Like other composers of verse in the fourth century (e.g. Ephrem, Gregory of Nazianzen, and even Augustine), Ambrose began writing hymns in part to respond to doctrinal opponents. According to contemporary sources, the bishop of Milan introduced antiphonal singing to rally his congregation against imperial pressure that demanded the city’s basilica be consigned to the rival Homoian community.
Yet unlike those other fourth-century versifiers, Ambrose rarely refers directly to heretics or to specific doctrines in the text of the hymns themselves (even though some hymns refer to datable events, e.g. the inventio of the relics of Gervasius and Protasius). Instead we occasionally find doxological texts appended to some of the hymns, which scholars often use to locate an “anti-heretical” strategy. Closer examination suggests, however, that these texts are often generic prayers, equally patient of a Nicene or Homoian reading. They would not notably distinguish Ambrose’s hymns from competitors’.
The influence of an anti-heretical program in the corpus, I believe, is more subtle. My paper examines one of the hymns, Iam Surgit Hora Tertia, to present the ways that Ambrose interweaves doxological and biblical language for Nicene, confessional ends. I argue that through direct citation of scriptural and creedal language Ambrose achieves two goals: first, he catechizes the unlettered in his congregation, and, second, he identifies the singers as the most closely devoted to the authority of scripture and tradition. The hymn, then, exemplifies the depiction that Neil McLynn offers of Ambrose as a pastor who created a program of worship to unify his otherwise disjointed congregation; through singing, “The people of God could transcend the dizzy social chasms which in real life separated them.” 
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