songs like his big hits "I Walk the Line" and "Ring of Fire."  But I want to focus on the other two albums, God and Murder.

From the beginning Johnny Cash recorded gospel songs. The first one was "Belshazzar" recorded in 1957 with Sun Records, the only gospel song Sam Phillips allowed Cash to record. Once Cash left Sun to join Columbia Records he had more liberty to record gospels songs and albums. He quickly exercised that artistic freedom in 1959 to record an entire album of gospel music Hymns By Johnny Cash. For the rest of his career Cash included gospels songs on his albums as well as recording many more gospel albums. Noteworthy among these is The Gospel Road (1973), the soundtrack to the movie The Gospel Road. The Gospel Road was a musical documentary of the life of Jesus that was produced and narrated by Cash and shot on location in Israel.

All that to say, Cash's body of work features a great deal of gospel material, even a movie, all of which is very devout and earnest. The God album of Love God Murder features many of these songs.

And the Murder album features, well, all the songs Cash sang about murder.

As with Cash's gospel songs, this dark impulse was there from the very beginning. The second big hit recorded by Cash with Sun Records (the first was "Hey, Porter") in 1955 was "Folsom Prison Blues." The second verse of the song contains the chilling, sociopathic lines:

When I was just a baby my mama told me. Son,
Always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.  

I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. When they recorded the song in 1955 Cash and Sam Phillips weren't sure if radio stations would play the song because of that line. But the song did get played and became one of Cash's biggest hits.

Such are the songs on the Murder album. Songs like the traditional murder ballad "Delia's Gone," a song Cash originally recorded in 1962 but one he revisited late in his career in 1994 on the first album he did with Rick Rubin, American Recordings. "Delia's Gone" tells the story of a man shooting his girlfriend and later being haunted by her ghost in prison:

Delia, oh, Delia Delia all my life
If I hadn't have shot poor
Delia I'd have had her for my wife
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

I went up to Memphis
And I met Delia there Found her in her parlor
And I tied to her chair
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

She was low down and trifling
And she was cold and mean
Kind of evil make me want to Grab my sub machine
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

First time I shot her I shot her in the side
Hard to watch her suffer
But with the second shot she died
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

But jailer, oh, jailer Jailer,
I can't sleep 'Cause all around my bedside
I hear the patter of Delia's feet
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

So if you woman's devilish
You can let her run
Or you can bring her down and do her
Like Delia got done
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

That's a dark, dark song.

All told, these are the sorts of songs on the God and Murder albums, and they help illustrate a juxtaposition that I'd like the draw out about Cash's music. This is the startling moral juxtaposition of God and Murder, the juxtaposition of all those dark, sociopathic songs with all those gospel songs.

Saints and sinners held simultaneously in the same artistic vision. And embodied by the artist himself.

Consider, for example, the moral contrast found in Cash's concert performances. Listen to At San Quentin, the live concert album recorded in San Quentin prison. (I'll talk more about this album and the epic At Folsom Prison album later in this series.)

Early in the San Quentin concert Cash is cussing and joking about his own stints in jail and his own drug use. This is the "bass ass" Johnny Cash. This is the concert where Cash gave the finger to a photographer and was captured in an iconic photo.

This is Johnny Cash the sinner.

But halfway through the concert (if you listen to the 2000 release of the full concert) Cash changes and shifts into gospel mode. In the second half of the concert Cash sings three gospel songs "There Will Be Peace in the Valley," "He Turned Water Into Wine," and "The Old Account Was Settled Long Ago." Before singing "He Turned Water Into Wine" Cash shares with the inmates about how he composed the song in the town of Cana while he was in Israel preparing for The Gospel Road album and movie.

This is Johnny Cash the saint.

Which brings us back to Martin Luther's simul justus et peccator.

I think one of the most interesting things about the music and life of Johnny Cash, something very unique about him, is this mixture of light and darkness. There's a lot of dark, murderous music out there. And there's a lot of devout, earnest Christian music out there. And most artists sing one sort of music or the other.

But Johnny Cash sang both.

Johnny would sing about sociopathic killers and Jesus in almost the same breath. And Cash himself exhibited this mixture of light and darkness. Cash was a devout Christian who read his bible daily. Even in the midst of deep drug addiction.

Saint and sinner.

And this is, I think, a huge part of the appeal of Johnny Cash, his life and his music. Cash's music and his life, very much like the Psalms, speak to both the light and the darkness in each of us in equal measure.

Simul justus et peccator. 

We are, simultaneously, both sinner and saint.

Part 3: The Man In Black