lift-up-your-voice-november-december-2002

STYLE & SUBSTANCE ❘ WHY WE SING ❘ SONG & MUSIC

MODERN REFORMATION LIFT UP YOUR VOICE!

VOLUME

11, NUMBER 6 , NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002, $5.00

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LIFT UP YOUR VOICE!

13 Music and the Worship of the Living God Since God is more interested in a particular kind of worshipper than in a particular kind of worship, the author argues, it is important to note the biblical principles that instruct the worshipper in his or her worship.

by Dan G. McCartney

20 The Song of Moses in the City That Never Sleeps The “Song of Moses” from Exodus 15 recounts the mighty acts of God in redeeming his people from the bondage of Egypt. The song also has much to teach contemporary Christians about the purpose and nature of worship.

by Michael Horton Plus: Why We Sing

30 Christ in the Psalms With the loss of a distinctively Reformational theology, the importance of the Psalms in worship has also been forgotten. In order to reappropriate their theology and spirituality for the contemporary church, the author states we must rediscover Christ within them. by J. Ligon Duncan, III

35 Church Music and Contemporary Culture COVER PHOTO BY KRISTOFER DAN-BERGMAN/GETTY ONE

To whom does the church’s music belong? Should the church follow the world by segregating worshippers according to their own musical preference? How can the church embody both the diversity and unity of the body of Christ?

by Gene E. Veith Plus: The Dialect of Worship

In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Open Exchange page 4 | Ex Auditu page 5 Preaching from the Choir page 8 | Speaking of page 9 | Between the Times page 10 Resource Center page 26 | We Confess page 44 | Free Space page 45 | Reviews page 48 | On My Mind page 52

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MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton Executive Editor Mark R. Talbot

One Lord, one Faith,…one Worship?

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espite pop culture’s mocking portrayal of heaven as a place of golden harps and choirs of angels, the eschatological importance of music should not be underestimated. The end of the age is described as a time of worship, when

members of every tribe and tongue gather at God’s throne to sing to him their love and devotion (see Rev. 15). Here on earth in the midst of this present age it is painfully obvious, however, that worship has become one of the church’s more divisive activities, resulting sometimes in multiple congregations gathering under the same roof and supposedly belonging to the same church who insist on expressing their one faith differently. Some Christian groups are now more identifiable by their worship styles than by their theology.

Each week, pastors, church musicians, and worship committees face the daunting question, “What shall we sing?” Answering that question used to be fairly easy. Music was chosen from hymnals that were approved by the church, or psalms were chosen according to the thrust of the pastor’s message. But with the expanded range of music available to the contemporary church, the weekly quest to find appropriate worship music has now taken on new dimensions and begs different questions: Do the words of this song say more about God or me? Does this hymn’s tune lend itself to congregational singing? Are our music choices more influenced by contemporary culture than by Next Issue January/February: Connecting the Dots: Why Systematic Theology Matters.

Systematic theology is often disdained in evangelical and Reformational churches today. Is it necessary? Is it enough to just "say what the Bible says"? Richard Lints, Carolyn James, and Darryl Hart help explain how systematic theology helps us make sense of it all.

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theological commitments? Will the archaic language of this Psalm mean anything to people unversed in the language of the church?

In this issue, we offer some resources for answering important questions like these.

Dan McCartney, professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, sets forth five biblical principles that are applicable to the use of any style of music in worship. Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton shows how the church’s music should represent to the congregation the mighty acts of God, just as the “Song of Moses” in Exodus 15 did for the people of Israel during their wilderness wanderings. Presbyterian pastor Ligon Duncan argues for a re-appropriation of the Psalms in worship and private devotion.

And Lutheran professor and writer Gene E. Veith asks us to consider the history of the visible church—a unified body of believers that has existed for thousands of years in thousands of places—when deciding what we will sing.

Does the church have to wait until the end of the age to gather once more as one people praising our one Lord with one voice? Or can the rich variety of our divergent cultures be woven together into a harmony of song and music that compliments and strengthens our common confession? Though sometimes painful and often frustrating, examination of our commitments, our biases, and our preferences concerning the music of worship is crucial as we seek to celebrate our one faith.

Managing Editor Eric Landry Alliance Council Gerald Bray ❘ D. A. Carson Mark Dever ❘ J. Ligon Duncan, III W. Robert Godfrey ❘ John D. Hannah Michael Horton ❘ Rosemary Jensen Ken Jones ❘ John Nunes J. A. O. Preus ❘ Rod Rosenbladt Philip Ryken ❘ R. C. Sproul ❘ Mark R. Talbot Gene E. Veith ❘ Paul F. M. Zahl Department Editors Lisa Davis, Open Exchange Paul S. Jones, Preaching from the Choir Brian Lee, Ex Auditu Benjamin Sasse, Between the Times D. G. Hart, Reviews Staff ❘ Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Assistant Editor Diana S. Frazier, Contributing Editor Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Celeste McGhee, Proofreader Katherine VanDrunen, Production Assistant Contributing Scholars Charles P. Arand ❘ S. M. Baugh Jonathan Chao ❘ William M. Cwirla Marva J. Dawn ❘ Don Eberly Timothy George ❘ Douglas S. Groothuis Allen C. Guelzo ❘ Carl F. H. Henry Lee Irons ❘ Arthur A. Just Robert Kolb ❘ Donald Matzat Timothy M. Monsma ❘ John W. Montgomery John Muether ❘ Kenneth A. Myers Tom J. Nettles ❘ Leonard R. Payton Lawrence R. Rast ❘ Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie ❘ David P. Scaer Rachel S. Stahle ❘ David VanDrunen Cornelis Van Dam ❘ David F. Wells Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals © 2002 All rights reserved. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship and life.

For more information, call or write us at: Modern Reformation 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 ModRef@AllianceNet.org www.modernreformation.org ISSN-1076-7169

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stand behind the pulpit and open God’s Word to the people before us. Thank you for the pastoral challenge.

Dr. Jim Newcomer, Pastor Twin City Baptist Church Winston-Salem, North Carolina

A hearty “Amen!” to Dr. Horton’s article, “Reformation Piety” (July/August 2002). The article is wonderfully personal as he writes from the perspective of a new father as well as a man who has been refreshed by the maternal love of Christ’s church. This makes his references to covenant all the more poignant. Sadly, however, his reference to “God’s blessings cascading down from church to family to individuals” reminded me of the nearly universal practice in Reformed churches of preventing our covenant children from receiving the Lord’s Supper. If we agree on our duty to baptize our infant children into covenant with Jesus Christ, and to have them participate in the other “means of grace,” including “family worship, with Bible and catechism reading, singing, and prayer,” how is it that we will not submit to good and necessary consequence from Scripture and welcome our covenant children with the rest of the covenant community to the Lord’s Supper? This is arguably the weakest link in the Reformed understanding of piety, weakening the babes of the church and presenting an unnecessary hurdle to those who might otherwise be persuaded to think covenantally. Thanks for the article and for pursuing purity in Christ’s church.

Nathan Enas Indianapolis, Indiana

I want to thank you for Dr. J. Ligon Duncan’s excellent article “Speaking Soberly and Sensitively about Hell” (May/June 2002). Pastor Duncan’s wise, wellorganized counsel must grip each one of us who weekly

It is not without considerable fear and trembling that one attempts a critique of a sermon by Dr. John Piper; but the confusion and dismay I felt after reading his text on Hebrews 7:1-25 (“Jesus: the Intercessor Between God’s Wrath and Our Sin,” May/June 2002) were powerful persuaders that an attempt should be made anyway. Particularly unsettling was his statement that “Christ… continually puts himself between the Father and us as a protective shield, guarding us from God’s whitehot anger against sin.” To quote John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied, “God himself in his own Son has removed the ground of offense and we receive reconciliation. It is the message of this divine performance, perfected and complete that is addressed to us in the gospel, and the demand of faith is crystallized in the plea that is uttered on behalf of Christ and as of God, ‘be ye reconciled to God.’” If reconciliation has been “perfected and complete,” then God’s wrath is turned away from those who are his, and Christ does not need to put himself between the Father and us as a protective shield…against God’s wrath.

William G. Newkirk, Sr. Pisgah Forest, North Carolina

This whole debate over the duration of hell (“Hell: Putting the Fire Out?” May/June 2002) would vanish if we had the courage to employ sola Scriptura to establish the truth about human immortality. Protestantism’s refusal to abandon the Plato-inspired immortality of man will continue to drive its members into the arms of Rome or elsewhere. The courage to mount a fulfillment of the unfinished Reformation by exercising its famous maxim, sola Scriptura, and declare man mortal, all talk of the duration of eternal hell-fire would instantly be preempted by our being mortal!

Norman L. Meager Lima, Ohio [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 7 ]

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by Greg Spraul

Are Christianity and Environmentalism Antithetical?

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s a follower of Christ Jesus and an employee of a government agency charged with protecting the environment, I am often asked if my job conflicts with my religious convictions. I have sometimes heard Christians make statements like, “This world is going to pass away, so what’s the point of protecting it,” and “Who cares if species

Interested in contributing to Open Exchange?

Send your name, address, and essay topic to: Open Exchange c/o Modern Reformation Magazine 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 or contact us by e-mail at OpenExchange @AllianceNet.org

are dying, God has given humans dominion to do as they please with the earth.”

I fear that many Christians have thought about environmentalism politically, rather than biblically, and have aligned themselves with party platforms rather than biblical responses. We should not let our reaction to extremists blind us to what the Bible says.

In fact I am concerned that many of my brothers and sisters in Christ may be thinking about the care of God’s earth in unbiblical and perhaps sinful ways.

So what does the Bible say about humankind’s responsibility toward God’s creation? The Bible declares that as disciples of Christ, Christians are called to be stewards of everything, including the earth, in order to display God’s glory to a fallen world.

Our world is fallen, in a state of decay because of sin, and will never be perfect until the Lord Jesus Christ returns at the end of time. In Gen. 3:17-19, God says “Cursed is the ground because of you…” in reference to Adam’s disobedience; and in Rom. 8:19-22, Paul says that a groaning creation will be “liberated from its bondage to decay” in the last days. Since this world is cursed, Christians should put their ultimate hope in the new heaven and earth, promised in Rev. 21 and 2 Pet. 3:10-13, to those who repent and believe in Jesus.

Yet, despite the Bible’s testimony of a fallen world and final liberation from sin in heaven, God still tells us to labor for his glory here and now. This includes being faithful stewards of his creation, since creation itself is a testimony to God’s majesty (Rom. 1). Why? First, God

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created everything and delights in it (Ps. 24:1, 50:7-12, Heb. 2:8, Gen. 1:12, 18, 21, 25). Second, God put humans in charge of his creation to “have dominion” and to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28, Matt.

6:25-26). And lastly, we are commanded to care for God’s creation and be good stewards of it (Gen. 2:1517, Prov. 12:10, Luke 16:1, Exod. 16:4).

So why do many Christians fail to grasp these biblical principles and fulfill them? To be fair, I think it’s important to recognize that some popular objections to environmentalism are well grounded.

Some environmentalists come dangerously close to pantheism.

Some Christians think that environmentalists promote the sovereignty of a personalized “Mother Nature.” Many radical environmentalists view humanity as a cancer on this earth rather than God’s steward and image bearer.

Obviously, endorsing any of these views puts the creation over the Creator; but biblical stewardship of the environment is far from nature worship.

Christians should value the environment and appreciate efforts to preserve and protect it. The environment should be an issue that Christians and non-Christians have in common—on which they can collaborate and put to rest divisive accusations. It may even lead to a new appreciation for the Christian’s gospel message which heralds the redemption of all creation from sin and decay.

Greg Spraul works for the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington D.C.

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Luke 10:25–37

What Must I Do? A Question of the Law

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eacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” That’s a good question. It

Do this, and you will live.”

A nagging silence follows. was the great religious question at the time of Jesus, hotly debated among You can almost hear it between the verses. the experts in the law. And now this lawyer wants to pull Jesus into the debate. Something has been left unsaid. “Do this, and you It was the major question at the time of the will live.” But can you do it?

Reformation. How can a sinner be justified before And do it perfectly, without From God? What must I do to get to heaven? How can failing, without falling short, WILLIAM M. I be saved? and always with the right CWIRLA The synagogue lawyer’s question is a law attitude in the heart? Left question designed to trap Jesus. What must I do? unsaid is this: Don’t do this, and … our doing is always governed by the law. But you will die.

Senior Minister the question seems a bit out of whack. What must The lawyer is unsettled, Holy Trinity I do to inherit? What does one do to inherit caught in his own legal trap.

Lutheran Church something? Nothing, except be born into the right He asks another question, Hacienda Heights, CA this time seeking to justify family and stay in the good graces of the one who himself: “Who then is my is doling out the inheritance. If necessary, get a good lawyer. The synagogue lawyer is thinking neighbor?” This is the game we play with God’s law like a good lawyer, seeking the terms of the when we try to justify ourselves and our actions. contract. What exactly do I have to do to get in We look for loopholes, exceptions, contingencies, circumstances. We self-justify. We play with the good with God? It’s a law question. Ask a law question of Jesus, definitions and stretch the boundary lines. How far and you’ll get a law answer from Jesus. He points the can we go before it’s adultery? Murder? Theft? lawyer to the Torah. What is written in the Torah? Lying? Idolatry? The law says “love your neighbor.”

But what will the lawyer pick from the Torah, the law, Legalism plays word games, morality games, mind or the gospel? God’s commands or his promises? games. Who is my neighbor? We try to whittle the Like a good lawyer, he goes with the law: “Love the law down to size, make it practical and doable.

Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your “Don’t give me vague, open-ended commandments. soul, and with all your strength, and with all your Give me principles and programs.” mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.”

“Bravo!” says Jesus, “You’ve paid attention in A Parable for the Self-righteous synagogue school. You’ve learned your lessons Jesus tells a parable for all who would justify well. So now if you want to do something to themselves with the law, who think they love God inherit eternal life on the law’s terms, this is what and their neighbor enough for God to welcome God requires you to do. Love God with your them into their inheritance with open arms. This whole being and love your neighbor as yourself. is a parable for the self-righteous and religious, for

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the “good people”—those who imagine they can obey the law and live by it.

You know the story. A man fell among robbers on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.

Stripped, bloodied, beaten; left for dead in the ditch. Three men happened to walk by the crime scene that day—a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan.

The priest and Levite were fine, upstanding clergymen, religious men, role models for the youth, pillars of the community. As for the Samaritan, well, he was a Samaritan—not quite a Jew and not quite a Gentile. He was a half-bred heretic, living in the near north country between the Jews and the Gentiles. He was despised by the Jews, who called Samaritans “dogs.” Leave it to Jesus to make him the hero of his parable. Unless you are humbled and stripped of your credentials, unless you become like a Samaritan to a Jew, you cannot be saved.

The priest saw the man laying in the ditch at the side of the road and went around on the other side.

He didn’t want to get anywhere near the man. The Levite came a bit closer, right up to the crime scene, but he, too, passed by on the other side of the road. Neither of them bent down to help the man. Don’t be too harsh in judging these two.

Both priest and Levite were under a very strict law.

If they touched a dead body, or blood, or any such thing they would be ceremonially unclean and unable to fulfill their duties in the temple—which presumably was why they were traveling on that road in the first place.

The law had them in a bind. On the one hand, it commanded them to help their neighbor in need; on the other, it declared them unclean if they did.

It was like a father telling his son to change the oil in the car without getting his hands dirty in the process. What could they do? The law commands you to love God, but it doesn’t put the love of God in you. It commands you to love your neighbor and to help him, but it can’t help you do it. The law deals in black and white—“do this, don’t do that”—but it can’t help you with the shades of gray you encounter on the road. And it can’t change your attitude toward your neighbor. It won’t move you to bend down to help him. You may know what the law requires, but knowing it won’t enable you to do it. And when you fail, the law will always be there pointing the finger, judging, accusing, reminding, scolding you. “You should have done more. You could have done better.”

Then we come to the Samaritan, the outcast.

When he saw the man lying in the ditch, he had compassion. His condition literally grabbed at his guts. He got down into the ditch with the man. He cleansed and bandaged his wounds. He lifted this

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stranger on his donkey and brought him to a local inn, where he laid down two days’ wages to cover expenses. Before leaving, he ran a tab at the front desk and promised to pay it back. Imagine this man arriving home in Samaria a few days later, trying to explain to his wife why he was delayed; why he spent two days wages on a total stranger; why he had left his American Express card to cover who knows how much in the way of additional expenses.

And he didn’t even know the man’s name.

“Now which of these three men, do you think, proved a neighbor to the man who fell among the thieves?” The answer is obvious, isn’t it? The Samaritan. Only the Samaritan was free enough from the rules and regulations of the law to bend down and help someone in need. Only the Samaritan was free enough to have compassion.

Rules and regulations won’t work love for the neighbor. That must come from a heart set free.

Only the Samaritan had nothing to lose and everything to give.

Who Is Our Neighbor?

Who then is my neighbor? The answer to the self-justifying questions puts an end to all selfjustifying. My neighbor is whoever happens to need my help at any particular moment. Whomever God has put in my path. Neighbor is not a concept to be debated or defined, but a flesh-and-blood person in the ditch waiting to be served. You can’t define your neighbor in advance; you can only be a neighbor when the moment of mercy arrives.

The law says, “Love God and love your neighbor.” And then you stumble across a broken, bleeding man lying in the ditch, and you’re in a hurry, and you have things to do, and the kids are screaming in the back seat, and you’re not feeling quite up to it, and the law says, “Behold your neighbor. Love him as you love yourself. Do it without grumbling or complaining. And while you are loving him, love God, too.” You will find yourself beginning to resent the man in the ditch.

And you will resent the God who makes up commandments such as “love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s where the law will take you. It commands that you love God and love your neighbor. And you wind up hating your neighbor and hating God. If this is the way to inherit eternal life—loving God and our neighbor—then we are all doomed.

If this is what we must do to inherit eternal life, there will be no end to our doing, and no certainty that we have done enough.

But God is merciful and compassionate. He became our neighbor in his Son Jesus. He came in the humble way of a despised Samaritan. Born of a

virgin mother. Laid in a manger. The carpenter’s son from Galilee. The itinerant preacher of Nazareth.

He came to be our neighbor. You were that man in the ditch—broken, bloody, beaten by the law, dead in sin. Jesus had compassion. He bent down. He got down in the ditch of our sin and death. He poured the oil and wine of his forgiveness into our wound. He brought us to the inn, the church, where he provided for our care. He washed us in baptism.

He applied the healing balm of his forgiveness. He feeds us his own body and blood. If ever there was one who was a neighbor, it was the one who laid down his own life to save us.

Go and Do Likewise And now he bids us to be a neighbor to that broken man in the ditch. Look closely at your neighbor, this man who fell among the thieves, lying there left for dead. Don’t avert your eyes.

Don’t take the long way around to avoid him.

Look at him. He isn’t much to look at, no beauty or majesty that we should be drawn to him. He is one from whom men hide their faces, who turn away and walk to the other side of the road. Yet in his brokenness, stripped and beaten, he bears a striking resemblance to the one who was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities. That man in the ditch is Christ in cognito, Christ hidden in weakness and want. “For as often as you have done this to the least of these, my brothers, you have done it to me.” Jesus is there— in the man in the ditch—for you to serve. And in serving him, you serve him who served you.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Nothing but receive. It’s an inheritance, remember? You inherit by being born into the right family and being in the good graces of the one who is giving out the goods. You are baptized. You are born of God, children of your Father in heaven. You are in the Father’s good graces, not by what you have done, but by what his beloved Son has done for you. All we can do is acknowledge our sinfulness.

We have not loved God with our whole heart and mind and soul and strength. And we have not loved our neighbor with Samaritan recklessness.

And then we hear from God his words of reconciliation, “My child, you are forgiven. You are mine. I have loved you to death in the death of Jesus. All that is mine is yours. Receive it as a gift.

It’s yours.” Now you are free to go and do likewise.

Go and do likewise in the freedom of forgiveness, knowing that you have nothing to lose, that eternal life is yours. Go and be a reckless Samaritan for others not as an obligation but as an opportunity, not because you have to but because you get to.

Not because the law compels you, but because

your neighbor needs you. Your neighbor, that man in the ditch, is God’s gift to you. Help him not because your eternal life depends on it, but because he needs you. Do it because the inheritance is yours, won by the death of Jesus, applied in your baptism, sealed to you by his body and his blood, for the day you rise from the dead.

The inheritance of eternal life with God is yours, a gift from Jesus. You are forgiven. You are free. Now go and love like a Samaritan.

William M. Cwirla (STM, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, MO) has been pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) since 1992.

Letters

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I found the issue on Hell (May/June 2002) to be quite interesting. It’s the first issue in which I disagreed with every article. I do not diminish the “horror that Christ endured,” but I disagree with Michael Horton’s contention that it was endless torment in hell. Yes, we were “worthy of suffering the same fate.” And if it is not given to us to be able to believe in this life, then we will. He was a sign, a pattern. There will be horror of suffering for three days and three nights, then the resurrection into life, because Christ paid the debt for sin. This is the pattern and this is the logical fulfillment.

Jonathan Mitchell Flagstaff, Arizona

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Criteria for Good Church Music

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any people are looking for a short list of acceptable pieces or composers of

acceptable level of difficulty will vary according to who church music. Failing that, other questions arise. What composers write will sing or play. A choir may be capable of singing music well for the modern church? What pieces from previous generations are still considerably more complex than the congregation. It is valid for our services? What publishing companies better to present something simply and well than should we trust? What is good church music? to attempt a challenging work with poor results.

Who should decide?

At the same time, congregations, choirs, and other The difficulty in providing answers to these ensembles need to be challenged. In general, questions is doing so objectively. Music is a very melodies for a congregation should be singable and personal matter to most people. So let us consider memorable without being monotonous or overly some objective criteria to help discern what is good predictable. Harmony should be interesting and church music. follow the rules of good counterpoint. Rhythm must match the text, placing strong syllables on Textual Considerations strong beats and invigorating the singing. None of Textual consideration is a first avenue of critique. these musical features, however, can be permitted Obviously, any text sung in worship should to obscure the meaning of the text.

A piece of music, like any type of art or harmonize with biblical principles. Pastors must be involved at this point if the church’s musicians lack literature, must have form. Form determines the sufficient theological training. When the song overall structure and phrasing of the inner Some pieces have lovely quotes Scripture, the setting should take into structure. account contextual meaning. In other words, melodic/harmonic elements or a strong rhythm but Scripture should not be taken out of context in lack good form. Musical parameters like these music any more than it should be in a sermon or in require the insight of trained musicians. Forces prayer. Worshipers also must be directed toward available to present the music also factor into God, who is both the subject and object of determining its usage. Aesthetic considerations are worship. Appropriateness is another textual test. significant, and variety comes into play here, as One must determine whether the text is does association. For instance, if certain music is appropriate to the service itself, to the particular associated with the shopping mall, a baseball game, place in the service, and to the congregation. or a nightclub, its appropriateness for the church Finally, the text must be able to be understood in service should be questioned even though there both language and delivery. Strongly metaphoric may be nothing wrong with the music in and of poetry or anthem texts with Victorian English may itself. need to be explained to be of help to the congregation, or the language may need to be General Considerations updated.

General considerations include function, marriage of text/tune, and style. How is the music to function Musical Considerations within the service (prelude, prayer, praise, or Musical considerations include level of difficulty, proclamation)? Will the selection precede a prayer melody, harmony, rhythm, form, and forces. An [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 4 7 ]

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Speaking of...

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he Christian music industry is power and money

right now. In its early stages it was a ministry support vehicle. A record company would come to you and say, “We’re here to support your ministry,” but now it’s gotten so big that [record companies] are creating artists, taking people—some of whom haven’t even sung in a church—and creating them.

That’s just power and money.

Christian recording artist Michael Card in an interview with Religious Broadcasting (July/August 1995)

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ndividualistic self-indulgence is displayed often by disgruntled parishioners who believe that they are not being “fed” in worship. Worship exists, they argue, “to feed me”—meaning “to please me.” The pleasure they get out of worship becomes the test of its validity. However, the worshiper who is always calculating what he or she is “getting out” of the service is missing the essence of worship: worship is not introverted.

It is extroverted—we give to God as we celebrate his acts. That is the essence of worship. When personal gratification is worship’s objective, worship is invalidated. To leave the service with the query, “Now what did I get out of church today?” is to misunderstand the nature of worship. Such worshipers define it by their own pleasurable self-satisfaction, another way of saying that hedonism is not all that secular.

Calvin M. Johansson, Discipling Music Ministry, 50

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ll serious church bodies are concerned that their traditional forms of worship—no matter how integrally connected to the message, the memory, and the theology of their group—may not reach a generation whose sensibilities are shaped by supermarkets and television, where the attention span of a gnat is too long to use as a measure, immediate sensation is needed, and aesthetic mediocrity is demanded.

To do nothing to adapt means stultification and, we are told, dwindling congregations.

To give the whole store away to match what this year’s market says the unchurched want is to have the people who know least about the faith determine most about its expression.

Martin Marty, “Build a Parking Lot, and the People Will Come (and Go),” Context 25 no. 4 (February, 1993), 3.

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Apologizing for My Father’s Sins …But Who Is My Father? eeting in Birmingham this summer, the 1,600-plus delegates to the Presbyterian Church in America’s (PCA) General Assembly (GA) voted overwhelmingly in favor of a “racial reconciliation” declaration. Because of the complex debates such statements inspire, we reprint the resolution in its entirety:

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we live and minister; We therefore confess our involvement in these sins. As a people, both we and our fathers, have failed to keep the commandments, the statutes, and the laws God has commanded. We therefore publicly repent of our pride, our complacency, and our complicity. Furthermore, we seek the forgiveness of our brothers and sisters for the reticence of our hearts that have constrained us from acting swiftly in this matter.

We will strive, in a manner consistent with the Gospel imperatives, for the encour-agement of racial reconciliation, the establishment of urban and minority congregations, and the enhancement of existing ministries of mercy in our cities, among the poor, and across all social, racial, and economic boundaries, to the glory of God. Amen.

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Whereas, the heinous sins attendant with unbiblical forms of servitude—including oppression, racism, exploitation, man-stealing, and chattel slavery—stand in oppo-sition to the Gospel; and, Whereas, the effects of these sins have created and continue to create barriers between brothers and sisters of different races and/or economic spheres; and Whereas, the after-effects of these sins continue to be felt in the economic, cultural, and social affairs of the communities in which

The first thing to say about this statement is that it was nobly motivated and its sponsors from the Nashville Presbytery should be commended. For indeed the

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racism of many American Protestants has long been grotesque, and much of southern Presbyterianism— from which the PCA was born—was undoubtedly complicit in the continuation of chattel slavery in this nation.

As recently as the 1980s, there were many PCA congregations where it was well known that African-Americans would not be welcomed into membership. (In the interest of full disclosure, our most recent surveys indicate that PCA members—while still a minority—constitute the largest bloc of MR subscribers.)

These noble goals notwithstanding, the statement leaves a number of important matters unaddressed. The editors of MR hesitate, in a brief editorial, to criticize such a well-motivated resolution. Yet it is unclear who is apologizing (“our involvement,” “as a people”?), and for what particular sins an apology is being offered.

These questions are not

Number of widely marketed new English Bible translations in the last 18 years. Amid all of the

(albeit important) debate about the accuracy of the gender-inclusive language in the recently released TNIV New Testament, it is worth also noting the real cause behind the proliferation of ver-

sions. New Bibles are now constantly appearing not chiefly

because of genuine scholarly needs for new translations, but because Bibles are immensely profitable and publishers are attempting to stimulate sales by rendering older versions obsolete.

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marginal, but are in fact near the center of what such a statement should address if it is to carry any weight. The problem is compounded when one learns that this statement was affirmed at the same GA where the delegates rejected a proposed resolution criti-cizing the southern Pres-byterian churches’ direct involvement with the Confederacy’s slave system.

If not the church, who then apologizes in this statement? One wonders if— actually, one fears that—the actors are speaking more as Americans than as churchmen. Or, perhaps, many delegates fail to draw this important distinction. And thus the statement, to judge from postings at the pcanews.com site as well as from other discussions, has confused and frustrated PCA members who are not U.S. citizens. What, after all, is a Chinese or a Canadian Christian to make of her church apologizing on her behalf for the sins of national fathers who were not her father?

As one of the many Korean-American ministers in the PCA told MR: “I believe in original sin. I believe I own Adam’s sin.

And I believe I’m complicit in much social sin. I’m even willing to own and apologize for much of what my brothers in Christ have done in his Name—that is, as the church.

But I think it’s fairly mean-

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ingless for me as a Korean to apologize for what nineteenth century Americans did as Americans. And since the statement didn’t address the particular ways the church was guilty, it doesn’t allow me to get to the places where I am actually connected to this guilt. The PCA again acts like it is merely a subset of America, rather than as a portion of Christ’s eschatological, transnational Kingdom.”

Then again, this minister continued, because the statement in its final form backed away from a focus on the U.S. slave experience exclusively, and abstracted itself to “racism” in general, he could at least own and apologize for that general sin.

One can wish for more

Religion Around the World… ÍInternational Christian Concern, which monitors religious freedom around the world, reports that leaders of Laskar Jihad, a well-armed radical group in Indonesia, are urging Muslims throughout Asia to ready themselves for a holy war against Americans, Christians, and Jews. In one notable recent radio broadcast, Ahlus Umar Thalib, a high ranking Laskar Jihad official, preached that Muslims should consider their schools to be on holiday, so that students too might be engaged fully in war preparations.

substantive self-criticism in the PCA’s consideration of her past. But it’s a start.

Clergy Pay PI reports that the “average annual compensation” of Protestant clergy has increased 25 percent the last decade, to $40,077.

Pentecostals pay significantly less than the average, while the mainline mean is closer to $46,000.

Much of this difference correlates to education level, as seminary graduates make 38 percent more than non-graduates.

The Master of Divinity degree is typically a prerequisite for ordination in the mainline, while many Pentecostal preachers lack

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Furthermore, “I have ordered every Jihad soldier in the Ahlussunnah Wal Jama’ah to write out their wills and prepare themselves to welcome their fate as martyrs. Get out all your weapons.” ÍA recent study by Idea, an international news organization, suggests that predictions of a coming declining position for Christianity among world religions—long prophesied among some demographers—appear inaccurate. What is occurring, however, is a major shift in the location of Christians worldwide— from the northern to the southern hemisphere. A

formal theological training.

When spousal earnings and investments are included, the average Protestant clergy household income rises to $54,000. By contrast, the average household income of a lawyer is $155,000, and that of a doctor is $187,000. The National Bishops Conference reports that Roman Catholic priests generally receive only $15,000 plus room and board.

Friendly Foes olitics has always made strange bedfellows.

But who would have guessed cooperation etween the religious right in America and the oppressive Islamic governments of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Sudan?

According to Diana West, columnist for the Washington Times, there is a blossoming new political alliance between these religious competitors behind the scenes at the United Nations.

Their differences over theology and religious liberty notwithstanding, Christians have begun to notice the value of Muslims in their common attempt to block the United Nation's quest to recognize abortion as a "universal human right."

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century ago, more than half of the world’s Christians were European.

Today, only about 25 percent reside in Europe, and that percentage will likely shrink to 20 percent by 2025. Africa and Latin America, by contrast, accounted for approximately 12 percent of world Christians a century ago. They now constitute 40 percent, and are expected to be home to over half of the world’s two billion Christians by 2025. ÍEuropeans have long known Heinz Bauer, the German media mogul, as the producer of major films for theaters and television.

Less well known—until

recently—was one of his other big dollar media ventures: trafficking in Internet porn. This wouldn’t be that noteworthy (after all, many mainstream American entertainment companies also have pornography divisions), except for the fact that Bauer is a member of the theologically conservative IndependentEvangelical Lutheran Church. His denomination is now struggling with the question of whether ecclesiastical discipline— which many Lutheran bodies have historically been reticent to apply—is appropriate in this case.

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LIFT UP YOUR VOICE!

Music and the

Worship of the Living God n Scripture, worship of the living God involves at least three activities.

First, we bow down to God, thereby acknowledging his sovereignty and indicating our loving and faithful subservience. Second, we glorify God by praising his attributes and recounting his deeds and virtues.

Third, we draw near to God in adoration, thanksgiving, and supplication.

Music is especially suited to worship because it can encompass all of these activities. Not surprisingly, then, when worship is described in the Bible, singing often figures prominently both in the Old and New Testaments. Songs are used to acknowledge that God has acted and fulfilled his promises (see Exod. 15; Deut. 32; 2 Sam. 22, Ps. 18). Some Old Testament worship also includes instrumental music (see, e.g., Ps. 98:5, 6). Scenes of heavenly worship are expressed in singing and

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music (see Rev. 5:8, 9; 14:3; 15:3, 4). In fact, Scripture commands believers to sing and make music (see Ps. 33:2, 3; Isa. 42:10–12; Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16).

Since worshipping God is our highest calling and music is so naturally a part of worship, it is appropriate to consider their relationship in depth.

Before we do that, however, let us consider two concerns. First, questions of musical style—the principal battleground of the “worship wars”—are very tightly bound up with cultural forms that vary from one social context to another. Although these questions are relevant, they must be answered anew in each cultural context; here we will be concerned with larger principles. Secondly, God is more interested in a particular kind of worshiper than in a particular kind of worship (see John 4:23). Yet worshiper and worship intertwine, so it is important to discuss certain biblical princi-

conscious of it or not, reflects our conception of God. If our concept of God is biblical, then the way we worship—and not just the propositional content of our sermons and prayers—will reflect that. Pagan styles of worship reflect pagan conceptions of deity. Christian styles of worship ought to correspond to the biblical concept of God. Cultural critic Marshall McLuhan may have overstated it when he said that the medium is the message, but it is undeniable that the medium affects the way the message is received. Worship, including its music, reflects and extols God’s character, attributes, and actions. So it is important in any particular culture to use music that adequately conveys his character.

People come to God for different reasons. We can be driven to God by servile fear, or seek him to satisfy a need, or we can be drawn to him by both his splendor and beauty. The latter is true worship (see Ps. 27:4; 29:2; 96:1–9; cf.

50:1–2). The former two motives for coming to God God is more interested in a particular kind of worshipper than in a particular are not bad and often are necessary steps, but they do kind of worship. not produce the kind of worshipper God seeks. Hence, the music of worship ought to reflect, in word and form, ples that apply to the use of music in worship. God’s splendor and beauty. The less our worship These principles include the following: does that, the harder it is for the true worshipper to • The worship of God, and, thus, also the be drawn to it. music of worship, should correspond to Hugh of St. Victor declared “the world is like a God’s character. How we worship should book written by the finger of God” and its “visible reflect the kind of God he is. This correspon- beauty is an image of invisible beauty.” Indeed, dence principle underlies all other principles. beside God’s beauty all earthly beauty is but a pale • The worship of God, and, hence, the music of reflection. Yet since God’s beauty is one of his worship, should exhibit joyful reverence and communicable attributes, his image bearers should awe. This we may call the holiness principle. reflect it.

• The worship of God, and, thus, the music of Does this mean that worship itself should be worship, must conform to God’s own pre- beautiful? Wouldn’t that distract us from God’s scriptions for worship. This we commonly own beauty? It can. In the high Middle Ages, the call the regulative principle.

Church honored art. It strove to represent the • The worship of God, and, thus, the music of divine beauty in magnificent buildings and great worship, should involve the whole worship- paintings. Unfortunately, it also tended to emphaper and not just cognitive but also aesthetic, size art to the point of obscuring the gospel’s truth. emotional, and physical aspects of our being. By substituting the delights of ornamentation for This is a holistic principle. the true knowledge of God, it often lost sight of • The worship of God, and, thus, the music of the biblical principle that God is to be worshipped worship, should embody the best the wor- only as he himself prescribes. But Roman shipper can do. I will term this the excellence Catholicism’s excesses ought not to tempt us to principle. renounce beauty anymore than gluttony should prompt us to renounce food.

The Correspondence Principle We are, thus, faced with opposing errors: ow we sing is integral to how we worship, Worship can be ugly or boring, hence obscuring and our worship expresses what we God and making his beauty hard to see; or it can believe. Our worship, whether we are focus so much upon human creative art that a sub-

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stitute beauty gets in the way, and, thus, again makes God’s own beauty hard to see. Calvin addressed this issue of the kind of beauty appropriate to worship in his preface to the 1645 Psalter: “Care must always be taken that the song be neither light nor frivolous, but that it have weight and majesty (as Augustine says) and also that there be a great difference between music which one makes to entertain men at table and in their houses, and the Psalms which are sung in the church in the presence of God and his angels.”

Calvin was not against beauty in worship. But that beauty had to be fitted to its task of conveying God’s weight and majesty. Consequently, it needed to manifest simplicity, sobriety, and measure.

The kind of beauty that is appropriate for worship is a holy beauty—or, to use the phrase used in the King James Version, “the beauty of holiness” (Ps. 96:9). This brings us to our second principle.

The Holiness Principle ur worship of God, and, hence, the music of worship, should exhibit joyful reverence and awe. As Scripture declares, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28, 29).

God is a consuming fire because he is utterly holy, and, therefore, acceptable worship is characterized by reverence and awe. In fact, the translation “awe” in modern versions is a bit weak. The fact that God is a consuming fire does not just inspire awe, it inspires holy fear. Granted, the Greek word here—deos—is not the usual word for “fear,” but it is no weaker in force. It refers especially to numinous fear, in other words, fear that the unknown, uncontrollable, limitless, raw power of deity’s presence evokes. New Covenant worship— even more than Old Covenant worship—should be filled with reverence and a deep sense of numinous fear, because we now more clearly know the holiness of the one we worship by understanding the depth of what was required for our redemption.

Immediately preceding these verses, the author of Hebrews tells us that Moses was afraid because of the fire and smoke on the mountain. “But,” he writes,

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you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the

sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (12:22–24) Often we think this means that while God was frightening in the Old Testament, he is a nice friendly God in the New Testament, so we no longer need to be afraid. But that is not the author’s point. His point is that although worship early in Israel’s history was so frightening that even Moses was terrified, the reality is far more glorious than even Moses could perceive—and, hence, should evoke even greater fear and reverence. Yes, the sprinkled blood of Jesus speaks more graciously than Abel’s; but this, too, if we really understand it, should evoke holy fear: “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared” (Ps. 130:4).

Again, if the appearance of even one angel evokes terror, what would the presence of innumerable angels be like? And, most crucially, we come not just to a smoking, fiery earthly mountain that may still be touched (see 12:18), but we come to the living God, who is the judge of all, with absolute, total power, and who will burn away in furious fire all that is not holy.

This is why the text continues with the words, “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.

For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven?”

This greater warning is more weighty and fearsome—and there are greater consequences for failing to pay attention. True worship at Mount Zion is not less reverent and awesome than worship at Sinai, but more so. Hence, our author says: “At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens’” (12:26). The internal quotation is from Haggai 2, where God says he will shake heaven and earth to restore the splendor and glory of Israel’s worship (see 2:6–9). And since, as the Hebrews’ verse points out, God shakes not just earth (which is frightening enough!) but the very heavens in order to do it, he must regard New Covenant worship as extremely important.

Thus, we arrive back at the verses that opened this section: “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” We are brought back to reverential and fearful worship because God is no lightweight, temporary, fly-by-night deity but a consuming fire who will shake both heaven and earth.

Nevertheless, our worship is also filled with great joy, because we have a perfect mediator between us and this fearsome God. True worship

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is full of joy precisely because it is aware of how terrifying the One whom we worship is, and how great our privilege is in being allowed to approach him. Truly joyous worship remains ever aware of the terrifying, dreadful, awesomely holy God who is a consuming fire—and it is, therefore, performed in fear and reverence. True joy in worship is not a “happy hour.” True joy in worship is only possible when we realize what an enormous and almost inconceivable provision God has made to make us fit to appear before him—and, thus, what an indescribable privilege we now have of standing in the presence of this consuming fire.

Thinking about the innumerable angels mentioned in verse 25 can help us here. These angels are gathered in festal assembly. The Greek word for “festal assembly”—panegyris—means a joyful but solemnly important occasion. It is not a party or a neighborhood barbecue. Coronations or royal weddings are festal assemblies. They are intensely joyful and festive but also very sober and solemn.

mean to keep this principle? Few would argue that the use of a pulpit violates it, but many have argued that no musical instrument other than the human voice should be used. Such debates focus on the elements versus the circumstances of worship.

Reformed churches have always distinguished between these two. The elements of worship are its indispensable, obligatory, and efficacious parts; they are central to what worship is. Hence, they must not be added to or subtracted from because they are what God has said pleases him. The Westminster Confession of Faith lists the elements as prayer, the reading of Scripture, the orderly preaching and hearing of God’s Word, the due administration of the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and singing in praise of God (see Chapter 21, Sections 3–5). In some form, each of these things must occur in worship.

But the particular forms that the elements of worship take—such as reading Scripture responsively or individually—and their setting—such as whether flowers flank the pulpit—are circumstances of worship.

Circumstantial What makes music excellent? Three principal ingredients of musical excellence aspects of worship include (among many others) standare: mastery, mystery, and passion. ing or kneeling or sitting, raising hands, musical preludes, processionals, boys’ choirs, hymn books and Divine worship is all the more joyous and festive, prayer books, incense, candles, ministerial robes, because of our lowliness and the greatness of the pulpits and lecterns, stained glass, carved wood latking who has invited us to join this solemn assem- ticework, hand-crafted communion tables, plastic bly. Hence, the music of worship should be appro- communion cups, collection plates, overhead propriately joyous and festive, but also solemn and seri- jectors, printed bulletins, ceiling fans, carpeting, ous. It should not be frivolous entertainment any and pews. Classifying some of these items—such more than a coronation or royal wedding would be. as incense—as circumstantial aspects of worship is controversial because some churches have regardThe Regulative Principle ed them as efficacious elements of worship; and so he regulative principle recognizes that God using them in worship at all is taken by some as alone should determine how we worship implying that they are being considered to be more him. It has a negative aspect—God pro- than circumstantial. Yet if they are considered to scribes certain things, such as the use of images— be merely circumstantial, then wisdom and disand a positive aspect—he prescribes certain things, cernment must determine their appropriateness. such as the reading of Scripture. Singing is pre- Scripture’s silence concerning them is not necessarscribed; it is something we are commanded to do. ily a condemnation of them. But still we must ask, So the music of worship ought to be taken as seri- What is most appropriate to worship in joyful revously as the preaching of God’s Word and the erence and awe? What forms or settings are best administration of his sacraments. fitted to present the elements of worship in culturIn the Reformed tradition, the regulative princi- ally appropriate and biblically faithful ways? What ple says that God is to be worshiped only in the circumstances in a given cultural environment most ways he specifically has commanded (see, e.g., the clearly reflect and evince God’s revealed attributes?

Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 21, Section 1).

Although the circumstances of worship are not To offer anything in worship that has not been prescribed, they are not unimportant or matters of commanded by God is not only religiously worth- indifference. If our worship reflects our conception less (Col. 2:23), it is a travesty. But what does it of God, then circumstantial aspects of worship are

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important, and we should always ask, Is this form or this setting appropriate?

What happens if we ask this question especially of the music of worship? Perhaps the best way to understand the regulative principle with regard to worship music is like this: In addition to being careful to avoid all elements of worship that God forbids, we must also be careful not to introduce anything as an element of worship that God does not command. In general, the theology of the Reformed churches has stressed the continuity of the one God and his one plan and one people through the Old and New Covenants—the New Covenant does not annul the Old Covenant; it fulfills it. It is, consequently, a little odd that in music this emphasis was reversed and that discontinuity was assumed for awhile, resulting in the proscription of musical instruments and the limitation of singing texts to those that are actually found in Scripture. But this proscription and limitation may in fact violate the very principle that is being advocated; namely, that nothing be added to the command of God (see Deut. 12:30–32; cf. Deut. 4:2; Prov. 30:6; Rev. 22:18, 19).

When we look closely at Deuteronomy 12:30–32 we see that its primary concern is that God not be worshipped in any way that is contrary to his nature and character. Pagan gods were worshipped according to their presumed characters and attributes. They were localized and, thus, could be represented by idols; they were hungry and rapacious, driven by the most extreme forms of human passion, and, hence, could easily be offended as well as placated; and they could be manipulated with bribes or magic. Israel was repeatedly tempted to think of the true God as though he were just like those pagan gods, but associating the true God with any of these pagan attributes was abominable. Thus, for Israelites to burn their children in sacrifice, as Moloch’s worshipers did, was unspeakably blasphemous and horribly at odds with the true God’s character (see Deut. 12:31).

God’s command, enunciated by Moses, that we must be careful to do all and only what he commands also concerns his holiness. Uzziah was stricken with leprosy because, even though he was generally a decent king, he broke a strict temple rule that reflected God’s holiness (see 2 Chron.

26:19; cf. Num. 16). Even more tragically, Saul was cut off from kingship by violating God’s command to wait patiently for Samuel to arrive at Gilgal so that God’s holy prophet would be the one to offer the sacrifice (see 1 Sam. 10:8 and 13:1–14). And when Uzzah tried to prevent the ark from falling into the mud he was stricken dead for his trouble (see 2 Sam. 6:1–7). How often does our worship

abandon the principle of holiness in the name of considerations such as seeker-friendliness, convenience, or economy?

The Westminster Confession of Faith first alludes to the regulative principle within the context of Christian liberty (see chapter 20, section 2). One purpose of this principle is to prevent human beings from laying religious duties on each other that God has not prescribed. In this sense, the regulative principle is a liberating one. If we use it to bind consciences where God has not bound them, then this violates the very principle that we are claiming to uphold.

This over-scrupulousness seems to be happening when Reformed churches proscribe instrumental music and limit singing to texts found in Scripture, particularly Psalms. The Psalms themselves enjoin the skillful use of instruments (see Ps. 33:3).

Exclusive psalmody, moreover, not only seems to clash with New Covenant worship as it is portrayed in the New Testament itself (see especially Rev. 5:9; 14:3; 15:3, 4; Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16), but it also makes it difficult to sing of Christ by name. Those who proscribe musical instruments do so because the New Testament makes no mention of instrumental music in worship, but this way of arguing would also proscribe Sabbath rest because the New Testament never explicitly connects the Lord’s Day or the day of worship with the Sabbath. These believers also fail to acknowledge what instrumental musicians know—that instruments are simply a means for singing in different ways than with the human voice. Musical instruments are, therefore, circumstances, not false elements.

In summary, we should be cautious about proscribing something if we are unsure that God has proscribed it, for then our proscription may be adding to the commandment of God. And however we take the regulative principle, it should not be invoked in defense of worship that is ugly, boring, and cheap, for such worship does not reflect God’s character at all.

The Holistic Principle he worship of God, and, hence, the music of worship, should involve all aspects of our created humanity. Since our whole being images God, it is important that the aesthetic, emotional, and physical aspects of our being be engaged in worship, in addition to our intellects (see Mark 12:30). Music is the one art that God specifically commands us to use in worship, probably because its capacity to address the physical, emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual dimensions of our being is unmatched by any other art. Obeying God’s command to sing, therefore, demands that

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FYI

Westminster Confession of Faith: In 1643, Parliament passed an act calling for an assembly of church leaders to gather at Westminster Abbey to determine the government and liturgy of

the Church of England. This followed over one hundred years of religious strife in England.

Among the documents created by the Westminster Assembly were the Directory of Public Worship, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, and the Confession of Faith. These documents, known as the Westminster Standards, became the definitive doctrinal statements of English (and, consequently, American) Presbyterianism.

our whole selves be put to the task.

Culture is also fundamental in shaping our whole beings—aesthetically, emotionally, physically, and intellectually. So music and culture are closely linked. Within any particular culture, there are a variety of different musical forms and styles, each of which affects us in specific ways. A culture’s funeral music differs from its wedding music, which differs from its battle music, drinking songs, love songs, and so on. A culture’s religious music is also distinctive and reflects that culture’s conception of deity.

Culture is not indifferent or ethically neutral.

Writer T. S. Eliot was undoubtedly right to think of culture as the incarnation of religion (see his “Notes toward the definition of Culture” in his Christianity and Culture). Pagan cultures reflect pagan religion and functionally agnostic cultures like ours inevitably bear the marks of their agnosticism. Yet the gospel can transform any culture, because all cultures are produced by people who bear God’s image. Even the most depraved culture has musical forms and styles that can appropriately express and echo God’s truth.

Thus, we should not take any culture as absolute and as the final standard to which all others must conform. The links between music and culture mean then that it is impossible to make absolute judgments about what kinds of music are appropriately reverent. This, however, does not mean that we should not make judgments that are relative to the culture in which we live. Just as it would be culturally confusing to sing a drinking song at a funeral or a battle song at a wedding, so it can be culturally and religiously confusing to take a song commonly recognized as praising “Mother Earth,” alter the words a bit, and sing it in Christian worship. (The oft-repeated claim that Luther put Christian words to drinking songs is simply not

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true. William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, did do something like that, but whereas he used popular melodies, he changed the style of their musical presentation.) The choice of music forms and styles in worship needs to be made conscientiously, recognizing the cultural implications, and not negligently defaulting to whatever form or style is most popular or least expensive to produce.

The Excellence Principle n excellent God deserves excellent worship—and, therefore, excellent music in worship. It is inappropriate to “make do” with slipshod worship, including thoughtless, ugly, boring, or cheap music. But intellectually, physically, emotionally, and aesthetically excellent worship music requires resources, dedication, and focus.

The Old Covenant requirement that worshipers bring their best to God (see Mal. 1:13) should certainly call into question our typical practice of doing worship music on the cheap.

What makes music excellent? Three principal ingredients of musical excellence are mastery, mystery, and passion. Mastery of any artistic medium, including a musical instrument or the human voice, requires years of dedicated labor and training.

Maintaining that mastery is also time intensive.

But without such mastery there is never the possibility of excellence. Psalm 33:3 commands musicians to play skillfully (see also 1 Chron. 15:22 and 28:21). This requires us as church members, to furnish them with appropriate resources, such as time to practice, decent (and, consequently, expensive) instruments, and adequate training.

Mystery refers to the subtle, nonpropositional character of any art that transcends what may be said in plain prose. Psalm 23 does not tell us anything that we cannot find elsewhere in Scripture, but our knowledge of God would be considerably impoverished if we did not have it. It takes a gifted and skilled artist to evoke such mystery—and once again that implies the need for resources for training and encouraging those who have such talents.

Finally, excellence in music requires passion—the kind of passion that flows from the deepest of human experiences. Great artists have suffered deeply, loved deeply, and rejoiced deeply. But shouldn’t these experiences be most characteristic of those who know the indescribable mercy of the Christian God?

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Emphasizing excellence does not imply advocating exclusivism or elitism. Our worship must not exclude or denigrate any of God’s faithful ones because then it would not reflect his character as one who lives not only in a high and holy place but also with those who are crushed and lowly (see Isa. 57:15; cf. Ps. 18:27). Encouraging musical excellence does, however, acknowledge that just as God has gifted some with the ability to teach, he has gifted others with the ability to sing and make music—and that such gifts ought to be developed for God’s glory and the good of his Church.

How Then Should We Worship? ur worship should reflect God’s attributes—his beauty, holiness, glory, and gravity. It should be done in consciousness of who he is and in conformity to his revealed will. It should involve each worshipper’s whole being, with each of us giving our best from every dimension of our humanity. And thus, worship will include music and singing as one of its indispensable and mandated elements.

We can see examples of these principles of worship in several psalms. Here is just one:

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Psalm 96 Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth.

Sing to the LORD, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day.

Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples.

For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods.

For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens.

Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary.

Ascribe to the LORD, O families of nations, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.

Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts.

Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth.

Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the LORD, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth.

He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth.

This psalm links together fear and trembling with splendor and majesty and beauty; and God’s splendor and majesty is echoed in the splendor of the worship.

Even attempting to worship this way is very uncommon today, even though earthly worship is the closest we can now get to what we will do after God restores all things. As has often been said, worship is a foretaste of heaven. It should be an eschatological experience. But how seldom do we experience the glories of worship in a way that anticipates heaven! So what has gone wrong?

Probably many things. Yet isn’t it at least partly because we have such a poor understanding of who God is? And isn’t this reflected in how little thought we give to the way we worship? More specifically, we neglect worship’s aesthetic dimensions—and not only the aesthetic dimensions of its music, but also of its sermons, prayers, Scripture readings, and the administration of the sacraments.

We think very little about how to manifest God’s splendor and majesty and beauty; and, consequently, our worship almost always lacks reverence and awe. But our earthly worship, including its music, ought to reflect what the books of Hebrews and Revelation reveal—namely, the great heavenly worship from which our earthly worship stems and to which it bears witness. May we begin to reflect such true worship again in our time. ■

Dan G. McCartney (Ph.D., Westminster Theological Seminary) is professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). He is the author of Why Does it Have to Hurt?: The Meaning of Christian Suffering (P&R Publishing, 1998). A Real Audio lecture on “A Biblical Theology of Music and Worship” by Dr. McCartney is available at http://www.wts.edu/alumni/conted.html.

Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.”

The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them.

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LIFT UP YOUR VOICE!

The Song of M That Nev A

church sign, which I used to pass frequently, boasted “The Singing Church,” under the church’s name. That a church would describe itself this way can serve as a starting point for realizing that music can be either too important to us as Christians—or not important enough.

Many people today are driven by music, and especially by pop music. However much some of us criticize its musical and lyrical shallowness, we still sometimes listen to it in our cars. It also seems to be always in the background in public and private places. As much as I hate to admit it, Joan Jett speaks for me when she belts out, “I love rock and roll.” It’s not a sin to listen to U2.

Yet just because we are saturated with pop culture, we need to be aware of our own presuppositions concerning ubiquitous “muzak” in our worship, as well. For many of us, complete silence in a worship service without any background music would be unnerving. A week without Communion is fine; a week without a sermon, some are saying, is tolerable; but a week without music would be unthinkable.

For many Christians, then, music has become too important. For some, “worship time” simply

means “music time.” Some churches have distinct services for different musical tastes even though both groups of worshipers remain formally united under one roof. Sometimes music is viewed as almost sacramental. One minister, writing in Worship Leader magazine, calls music our “heart language.” He then adds that it “can be spiritually generative.” What does that mean? “Spiritually generative events are things that ‘connect’ people with God and have a self reproducing quality.”

They are like the “Celtic orbs, knots and images about the Creation” that were “incorporated into what we know as the Celtic cross.” To look at such a cross “was to see Christ,” which was, therefore, “a spiritually generative event.” Another author writes on “Music as a Medium to Connect Us to God.” But we Christians must always remember that it is God’s Word and his sacraments alone that are the means of grace—that is, they are his fixed

The Song of Moses Exodus 15:1-18 (NIV) Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: “I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea. The the Lord is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he has hurled into the sea. The best of Pharaoh’s officers are drowned in the Red Sea. The deep waters have co your majesty you threw down those who opposed you. You unleashed your burning anger; it consumed them like stubble. By the blast of your nostrils the waters piled the spoils; I will gorge myself on them. I will draw my sword and my hand will destroy them.’ But you blew with your breath, and the sea covered them. They sank l out your right hand and the earth swallowed them. In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your h trembling, the people of Canaan will melt away; terror and dread will fall upon them. By the power of your arm they will be as still as a stone—until your people pa your dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, your hands established. The Lord will reign for ever and ever.”

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oses in the City ver Sleeps means of connecting us to himself—and it is never the music as such but God’s Word—whether enacted in the sacraments or spoken or sung—that effectively communicates to us Christ’s benefits.

Yet we may err in the opposite direction by not taking music seriously enough. Perhaps we, as pastors and laypeople, don’t think about worship—we just pass it off to the “worship leader” or music minister. Or maybe we think too little about where our music comes from. We don’t care that much of it comes from music publishers in church traditions diametrically opposed to our own. Once we may have been allowed only to sing songs that had been approved by our denomination; now there may be a free-for-all that is impatient with challenges to think more deeply about worship music. Nostalgia and sentimentality all too often reign in both traditional and seeker-oriented worship.

Yet as German reformer Martin Luther noted in his oft-repeated dictum that music is second in importance only to theology, what we sing is significant. From the start, God’s covenant people have been a singing bunch. When they were called out of Egypt to belong to Yahweh in his holy

Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a warrior; overed them; they sank to the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, was majestic in power. Your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy. In the greatness of d up. The surging waters stood firm like a wall; the deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy boasted, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake them. I will divide ike lead in the mighty waters. Who among the gods is like you, O Lord ? Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders? You stretched holy dwelling. The nations will hear and tremble; anguish will grip the people of Philistia. The chiefs of Edom will be terrified, the leaders of Moab will be seized with ass by, O Lord, until the people you bought pass by. You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance—the place, O Lord, you made for

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land, God’s people sang the “Song of Moses.” Here I want us to consider the remarkable career of that song, its place in redemptive history, and what it teaches us about why we sing.

The Song’s Setting n Exodus 14, the Angel of Yahweh leads Israel through the Red Sea. This is the same angel who judged Adam and Eve and yet clothed them in sacrificial skins; who judged Sodom and Gomorrah but delivered Abram and Lot; and who appeared in a burning bush before Moses on Mt. Sinai. He is, in fact, the pre-incarnate Christ who here acts in judgment again. Clothed in the cloud pillar, he goes before his liberated host, separating the waters to form dry land in order once again— as in the first creation—to make a habitable place where he may commune with human beings. In this way, the Exodus represents a new creation.

This is why there are so many allusions in the Song of Moses to the natural world: biblical praise knows

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nothing of an escape from “the late great planet earth,” but only of an escape from divine wrath and then of the coming restoration of all of creation at the end of the age.

This Angel of Yahweh is the Warrior-God of Israel, the Lord who fights for them against the Egyptians (see Exod. 14:14, 25). He is “the Lord of hosts” (see 1 Sam. 1:3, ESV)—or “Yahweh of Armies”—by title, the general who leads his people to victory. It is to him alone that credit is due, which is why Moses’ song is all about God and not about Moses or the Israelites. The means of judgment for the Egyptians is a means of salvation for the Israelites, as God fights for his people and leads them to safety.

Identifying the Song of Moses as the song of the Warrior-God evokes the memory of Adam who, as God’s deputy, failed to drive the serpent out of God’s garden. But God has sworn to be a father to Abraham and to his spiritual heirs despite their sin. He himself will drive the serpent out of

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t is reasonable to think that music and song have existed for as long as there have been human beings. Scripture notes that Lamech’s son Jubal “was the father of all those who play the harp and flute” (Gen. 4:21). Scripture represents music accompanying both work—in Numbers 21:17, 18, Israel sings as a well is re-dug, and the watchmen sing in Isaiah 21:11, 12—and play (see Job 21:7–12; Luke 7:32). Music is present when people meet and feast (see Judg.

11:34; Isa. 5:11, 12; Luke 15:25) as well as when they leave or grieve (see Gen. 31:27; Jer. 48:36).

Scripture contains literally hundreds of references to singers, singing, songs, and music. In addition to those psalms penned specifically for congregational singing, there are love songs (see the Song of Songs), wedding songs (see Ps. 78:63), lustful songs (see Ezek. 33:32), harlots’ songs (see Isa. 23:15, 16), drinking songs (see Isa. 24:9), mocking and taunting songs (see Job. 30:9; Ps. 69:12; Mic. 2:4), songs of the ruthless and songs of fools (see Isa. 25:5; Eccles. 7:5), songs in the night (see Job 35:10; Ps. 149:5), songs to greet creation and the dawn (see Job 38:4–7), songs of war (see Judg. 5; 1 Sam. 18:6–8), and songs of peace (see Ps. 85; Isa. 55:12).

Almost every kind of human experience occasions music and encourages singing. But why is this so? What prompts us to make music? Why do we sing?

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Why Do We Sing?

The simplest answer is that music and singing are natural to human beings. Human beings are not just unfeeling computing machines. We treasure—as well as observe and measure—various things. How things turn out matters to us. Whether we get the job or lose the boy can affect us deeply. And we often want what moves us to be expressed musically.

Toddlers show that we are naturally expressive, tuneful, and rhythmic beings. They often hum before they talk and not long after they learn to speak they may start putting words to their tunes—“We’re going to grandma’s; we’re going to grandpa’s.”

As we grow, we look to music especially to help us enhance life’s more significant moments. Granted, there are work songs, play songs, drinking songs, marching songs, and driving music.

We use music to shape and to celebrate the ordinary as well as to lessen life’s tedium. But we use it especially to help us express strong emotions such as love or hatred, joy or sorrow, and hope or fear. If you are falling in love, then love songs probably catch your ear. We also use it to prompt emotion. Oliver Stone’s Vietnam film, Platoon, would be much less moving if it had not been set to Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

In other words, music both expresses and evokes aspects of our lives that involve more than simple cognition. Falling in love is more than just recognizing that you and your beloved are com-

his garden and banish sin and suffering from his dominion on the last day, a judgment that is already anticipated here at the Exodus. Israel, like Adam, will fail in its task, but this will not keep God from remaining faithful to his promise. A faithful Servant will appear, yet one who is not only a servant (as Moses was) but also a son over God’s house. He will clean the garden of all defilement forever so that he and his people may dwell safely together in joyful communion rather than in wrath and destruction.

The Song of the Warrior-God he Song of Moses (see inset on p. 20) is a recital of God’s mighty acts in delivering his people and judging Egypt. It has two parts: the Exodus and the march to Canaan. It opens by acknowledging God’s triumph and then recites the details of that triumph for posterity. In the “heart language” of song, Moses expresses not primarily his own experiences but the objective

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redemption that God has publicly wrought. “This is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name” (Exod. 15:2–3). In fact, Moses and the Israelites are noticeably absent from the hymn except as the beneficiaries of God’s victory. It is all about God and what he has done to save his people. Egypt represents the arrogant city of man, contrasted with God’s city. “The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them.’ You blew with your wind, the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters” (vv. 9–10).

The march to Canaan makes up the hymn’s second part. The now-completed Exodus and the stillto-be-accomplished march are treated as one continuous event because God is not merely saving the Jews from Egypt but preserving them for fellowship with himself in his holy land. The godless nations are represented as standing along the parade route to Canaan as involuntary witnesses to God’s victory:

We Sing patible in various ways. Experiencing these aspects of life is integral to what it means to be a human being. We are not intended to be like Star Trek’s emotionless Dr. Spock. If you were present when I first heard that my wife had been in a serious car wreck and you observed no changes in my emotional state, then this would strike you as odd, at best. We are meant to be emotional, active creatures who desire and pursue specific things. The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has a long section on mood disorders that identifies our not feeling enough emotion often enough (the DSM calls this “depressed mood”) or our losing interest or pleasure in most of life’s activities as signs that we are not well-functioning human beings.

In his great book, Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards sees our emotions, interests, and pleasures as aspects of our affections.

Our affections, he says, are the “more vigorous and sensible exercises” of our inclination and will. Our inclination and will encompass our desires, our concerns, our loves, our resolutions, and our emotions. They produce our likes and dislikes, our joys and sorrows; and they evoke our praise and blame. They are what involve and motivate us.

As Edwards observes, sometimes the consideration of some things moves us so little that we remain almost indifferent to how we believe things to be. Yet at other times we are moved so

strongly by what we are thinking about that, “through the laws of union which the Creator has fixed between soul and body,” it actually affects us physically. Think, here, of being really afraid or of loving someone so much that it actually seems to hurt. This explains why Scripture often speaks of our affections as centered in one or another of our body’s inner parts. Strong compassion or a strong inner urge to be merciful is felt in our intestines (this is the literal meaning of the Hebrew word me’eh, translated as “bowels” [KJV] or “heart” [NIV, ESV] in Jer. 31:20); and the inner center of our strongly felt inclinations—or affections—is sometimes located in our kidneys (see the Greek word nephros, translated as “mind” by the NIV and ESV in Rev. 2:23) or, more often, in our hearts (see 2 Sam. 14:1; Ps. 119:111; Luke 24:32; 2 Cor. 6:11–13 [ESV, NIV]; 1 Pet. 1:22).

Scripture views us as essentially psychosomatic—or mind/body—unities that should not be divided into competing parts. More specifically, it does not take our minds or our intellects to be our most godlike part. It never suggests that our affections are second-rate or inessential aspects of our distinctively human being. In fact, it sees these aspects of our lives as mirroring God’s own personality. Thus Jeremiah 31:20, with its graphic reference to bowels or intestines, is actually referring to how

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In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by your strength to your holy abode. The peoples heard, they trembled; pangs seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the chiefs of Edom were dismayed; trembling seized the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan melted away. Terror and dread fell upon them; by the might of your arm, they became as still as a stone until your people, O LORD, passed by, until the people whom you acquired passed by. (vv. 13–16) The goal of this march is for God’s people to come to dwell with him in the house he has built for them as his bride: “You brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your own possession, the place, O LORD, that you made your abode, the sanctuary, O LORD, that your hands have established. The LORD will reign forever and ever” (vv. 17–18).

But, alas, we read between the hymn’s lines! We

God is moved as he remembers his “son” Ephraim. Again, Zephaniah 3:17 portrays God as taking great delight in the people he has resolved to redeem—such delight that he exults over them with “loud singing” (esv). Elsewhere, God says his heart “moans” for wayward Moab “like a flute” (Jer. 48:36 [esv]). circumstances, God's people are so eager to sing and make music to their Lord."

When we sing and make music, we put sound and voice to our affections. Scripture sees this as so essential to the nature of created beings that it even portrays the heavens and the earth’s deeps, the mountains, the forests, and all of their trees as singing when God brings about the culmination of all things (see Isa. 44:23; cf. 1 Chron. 16:31–33; Ps. 98:7–9). Singing and making music allow us to express and evoke aspects of our godlike humanity in ways that make us much more than we would otherwise be.

Why Do Christians Sing?

The short answer is that Christians sing and make music to God because we are encouraged and commanded to do so (see Ps. 81:1, 2; 98:1–6; Eph. 5:18–20). Yet this is not the whole answer; indeed, it does not explain why, sometimes even in very difficult circumstances, God’s people are so eager to sing (see Ps. 92:1-4; Ps. 95:2; Acts 16:25) and make music to their Lord.

“How,” the Babylonian captives plaintively cry, “shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137:4; cf. vv. 1–3). At times, we—like these captives—want to hang up our harps. For us, as for them, there can be times when songs are required of us

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know what was to happen in the wilderness, in the sordid history of the monarchy, and then in the divided kingdom. The Song of Moses soon and frequently was surrendered to songs of complaint.

Because of the unfaithfulness of God’s people, the march to Canaan did not result in an everlasting Sabbath. Israel, and not just the pagan nations, defiled God’s temple-garden. So the Glory left Israel—“Ichabod” (see 1 Sam. 4:21)—and she was exiled. Estranged from God in a foreign land and by the waters of Babylon, “there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hung up our harps upon the willows in the midst of it. For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song, and those who plundered us requested mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137:1–4).

Yet even before the exile actually happens, the prophets look through it to a time of salvation: “The LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, and

but we find it tormenting to sing. Sometimes even hearing singing hurts (see Prov. 25:20; cf. Eccles. 12:4; Lam. 5:14).

Indeed, God may stop the music and the singing (see Ezek.

26:13).

Singing is hard when we lack the heart to sing. Yet it is easy when our hearts are full—when our desires have been fulfilled, our concerns adequately addressed, our resolutions successfully carried out, and our loves met. Then we feel like singing.

Once Edwards has made his general remarks about our affections, he then makes the astounding claim that those who are spiritually reborn will have these kinds of strong, physically felt affections for God and his things. He painstakingly corroborates this claim from Scripture in the remainder of his book’s first part.

True religion, as found in the Scriptures, consists in a great measure in vigorous and lively actings of the inclination and will of the soul or the fervent exercises of the heart …. That religion which God requires and will accept does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference. God, in his word, greatly insists . . . that we be in good earnest, “fervent in spirit,” and our hearts vigorously [engaged in obeying and serving and loving him (see Deut. 10:12, 13; Rom. 12:11)].

Such “fervent, vigorous engagedness of the heart in religion … is the fruit of a real circumcision of the heart, or true regeneration;” and, as Edwards concludes, God promises everlasting life only to

was appalled that there was no mediator; so his own arm brought him victory and his righteousness upheld him” (Isa. 59:15–16). Isaiah portrays God as coming down dressed for war, with a breastplate of righteousness, a helmet of salvation and garments of judgment (v. 17). These prophetic announcements are often filled with allusions to creation and the Exodus. This is the “new thing” that God will do.

Despite national Israel’s failure, God has promised to bring back a remnant and sustain their march towards the heavenly Canaan, the promised Messiah, because of his promise to Abraham. In that day, God’s people will once more be delivered, bringing with them liberated captives from every tribe and nation under heaven.

He will set up a banner for the nations ….

The Lord will utterly destroy the tongue of the Sea of Egypt; with his mighty wind he will shake his fist over the River, and strike it

in the seven streams, and make men cross over dryshod. There will be a highway for the remnant of his people who will be left from Assyria, as it was for Israel in the day that he came up from the land of Egypt. (Isa. 11:12, 15–16) A little later in Isaiah, the anticipation of all nations being blessed in Abraham’s Seed is rendered boldly in a text that tells a typical deliverance story— only with the irony that Egypt is included among the redeemed!

On that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the LORD of Armies. One of these will be called the City of the Sun. On that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the center of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the LORD at its border.

It will be a sign and witness to the LORD of

those who give him their whole hearts (see Ezek. 18:5–32 and especially vv. 30–32; Mark 12:28–34 with Matt. 19:16–29).

This happens when God sends his Holy Spirit to give us new hearts (see Deut. 30:6; Ezek. 36:26–28; 2 Cor. 3:3; Titus 3:1–7)— hearts no longer naturally inclined toward evil (see Gen. 6:5; 8:21)—hearts healed of their innate enmity against God and their disinclination to obey and serve and love him (see Ps. 51:5; Rom. 3:9–18; Eph. 2:1–3)—hearts with new and godly desires (see Ps. 40:8; 42:1, 2; 73), new, more expansive concerns (see Prov. 29:7 [NIV]; 1 Cor. 12:21–26; 2 Cor. 7:2–13), new loves (see Ps. 18:1; 26:8; 119:127; 1 Thess. 4:9), new Spirit-prompted resolutions (see Ps. 16:7, 8; 101:1–4; 119:30, 112; Rom. 8:5–8 ), and new emotions (see Ps. 16:11; Rom. 15:13; Col. 2:7). In sum, hearts that are now, by God’s grace and through Christ’s work, both inclined and willing to love God and his things (see Ps. 119:112 [ESV]; Jer. 24:7; Phil. 2:12, 13).

Christians sing to express and evoke these God-given affections (see Col. 3:16). They sing and make music to God because God has given them a heart to sing. They sing because God has given them his Word (see Ps. 119:72). They sing because they are astounded by the love that God has shown to them (see 1 John 3:1, 2; 4:9, 10; cf. Exod. 15:2; Ps. 108:1–4). They sing because they want to exalt his justice and his righteousness and his favor and his strength (see Judg. 5; Ps. 5, especially vv. 11, 12; 101:1). And they sing because they know that singing helps them to set their hearts and minds on Christ and spiritual things (see Col. 3:1–4; 1 Pet. 1:13; 3:15) and thus increases their love for God and fans their God-given affections into flame.

In his Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, Edwards notes that the first Great Awakening invigorated congregational singing. In fact, he says, “there has been scarce any part of divine worship, wherein good men amongst us have had grace so drawn forth, and their hearts so lifted up in the ways of God, as in singing his praises.” In his congregation, he notes, the men “regularly, and well” carried three parts of music by themselves and the women another part. In a Thanksgiving sermon preached in November 1734, he urges Christian parents to “be careful that their children are instructed in singing.”

He notes that music is especially suited to express harmony and proportion. It is thus especially fitted to extol the incomparable harmony and proportion of God’s nature and acts. What could be more natural, then, than for God’s redeemed people to want to sing? As the great truths of salvation-history hit our hearts, we experience rushes of joy and love and gratitude that naturally provoke us to sing.

God’s redeemed people always have had and always will have an urge to form a harmonious chorus to hymn his glories. No wonder the new heavens and the new earth will be filled with the sounds of music and singing!

Mark R. Talbot (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is associate professor of philosophy at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, and vice-chairman of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. He is the author of Signs of True Conversion (Crossway, 2000).

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In Print November/December Book Recommendations Discipling Music Ministry: Twenty-first Century Directions Calvin M. Johansson Reviewing the past, evaluating the present, and suggesting a course of action for the future, Calvin Johansson asserts that the art form of music is far more influential and powerful in affirming or denying lived-out faith than we commonly believe.

B-JHNS-1, $10.00 A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship Michael Horton In this, his newest book, Michael Horton carefully and compassionately tackles the subject of worship and presents a plan for recovering biblical worship: drama! You are sure to be surprised and delighted by his creative use of the biblical motif of the story of redemption as the pattern for our worship services.

B-HO-16, $20.00 The Church Musician Paul Westermeyer In this basic text in the study of church music, Paul Westermeyer offers practical advice for musicians, pastors, and others. This book is an interdisciplinary study of worship, music, and theology accessible to everyone.

B-W-1, $17.00 Reforming Our Worship Music and Pleasing God in Our Worship Leonard R. Payton and W. Robert Godfrey These two booklets from the Crossway Today’s Issues series help define and defend and Reformational view of worship. Although the booklets are less than 50 pages apiece, the content will challenge you to consider again why you worship and how you worship.

B-PAY-1, $5.00 AND B-GO-2, $5.00 A Royal Waste of Time Marva J. Dawn In this sequel to Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down, Marva Dawn helps churches navigate beyond today’s worship wars and develop effective worship practices that are truly God centered.

B-DAW-3, $18.00 Leading in Worship: A Sourcebook for Presbyterian Students and Ministers Terry L. Johnson Terry Johnson’s book helps pastors lead their flocks in spiritual worship with dignity and without distraction. It contains biblical prayers, collects, and forms for services that keep our focus on God, not man.

B-JOH-1 $25.00 To order, complete and mail the order form in the envelope provided. Or, use our secure e-commerce catalog at www.AllianceNet.org. For phone orders call 215-546-3696 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. ET (credit card orders only).

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On Tape From the Alliance Archives THE Newest White Horse Inn Broadcast Series!

WHITE HORSE INN The Doctrine of Man Why does mankind exist? Why are we created as physical and spiritual beings? Does man possess a soul and a spirit or only a soul? What does it mean to be created in God’s image? Did we lose this image when we sinned?

If questions like these keep you up at night wondering, “Who am I and what am I supposed to be doing?” then you will enjoy hearing this series on the doctrine of man. An added bonus to this series is a special interview with Gene Veith who discusses our vocation.

C-DOM-S, 3 TAPE AUDIO SERIES, $18.00

THE The Dialect of Worship: WHITE HORSE INN Handling Style, Substance, and Caricatures Michael Horton, Ken Jones, Scotty Smith, and Ron Feuerhahn discuss the touchy questions related to the end of the “worship wars” in American churches. Representing Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Reformed perspectives, the guests frankly discuss questions of musical style and theological substance, while challenging the unhelpful caricatures that have polarized the bitter battles over worship music.

C-DOW-D, CD-ROM, $6.00

Understanding the Worship Service A L L I A N C E Dr. W. Robert Godfrey, president of Westminster Theological Seminary in California (Escondido, California), gave this seminar at the 2000 National Pastors’ Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. If you are a pastor, church musician, or interested lay person and want to know a little more about what you do during worship and why you do it, this tape is for you.

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Desiring God — PCRT 1994 This conference explores the hunger of the human soul for God. The focus is on corporate worship: whom we worship, how we should worship, the ways we fail to do so, and worship as the chief end of man. Featured speakers include Eric Alexander, James Boice, Robert Godfrey, and Michael Horton.

C-94-POA, 6 TAPE AUDIO SERIES, $33.00 THE Reforming Worship WHITE HORSE INN In this White Horse Inn series, Michael Horton, Ken Jones, Kim Riddlebarger, and Rod Rosenbladt discuss the theology of worship, the importance of preaching, musical aspects, and the place of the sacraments in worship.

C-RW-S, 8 TAPE AUDIO SERIES, $43.00

Worship God! — PCRT 1998 What kind of worship pleases God? What sort of music should we use, and what about drama?

What are the biblical guidelines we should follow? Disagreements are often fierce and the battle lines sharply drawn. Eric Alexander, James Boice, Michael Horton, and Don Matzat candidly address these issues.

C-98-FOA, 6 TAPE AUDIO SERIES, $33.00 The Alliance Resource Catalog In each issue of Modern Reformation the editors suggest tape and book resources relevant to the topic. For more selections of tapes, videos, books, and booklets (some of which are only available through the Alliance) please visit the Alliance website at: www.AllianceNet.org or call 215-546-3696 to request a copy of the resource catalog.

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Armies in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a Savior, and will defend and deliver them. The LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians; and the Egyptians will know the LORD on that day, and will worship with sacrifice and burnt offering, and they will make vows to the LORD and perform them.

The LORD will strike Egypt, striking and healing; they will return to the LORD, and he will listen to their supplications and heal them.

On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria…and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, whom the LORD of Armies has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage.” (Isa. 19:18–24)

Ours is an age of grace, but when the Warrior-King returns in glory, final judgment will come upon the earth.

Already in the Gospels the disciples report that even the demons are subject to them in Jesus’ name—and Jesus replies that he saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. God’s kingdom is now going forward with the outpouring of his Spirit among all peoples; and exilic mourning turns into outbursts of joy. The once-mute lips of those who were “not my people” become the harps upon which God plays his “new song.”

Why Do We Sing? o where are we? Into what part of God’s song do we fit? And what shall we sing and why shall we sing it?

When we now gather for worship, we do not gather in an earthly temple but in the heavenly Zion, where we are surrounded by a great “cloud of On that day, there will be a new exodus, only then witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) and where we participate in it will include a remnant “from every tribe, kindred, the worship of heaven that is now in progress. The tongue, people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). In that day, Book of Revelation, recapitulating this whole histoGod promises to pour out his Spirit on all flesh. ry from the first Exodus to the last, mirrors the his“For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be torical context of the Song of Moses perfectly. In deliverance, as the Lord has said, among the rem- chapters 8 and 9, there are the plagues, after which nant whom the Lord calls” (Joel 2:32). the angel announces the establishment of the kingdom of God, Satan is expelled from heaven, and The once-mute lips of those who were "not my people" become the harps upon the theater of conflict moves to the earth, where Babylon persecutes the people of God. which God plays his "new song."

But in the middle of all of this, John sees God’s people being brought through their final sea-crossing with Jesus Is the Warrior-God the Pillar of Fire leading the way: During his earthly ministry, Jesus made clear that Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and these prophesies do not refer to the reconstruction marvelous: seven angels having the seven of a temple in the earthly Jerusalem, but to his own last plagues, for in them the wrath of God is body. He is himself the new creation, the new exocomplete. And I saw something like a sea of dus, the new temple. He is the Warrior-God who, glass mingled with fire, and those who have seeing no one else to intercede, descends to save his people. As in the Song of Moses, when Jesus the victory over the beast, over his image speaks of these things, he identifies earthly eleand over his mark and over the number of his ments as witness-signs of God’s redemptive work: name, standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God. (Rev. 15:1–2) Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon Here, at last, the exiles are returning with a “new song” in their heart, taking up their harps to sing will not give its light; the stars will fall from once again the songs of Zion. Yet their “new song” heaven, and the powers of the heaven will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man is a fulfillment of the “old song”: will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes They sing the song of Moses, the servant of of the earth will mourn, and they will see the God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven “Great and marvelous are your works, Lord with power and great glory. (Matt.

24:29–31) God Almighty! Just and true are your ways,

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O King of the saints! For who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. For all nations shall come and worship before you, for your judgments have been manifested.” (15:3–4) The songs that emerge from biblical faith— whether Moses’ or Miriam’s or David’s or Mary’s— celebrate moments of significance in redemptive history. Like miracles, these “new songs” witness to the “new thing” that God is doing. Even when they testify to a divine work in an individual’s life, they are usually messianic in character: “He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord” (Ps. 40:2–3).

Biblical songs are not, to borrow a poem title from Walt Whitman, a “Song of Myself.” They do not testify generally to what God has done for someone in his or her own experience. Rather, they celebrate God’s latest victory or, as in the songs of lament, give vent to the desolates’ cries for God’s redemption in history. The Psalter’s final two songs celebrate God’s glory filling the earth in the new creation: “Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the faithful” (Ps. 149:1), concluding in a crescendo of praise.

So why do we sing? We sing in order to “keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25) and to announce and give witness here on earth to God’s mighty victory in Jesus Christ, just as the Song of Moses, transposed into the Song of the Lamb, is being sung in heaven. Like teaching and admonishing each other in all wisdom (see Col. 3:16), singing psalms and hymns is part of our common witness to God’s triumph. Certainly, our singing includes both the “before” and “after” of his triumph, which is why it is not all happy and joyful but is often filled with laments. But isn’t this how God finds us?

Isn’t this our most realistic response?

We should sing chiefly to celebrate what God has done publicly, in history, and not primarily to testify to our own personal saving encounter with God. The apostles do not tell us very much about themselves; but they tell us a lot about Christ’s person and work on our behalf. And so their testimony differs markedly from what often passes as witness and testimony today.

Too much of our singing, even when we sing the Psalms, separates the imperatives—“Sing to the Lord a new song!,” “Praise the Lord!,” “I will bring thanksgiving,” among others—from the indicatives—“Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he cast into the sea!,” “Christ the Lord is risen today!” Our

singing is often full of declarations of what I have done and intend to do, with few references to the mighty acts of God in the history of redemption.

But if our church singing is predominantly “I will, I will, I will,” then we are not harmonizing with the Song of Moses and the Lamb. Self-assertiveness appears in Moses’ song only once, in verse 9: “The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.’” Then Moses immediately refocuses on God: “But you blew with your wind, the sea covered them” (v. 10).

We sing a new song because we have something about which to sing: God has done a new thing! Our faithful forebears marked the solemn stages of God’s further execution of his plan with appropriate music, much as the great kings of the earth have commissioned poems, paintings, and symphonies to honor their exploits. We sing because we are no longer in exile, and our hearts cannot resist the lure of the heavenly choir that has just discovered the only One worthy to explain the secret meaning of history: They sing a new song: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and with your blood you ransomed for God people from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom of priests serving our God, and they will reign on the earth.” Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Rev. 5:9–14) As God calls us to be part of his people here below who are to join his choir above, may we be singing witnesses to the Lamb, so that God’s will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. ■

Michael Horton (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and the University of Coventry) is associate professor of apologetics and historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in California (Escondido, California), and chairs the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Dr. Horton’s newest books are A Better Way (Baker, 2002) and Covenant and Eschatology (Westminster/John Knox, 2002).

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LIFT UP YOUR VOICE!

Christ in the

Psalms any evangelical churches today have lost the distinctive doctrines of the Reformation. But why now? What accounts for this loss in churches where Reformation faith was heralded for generations? Why is the faith once delivered now being abandoned? It is because we have lost the reformer’s God. Behind the church’s current theological crisis is a spiritual crisis. Just as false doctrine leads away from the living God, so also true doctrine is buttressed by fellowship with him. If true godliness does not anchor us in the truth, then we will probably pursue the vain theological imaginings of our sinful hearts.

This spiritual principle’s dread consequences are now upon us.

What is the proper remedy? Part of it, I believe, involves reappropriating the theology of the Psalms. Today’s church has lost the Psalms. We rarely sing them—our choruses and praise songs feature only snippets dislocated from their rich contexts, and many churches where Psalms once were sung sing them no more. The Psalms confound us with their robust and realistic spirituality. They discomfort us with their sharp denunciations and imprecations. Our theology is effeminate by comparison. But we must recover them. The early church—indeed, the church in almost all ages—saw them not only as the church’s main hymnbook but also as the definitive, inspired guide to Christian experience. As Thomas Scott said, “There is

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nothing in true religion—doctrinal, experimental, and practical—but will present itself to our attention whilst we meditate upon the psalms. The Christian’s use of them in the closet, and the minister’s in the pulpit, will generally increase with the growing experience of the power of true religion in their own hearts.”

In spite of their centrality in Christian worship and meditation throughout the church era, we face several barriers in attempting to recover the Psalms today. Probably the greatest barrier is the claim that to read the Psalms in the light of Christ is inevitably to distort them. Yet the New Testament’s writers, as well as earlier Christians, saw the Psalms as essentially about Christ. They took them to reveal his person and work, his divinity and ministry, his incarnation and resurrection, and his humiliation and glorification. Establishing this may open the way to our reappropriating their theology and spirituality.

The Psalms Are About Christ and We Meet Christ Everywhere in the Psalms he Psalms are quoted throughout the New Testament with most of those quotations applied to Jesus. Earlier Christians saw the Old Testament as an essentially Christian book, and they believed the Psalms, above all of the rest of the Old Testament, were uniquely christological. They also found Christ in more than what we title the “messianic Psalms.” Jonathan Edwards catches this perspective perfectly when he says, “The main subjects of these songs were the glorious things of the Gospel, as is evident by the interpretation that is often put upon them, and the use that is made of them, in the New Testament. For, there is no one book of the Old Testament that is so often quoted in the New as the Book of Psalms. Here Christ is spoken of in multitudes of songs.”

Liberal Old Testament scholars love to parody assertions like this as involving gross, interpretive abuse. They argue that authorial intent as well as contextual relevance are savaged by such a “Christianized” reading of the Psalms. Jesus can be read into the Psalms, they say, but he wasn’t there in the first place. Christians may “apply” portions of the Psalms to Christ, but their original meaning and referents are found elsewhere.

In contrast, earlier Christians viewed the New Testament Scriptures as the definitive and divinely inspired interpretive manual for the Old Testament; and so, since the New Testament takes the Psalms to be about Christ, they also took them as fundamentally christological. That we should still do so is easily established by reviewing the New Testament’s christological interpretation of many psalms.

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Christ’s Exaltation and Resurrection: Acts 13:33; Psalm 2:7 hen Paul preached the gospel to the Jews and God-fearers in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, he not only asserted that the death of Christ was according to Scripture (see Acts 13:29) but also that Jesus’ resurrection fulfilled Psalm 2:7: “And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second psalm, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’” (Acts 13:32–33). Here Paul applied this statement from the Psalm directly to Jesus’ resurrection. So the Psalms reveal Christ’s exaltation, especially by referring to his resurrection.

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The Father’s Appointment of Christ as Our High Priest: Hebrews 5:5; Psalm 2:7 Hebrews 5:1–5 also appeals to Psalm 2:7: For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called

by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.”

The writer of Hebrews thus takes this Psalm as revealing Jesus’ appointment as high priest on our behalf. Today, ostensibly evangelical New Testament scholars speak of Christ’s resurrection as a testimony to his Lordship but downplay the role and meaning of his death. Yet this passage inextricably ties Christ’s resurrection to his priestly work, which links it to his sacrificial death. It also draws attention to the eternal Covenant of Redemption between the Father and the Son by emphasizing that God appointed Christ to be our high priest in contrast to Christ appointing himself.

Christ as Appointed Mediator Will Dispense His Own Prerogatives to His People on the Last Day: Revelation 2:26–27; Psalm 2:9 he Psalms teach that Christ, after his resurrection, is seated at the right hand of the Father, from where he will administer retributive and remunerative justice. Thus, when our Lord speaks to the church in Thyatira, he encour-

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ages them to persevere and endure with these words: “The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. And I will give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev. 2:26–27; my emphasis). The emphasized words are from Psalm 2:9. They remind us that the Father has given Christ every spiritual blessing so that he may dispense them to his people on the last day, even as God has given his Son rule over and judgment of all his enemies.

Psalms Are Fulfilled in the Events of Jesus’ Ministry: Matthew 21:16; Psalm 8:2 ore than one New Testament writer emphasizes the Psalms’ references to significant events in Jesus’ life and ministry.

For instance, Matthew’s account of the triumphal entry includes this incident: “But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ they were indignant, and they said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read, “Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise”?’” (Matt.

21:15–16). The final quotation is from Psalm 8:2 and, given Matthew’s fulfillment motif, it is meant to be more than illustrative. It tells us that Jesus is worthy of praise—which is another of his claims to deity—as well as that he is fulfilling the Psalms.

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Psalms Testify that Everything Is Subjugated to Christ: 1 Corinthians 15:27; Psalm 8:6 aul’s appeal to Psalm 8 in 1 Corinthians 15:25–27 establishes that the Psalms teach that Christ rules the world for the sake of his people and for the glory of his Father. Paul says: “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For ‘God has put all things in subjection under his feet.’” Then Paul adds, “But when it says, ‘all things are put in subjection,’ it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him” in order to emphasize that Jesus’ heavenly providential rule neither competes with nor contradicts the rule of his Father.

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God’s Promise to David Is Fulfilled in Christ: Acts 13:35; Psalm 16:10 aul’s speech at Pisidian Antioch confirms that the Psalms speak of Christ’s everlasting resurrection life. Appealing to Psalm 16:10, Paul quotes this passage as the clincher in his argument

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for God’s having resurrected Jesus to everlasting life.

And as for the fact that he raised him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way, “I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David,” Therefore he says also in another psalm, “You will not let your Holy One see corruption.” For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption. (Acts 13:34–37) Jesus’ resurrection thus fulfilled the Psalm, and the Psalm establishes his incorruptibility.

David’s Words Are on Jesus’ Lips Even as He Dies: Luke 23:46; Psalm 31:5 he Psalms supply Christ’s dying words. As Luke records, “It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed.

And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this, he breathed his last” (Luke 23:44–46). Here the Son’s trust of his Father even in death far outdistances David’s faith in the midst of danger. Jesus’ quotation of this Palm at this critical moment is a tribute both to his own faith and to God’s faithfulness.

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Jesus Takes Up the Words of David, which Makes Sense Only in Light of His Doing His Father’s Will: Hebrews 10:5–7; Psalm 40:6–8 he author of Hebrews, in the midst of his arguments for the superiority of the New Covenant over the Old, says “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book”’” (Heb. 10:4–7). Here this Psalm is applied to Christ in a way that indicates that Christ came to “do the will of God” in the sense of fulfilling all the requirements for our fellowship with him, both preceptively and penally. In other words, this Psalm points to Jesus’ perfect active and passive obedience. In addition, its reference to Christ having come into the world to do his Father’s will testifies to the pactum salutis—or covenant of redemption—that the Father and the Son struck before the foundation of the world.

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Jesus’ Dispensation of Gifts to the Church Is an Act of the Lord, Spoken of by David: Ephesians 4:8; Psalm 68:18 hen Paul speaks of Christ’s gracious gifts to his New Covenant people, he sees it as fulfilling Psalm 68:18. “But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, ‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.’” He then specifies some of these gifts.

“And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness Christ” (Eph. 4:7–8, 11–13). So the Psalms foretell of Jesus’ giving gifts to his church.

saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet’? If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

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The Psalms Express Christ’s Experience: Romans 15:3; Psalm 69:9b n exhorting Christians to follow Christ’s example in bearing with the weak, Paul goes to the Psalms to express Christ’s experience of dishonor, blame, disapproval, and rejection by his own people. “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me’” (Rom. 15:1–3). Paul’s point is that if Christ could bear reproach, then we at least should be prepared to bear weaker brethren. The fact that Paul makes this point by going to the Psalms rather than by citing some incident from Jesus’ earthly life implies that the Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of the Psalms are one and the same.

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In his humanity, Jesus is David’s son and, in his deity, David’s Lord.

Christ’s Position Is Superior to the Angels: Hebrews 1:13; Psalm 110:1 he author of Hebrews uses this same verse to contrast the Son’s position with that of the angels and thus to demonstrate Christ’s superiority over them: “And to which of the angels has he ever said, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’?” So it is the Psalms that provide the theological ground for Christ’s preeminence over the angelic host.

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Jesus Is the Rejected Stone Who Becomes the Cornerstone: Matthew 21:42; Psalm 118:22–23 he words of Psalm 118 appear often in the New Testament. They predict Jesus’ rejection by his people and yet his establishment as Savior of the world, in whom alone salvation is found (see Acts 4:10–12). They are used to welcome Christ during his triumphal entry (see Matt.

21:9; Mark 11:9–10; John 12:13). At Matthew 21:42–46 (cf. Mark 12:10–11; Luke 20:17), Jesus quotes verses 22 and 23 to apply the Psalm’s rejected stone/chief cornerstone image to himself as a rebuke to the chief priests and Pharisees:

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Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to be a prophet.

The Deity and Priesthood of Christ: Matthew 22:44; Psalm 110:1 salms 110 and 118 are the Psalms most frequently applied to Christ in the New Testament. Psalm 110 is one of the New Testament’s major Old Testament witnesses to the deity of Christ. (It is also used to distinguish Christ’s priesthood from the Levitical line.) In Matthew 22:41–46, Jesus stumps the Pharisees on this Psalm’s proper interpretation. All of the synoptics record this incident (see Mark 12:35–37; Luke 20:41–44).

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Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ?

Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord,

A Plea for Recovering the Psalms in the Church Today have noted fewer than half of the New Testament’s references to Christ in the Psalms.

But this should be enough to give preachers

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confidence in finding Christ in them and proclaiming Christ from them. More generally, it should encourage Christians to read and to memorize and to pray and to sing the Psalms as distinctively Christian praise and devotion.

This would give us a natural way to introduce Scripture’s God to our postmodern contemporaries. Postmodern thinkers value spiritual experience over religious authority. They disdain the didactic and prefer the poetic. They distrust propositions but warm to story. So how do we reach them? Where can we take them to hear what God says about himself through his divinely authorized messengers? There is no better place to start than with the Psalms as both God’s authoritative revelation of himself and an inspired expression of sanctified human experience. The Psalms approach objective truth from the angle of subjective experience. They convey this truth, found in the joys of deliverance and the heat of trials, through the language of song and of tears. They affirm God’s sovereignty amid life’s vicissitudes.

deity who empathizes with human life’s intractabilities but who cannot do anything about them.

Reading and singing the Psalms can help us to transcend these ungodly caricatures. In the psalmist’s joys and sorrows we can find the resources for true spirituality—a spirituality that is more than surface deep and a piety equal to the exigencies of our experience. As the psalmist deals with life’s realities, he pours out his heart to the living God. In his complaints, his heartaches, and his feelings of emptiness—as well as through his joys and comforts—he makes contact with a God who is incomparably great and yet who loves his struggling children with an everlasting, covenantal love.

God and his Word dominate the psalmist’s experience without diminishing at all the wounds and quandaries and questions that life in a fallen world brings. So it is no wonder that, in addition to the New Testament’s writers finding our Lord Jesus Christ’s person and work, his divinity and ministry, his incarnation and resurrection, and his humiliation and glorification in the Psalms, we also find unique intimations of our Savior’s heart in them.

We know that Jesus read and Today’s church has lost the Psalms. [They] confound us with their robust memorized and prayed and sang the Psalms—that is why and realistic spirituality. they came so naturally to his lips. They reveal his spirituality and his experience. And in doing so they reveal the The Psalms can help us break the habit of cir- poetry and the music—and not just the proposicumscribing God according to our age’s standards tions and the prose—in our Savior’s heart. and expectations by allowing him to present himA friend of mine once argued before an ecclesiself to us through the inspired songs of his people. astical assembly that the church should be singing This God is his people’s greatest desire, with plans the Psalms as well as biblically based hymns. He and purposes that transcend their largest problems. noted that they are Scripture’s song book, that they He is their priority, not as a means to their ends but have been the core of sung praise for Christians as the one whose favor and fellowship are dearer to down through the centuries, and that they are more them than life itself and whom they value more biblically robust than the diet of texts usually sung than the sum total of everything else. He is pro- today. A respondent charged that this would “cover nouncedly politically incorrect, but he is also a the bride of Christ with the veil of Moses,” presumGod worth living and dying for. In his incompara- ably because he thought the Psalms witnessed insufble greatness, he is worth knowing, glorifying, and ficiently of the glories of Christian redemption. enjoying forever. At his right hand are pleasures With that opinion, my friend’s respondent sepforevermore (see Ps. 16:11). arated himself from the New Testament’s inspired Embracing these great truths about God was cen- writers as well as from the best of the whole tral to Reformation spirituality. This made it far Christian tradition. ■ superior to the rootlessness and imbalance that characterizes much modern evangelical spirituality. It is J. Ligon Duncan, III (Ph.D., University of Edinburgh, not true that Christians can go through life without Scotland) is pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in any struggles, any pain, any weakness, or without Jackson, Mississippi, and is an adjunct professor at Reformed any sense of absolute tragedy. God does not prom- Theological Seminary (Jackson, Mississippi). He is also a ise his people health and wealth. He does not exist member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing for our personal benefit. Above all, he is not, as Evangelicals. some Christians now openly claim, a scaled-down

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LIFT UP YOUR VOICE!

Church Music and

Contemporary Culture y students tell me that their high schools are segregated according to music tastes.

Some teenagers like pop; others like rap. And then we have the heavy metal headbangers (themselves divided into factions favoring death metal, thrash, Goth, and other musical sects). Then there are the “alternative” fans, the devotees of techno, and those who listen only to dance music. In addition, we must remember the “goat-ropers” who favor country music, not to mention the avid fans of contemporary Christian music.

In the high school social scene, groups of kids who like the same music hang out together. The fans of the same music typically share not only the

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same tastes but the same values. Music is more than entertainment; it is an expression of identity.

Another facet of the high school social scene is often forgotten by nostalgic adults.

These different groups, defined by their music, tend to conflict. They don’t like each other’s music. And they don’t like each other. Defining your own group against another is just one more way of establishing an identity, so such adolescent cliques are not surprising, nor are they necessarily vicious. But feelings can run high, and the arguments are often over music.

The problem is, adults tend to play the same game. When today’s aging baby boomers were teenagers, their music defined their generation.

They pitted their rock ‘n’ roll against their parents’

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music. And to this day, boomers listen to their oldies stations, which ceaselessly spin the music they listened to when they were teenagers. Ironically, they often sound just like their parents, inveighing against the music their kids are listening to, lauding the Beatles like their parents lauded Frank Sinatra.

When baby boomers were young, there used to be a “top forty,” consisting of a single slate of bestselling records played by identical-sounding radio stations across the country. Today, though the charts still exist, the musical landscape is far more diverse.

So many different genres of popular music compete and the audience is so segmented that there is no one style of contemporary music that defines the times. Now there is an abundance of mutually antagonistic musical styles, each championed by equally antagonistic groups. And so, just as the big

three television networks have lost much of their audience to the scores of specialty channels on cable or satellite, the music industry has had to adjust to a market of “narrow casting,” a phenomenon that is only accelerating with Internet radio and MP3 files.

No wonder churches today find themselves fighting over music, which seems to raise more passions and hard feelings than theology. It is no wonder the “worship wars” can get so bloody.

What are churches to do in this musical and cultural climate? Since there is no one contemporary style, how can church music be contemporary?

Since music is tied to group identity, how can worship leaders avoid antagonizing diverse members of their congregations by championing one particular style? Can music be used to forge the congregation, in all of its musical diversity, into a single body of

The Dialect of Worship: Handling

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he White Horse Inn radio program and Modern Reformation magazine recently cohosted a roundtable discussion on the divisive subject of contemporary trends in worship music. The participants were Michael Horton (MH), editor-inchief of Modern Reformation and co-host of the White Horse Inn, Ken Jones (KJ), pastor of Greater Union Baptist Church in Compton, California, and co-host of the White Horse Inn, Ronald Feuerhahn (RF), associate professor of historical theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, and Scotty Smith (SS), pastor of Christ Community Church (PCA) in Franklin, Tennessee.

MH: How have you two resolved the style-versus-substance issue that is ravaging many evangelical churches? Is style neutral?

If not, what role does it play?

SS: I don’t think there are many neutral areas. For my congregation in particular—we’re in the Nashville, Tennessee, area in the middle of so much style and trendiness—it’s been a challenge but a joy to think through how a biblical worldview impacts everything from style to substance to whim. We’re trying to tear down the false dichotomy between style and substance.

Hopefully everything will be substantive if it’s done to Christ’s glory.

RF: As a professor who sits in the pew on Sunday mornings, I have a slightly different perspective. I visit a lot of churches where the style-versus-substance issue is a reality. It may have changed its complexion slightly over the last few years from our repeatedly stressing that substance is the main point. The

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church’s mission and message are crucial and style should always follow them, but historically it has almost always been the other way around.

One principle observed throughout church history is that “the way of praying is the way of believing.” But it should be the other way around—belief or doctrine should lead and guide everything else. In my own denomination, some people are saddened by the tension we are experiencing regarding some doctrinal matters because this seems to be preventing us from giving full time to the church’s mission and evangelism efforts. But actually these doctrinal controversies determine the message we preach. The faith—the message—is the substantive thing in church life and the rest must follow that. You don’t have good evangelism unless it’s based on substantive faith and doctrine.

MH: Is it possible to have substantive faith and doctrine with stylistic diversity?

RF: I think so. You can have stylistic diversity because the style can serve the situation.

MH: Scotty, what role do you think music generally plays in the weekly worship service? I ask because whether we are talking about—I don’t like these polarizations—traditional or contemporary worship, music seems to be the most divisive issue today.

SS: In the last couple of years, we have taken some leads from the post-exilic community when God brought his people back from the Babylonian captivities. We studied how Ezra and Nehemiah’s leadership was brought to bear as God’s people reestablished themselves as a worshiping community in the promised land and found three poles to emerge that enabled us to look

believers, unified not only with each other but also with fellow believers throughout the centuries?

Genre and Purpose irst of all, the warring factions should realize that, in spite of the way the argument is usually framed, the issue is not whether or not it is appropriate for music to be contemporary. New church music is being written and published every day, including new music by arch-traditionalists.

As a committee member working on the new Lutheran hymnal, I have been introduced to many newly written hymns, which are wonderful and prompt no complaints, even among the most rigorous liturgical purists. These new hymns are contemporary in their language, their imagery, and their music. They are, however, definitely hymns—

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that is, songs written specifically for congregational singing during worship.

Not all music works well for group singing.

Most music today, including the various styles of pop music, is written for individual performance. A congregation cannot sing together an Amy Grant song (although I have seen it tried) any more than it could sing together a Pavarotti aria. The music performed by these professional artists hinges on expression, phrasings, note-bendings, and coloratura (or elaborate embellishments) that cannot be duplicated by a large group of musically untrained church members trying to sing in unison.

Most large groups singing together include different voices and ranges; some who can only sing high, and some who can only sing low. A hymn must suit them all. So hymns are typically written in

g Style, Substance, and Caricatures at worship and music in fresh ways. They are the historical, the contextual, and the eschatological poles. The minor prophets whom God raised up at that time emphasized the historical pole.

They helped God’s people to rediscover their story. Likewise, we must rediscover this story, for it binds us to the gospel’s whole meta-narrative. This means that we must sing the great hymns of Zion. Yet as God’s people re-entered the land new songs were also being written—songs representing both the laments of those who remembered the old temple and grieved and wept real tears as they saw the disappointing reality of the rebuilt temple, as well as songs representing the good news in that particular moment of God’s outworking of his historical/redemptive plan. We also need to have new songs that we can sing about our particular moment in redemptive history. God also called his reestablished people to look to the eschaton through Zechariah and Haggai. And eschatology must shape how we think about worship and music because one day we will gather with God’s whole covenant family around the throne of grace, where life’s rich diversity will still be manifest even as it is celebrated in the perfect unity that will mark God’s whole people.

Music is not neutral, so its style needs to be shaped by these poles that God has established for his pilgrim people. So we try to get our bearings each Sunday in terms of them. How does our worship on this Lord’s Day establish our community with the church triumphant and militant, the historical moorings? How are we now experiencing the gospel by God’s Spirit? What are the new songs that are being written? And how should the song of the New Jerusalem shape what we do even now as we connect

with the larger international family of God? MH: Thinking for a moment about the historical pole, some of us are concerned about what is happening inter-generationally. It seems, especially as some churches move to a traditional service followed by a contemporary service, that we are pulling the generations apart by doing niche marketing. To what extent is Christianity inherently inter-generational and to what extent does the music in the worship have to express that?

SS: For me, inter-generational worship must start with helping young and old alike rethink how we define worship. Is it the other-centered adoration of God for his sake? Or is it simply some consumeristic orientation where I, in any given service, find the songs I connect with? Worship is always response. We must always declare God’s Word and think more about how we can bring pleasure to the heart of the God who has so generously given his Son to us. So we must move away from the insidious consumeristic orientation that blights so much evangelical Christianity today.

RF: Ironically, the inter-generational issue has been changing dramatically in the last few years. In one large church of my denomination, the young people are trying to drag their parents out for the 8:00 a.m. traditional service. This is quite remarkable.

Insofar as the church is “catholic” (or universal) in the proper sense, we should try to keep the generations together. Otherwise you do have different congregations worshiping in the same place, which does not seem to be a very positive thing.

MH: How do you deal with this claim? “Traditionalists are just elitist and ingrown while contemporary music folks are just [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 3 8 ]

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parts, taking advantage of the vocal diversity by employing schemes of harmony. They typically have a clear melody line, which makes it easier for everyone, including those who cannot handle the harmony and cannot read music. The lines, rhythms, and meter tend to be stolid and regular, for good reason; otherwise, singers would get confused and could not keep up. Put more positively, a song written for group singing should allow everyone to participate together in an act of common worship.

With hymns, not only is the music written to be sung collectively, the content should apply to everyone. So the words must not express an individual experience, but, rather, either objective truths or an experience that all Christians share.

Thus, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come,” “There is a fountain filled with blood,” and “A mighty fortress is our God” all express, with emotional and poetic intensity, biblical realities. When hymns use the first-person pronoun, they should express not some unique personal history but something universally true for every Christian. Every Christian can say and sing “I once was lost, but now

pop and want to turn worship into entertainment.” Are these caricatures? How can we combat and move beyond them (if they are caricatures) when we discuss important topics like worship music? How have you in practice overcome these caricatures?

RF: Sometimes they aren’t caricatures. You can get elitists who are just that—elitists. They do not respond as good Christians should to other people’s opinions. Yet having said that, they may often be caricatures and then we can discard them.

Lutheran worship always emphasizes God’s initiative. This should make anyone, traditional or contemporary, equal in God’s presence. We are all there as recipients to be gifted by God. And so, since it is not in the first place our doing or our deciding but God’s, we follow his lead. His lead comes to us through his Word in terms of what he says to us about himself, his plan of salvation, and our reality as his baptized children. We respond to those things. That should bring us all together so that our response will be quite similar, no matter what our age or background. My friend Ed Veith talks about high culture, middle culture, and low culture and how the church always seems to aim for a higher culture. Putting it that way explains some things, but someone might ask, “Why should that be the church’s aim?” No matter how we label it, we must respond to God in a way that gives him the best there is to give because of the fullness of what he has given to us in Christ. We are open-handed beggars before God’s throne. He puts into our hands these great gifts—and as they

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I’m found.” But being “seated one day at the organ,” whereupon “I struck one chord of music/Like the sound of a great Amen”—well, every Christian has not done that. That song may be fine in other contexts, but not in collective worship.

Of course, there are other kinds of church music. Our Lutheran hymnbook committee is also looking at new musical settings for the great texts of the liturgy, those scriptural passages that have been used in the Church’s worship for centuries; for example, the Kyrie (“Lord, have mercy upon us”), the Gloria in Excelsis (“Glory be to God on high”), the Agnus Dei (“O Christ, Thou Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world”), and so on.

These typically employ the musical genre known as chant.

Go to a Jewish synagogue and you will hear the cantor singing the words of the Hebrew Scriptures.

This is chanting, which renders a prose text in a flowing, irregular musical line. In Christian worship, chanting is associated with Roman Catholics (e.g., their Gregorian chant); and it is integral to an Eastern Orthodox service. But Anglicans have also

come into our hands they make us new creatures and so we respond in new ways. We do not respond as young or old, hip or not. We respond as people whom God has gifted, using primarily the language that God has given us, Scripture’s language, which is not the world’s language. We then begin to catechize the new people in our midst. This is also one of the great gifts of the church—to instruct newcomers about this new experience, this new community, and what God has given us that brings us all together.

MH: The apostle Paul says that music—singing psalms and spiritual songs—is a way of catechizing. It is a way of teaching and admonishing each other. I think, in light of what you have said, that one of the great challenges before us with a lot of contemporary music is that it involves a focus on us and what we are doing. “We bring you glory.” “We are bringing you praise.” “We just want to worship you.” “We . . . we . . . we . . . we . . . we.”

This is something we don’t find even in the pietistic hymns of the 18th and 19th centuries. The piety of those older hymns seems to be saturated in God and what he has done in Jesus Christ.

Doesn’t Christian music need to attend much more to what God has done in Christ and then extol those mighty acts rather than immediately stepping up to the plate to say what we are going to do in our piety?

RF: We really do live in a different era. In the nineteenth century, Matthew Arnold talked about living in the sea of faith.

contributed much to church music with their plain song chant, and Lutherans regularly chant both the liturgy and the Psalms.

Chant allows music to be attached to the direct, word-by-word text of Scripture. Any Bible translation, as well as any prose passage, can be set to music by means of chant. Translation into English poetry is not necessary to fit the metrical requirements of a particular tune. In chant, the tune changes according to the words, rather than vice versa. Historically, the Psalms—which were originally written to be sung—have been chanted.

Some Reformed Christians believe that only the Psalms, and no other hymns, should be sung in church. Typically, however, they sing metrical Psalms, a rhyming, rhythmic translation of the biblical text. We Lutherans wonder why they do not just chant them. That way they could sing them word for word from Scripture.

I realize, of course, that this solution is unlikely, and I am not urging Christians who do not have this tradition to endorse it. One principle of church music is that it should be faithful to the particular

theological tradition of which the congregation is a part. Because music helps to define and forge an identity, members of a particular denomination undoubtedly have their own musical heritage, which they should respect, continue, and enlarge.

Chant illustrates another, more universal, characteristic of church music: It exists to serve and be subject to God’s Word. Chant embodies this in its very form, but hymns should also be grounded in Scripture. However poetically elaborated it may be, a hymn should be just as biblical as a metrical Psalm.

This does not mean that songs that are not biblical are bad or may not be sung—it just means that they are not appropriate in worship, which should be deliberately saturated in Scripture. Thus the beloved Christmas carol “We Three Kings” is not in our Lutheran hymnal. Scripture does not specify that they were three, or that they were kings, or that they traversed afar through field and fountain, moor and mountain. That’s okay. We don’t object to the song being played softly in the background at the shopping mall. But we don’t sing it in worship.

So old, beloved songs may be just as inappro-

There was a vertical orientation, whereas today we are very, very much more centered on ourselves. As Richard Russell said a couple of years ago in the New York Times, now Woody Allen’s stammering phrase, “I I I I I I I I I,” begins to sound like a complete sentence. And, even for those who try so hard to offer their worship in terms of this “we” phenomenon for what they think are good reasons, this language is basically anthropocentric. It is meant to be otherwise, I assume, but it really is oriented to their own expressions. Even the way the music comes across is at times indulgent in the same way.

SS: It seems like the line between the personal and the privatized is getting blurred. We can certainly appreciate any faithcommunity that wants the continuum of transcendence and immanence to be balanced. It is appropriate to sing with Charles Wesley’s wonder, “and can it be that I should gain an interest in my Savior’s blood?” Yet what concerns me is the privatization of the way we use these personal pronouns in this culture. We need to see these pronouns become collective and missional so that we are looking at the final center of worship as the new heaven and the new earth where there will be no building where we gather but where the whole of life will be lived to God’s glory.

KJ: I am African-American and Baptist. Style plays a great part in African-American worship. In African-American churches, long before you get to the question of substance, style permeates. I think one reason for the emotional flavor—the style—of

African-American worship is that it interprets the salvation message in a particular way. We associate with the children of Israel in the wilderness. That leads to a question: In talking about style you raise the issue of traditional versus contemporary. But how much do other issues influence whether the style is considered traditional or contemporary—issues such as denomination? You come from a Lutheran background, Ron, and I know that in the Lutheran church the issue of faithfulness to your standards—the Book of Concord—plays a big part. Then there is the issue of ethnicity. I look at the Asian church and, again, in many AsianAmerican churches there are great conflicts and questions concerning worship. When they contrast traditional and contemporary, culture and ethnicity play a large role. How much should those issues influence their American forms and expressions of worship?

Sometimes there is a tendency to assume that the worship wars are all about theology versus non-theology. But there are other issues that play a part in reflecting that theology.

SS: Would it be helpful for us to find some synonyms for style? “Style” has gotten a life of its own, but when I think about, for instance, a conversation with my wife, if I really am committed to loving her as Christ loves the church, then I’m going to learn her dialect. I’m going to learn what connects with her, what reflects her heart. Similarly, when I am part of a community of faith, what is appropriate language in that community? The book [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 4 0 ]

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priate in worship as new, contemporary songs. And this raises another important principle for church music: We can enjoy a particular song or style of music without demanding that it be employed in church. There are many different musical styles, which we are free to enjoy. But not all of them meet the specific aims of a worship service.

“Jerusalem the Golden” just does not make it as a party tune for a beach volleyball game. “Louie, Louie” would be more fitting for that purpose. By the same token, “Louie, Louie” does not fit in a worship service, even if its words are slightly altered. A Christian can play volleyball and go to church without confusing the two activities and without demanding one musical style in both settings.

Sacred Music and American Culture ome people may consider it ironic, but Christian music has been profoundly influential in American culture, including in popular music.

Christians have a history of actively shaping culture, including music, and not just following trends.

As far back as 1770, churches in the South were

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of Lamentations and many of the Psalms reflect styles that are contextually appropriate to great grief or to the call for repentance or even to the unanswered questions in Israelite hearts.

Sometimes Scripture’s style reflects high celebration. Quite honestly, there are pictures of worship in Scripture that push me way beyond what I’m comfortable with. For instance, it is going to take a lot of faith and repentance on my part to get in the worship service in Revelation 5, because I don’t like to be prostrate on my face. I’d rather sit here in control, thank you very much.

So where does the regulative principle come in? Scripture should become the ultimate arbiter of style so that the question is not whether I either enjoy or don’t enjoy doing something or am comfortable or uncomfortable with it. My response should become congruent with the different aspects of the great story of the gospel and thus take on much different styles in different contexts. This may move us beyond doing what we think is abstractly most honoring to God to doing what really is concretely most honoring.

MH: Ron, you talked earlier about the need for catholicity. I think that is part of what Ken is saying, too. We want to link hands not only with our brothers and sisters in our particular culture and our particular denomination but also cross-culturally and cross- denominationally with anyone who is genuinely catholic in the sense of affirming the apostolic faith. But this is something I really can’t fathom. How can we be catholic while recognizing

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sponsoring singing schools where members would gather to learn how to sing. The shape note tradition taught even unlettered students how to read music by using a musical transcription that portrayed the fa-sola tones with different shapes in addition to the lines on a staff. This resulted in what music historians call a major democratization of music.

The so-called Sacred Harp tradition (named for the title of a popular songbook in the mid-1800s) was a means of devotion, meditation, and fellowship with other Christians. Originally, this music was not intended for Sunday worship, nor was it any sort of choir practice or a means to practice special music for church. It was not designed to be performed publicly. In Sacred Harp music, the singers face each other in a closed circle or square, with the goal of never dominating as a solo performer or excelling to impress people. They faced each other so that they could hear each other’s voices blend. They were singing to God and to each other. Both the musical and the spiritual goal was harmony.

In this tradition, church members would get together to sing, just as they might get together for

that different cultures bring their cultural distinctiveness into worship, and that to some extent they must or we would not be the particular, culturally-conditioned human beings that we are?

RF: Perhaps now I’ve got to take back everything I’ve said!

But I hope I don’t have to. Let me ask this, “By what authority, by what right, could a traditionalist claim that his way is better than the contemporary way?” Those of us who may want to be called “traditionalist” need to answer this question. I might answer it like this. I hope I can affirm much that is contemporary in worship.

But let’s think for a moment about the divide between the era when there was the sea of faith and today, between a more objective way of understanding Christian faith and a more subjective way of understanding it. Is genuinely catholic faith with an evangelical heart better served by the traditional way of worshiping because it is more objective, because it attends more to God than to me? Friedrich Schleiermacher’s late eighteenth and early nineteenth century theology is very aptly described as I Theologie—“I theology”—and we have suffered ever since from this great shift.

Traditional worship is rooted in a time before this shift. Now contemporary music can conform to the older standards and thus be catholic and be able to be sung by all Christians everywhere but its actual conformity to such standards is rare. These two standards—catholic in substance and evangelical in principle— balance each other beautifully. They are not opposed. In our day and age, we must come to appreciate that these standards have

Bible study or in a prayer group. Though these songs influenced what was later sung in the sanctuary, from the beginning they had a life of their own outside the church.

The nineteenth century witnessed the rise of camp meetings and evangelistic revivals, which featured songs from this tradition of popular Christian piety. The term gospel music came out of these revivals, referring specifically to songs that carried an evangelistic message, the salvation of sinners through Christ. Gospel songs typically followed the pattern of the other evangelistic messages proclaimed at these meetings—the personal testimony, a narrative of confession in which a Christian told about his life of sin and his conversion through faith in Christ.

Evangelistic camp meetings were not, however, the same as church services. They were directed at nonbelievers, although Christians from many different church bodies attended them in droves. They were not construed as worship services but as outreach tools. Emotional, informal, and highly personal, these meetings were held outside the church

in tents and were distinct from the more formal and traditional liturgies of church worship services.

Denominations with strong theologies of worship––such as Presbyterians and Episcopalians–– maintained this distinction, but with the rise of the Pentecostal movement in the early twentieth century and the emphasis on revivals among Baptists, Methodists, and other groups, the line between camp meeting and church service began to blur.

In the ensuing controversies over what music was appropriate for what purpose, the musical genres became further refined. Hymns were understood as directed upward, from the person to God. Gospel, on the other hand, was directed outward, from one human being to another. One preacher, the Reverend Phil Kerr, put it this way: “A hymn is a prayer set to music,” and should be sung reverently. “A gospel song is a testimony or exhortation, set to music” and should be sung “with the same enthusiasm and earnestness and victory with which a testimony or exhortation would be delivered.”

Early gospel music was not just vapid piety, however. Gospel songs tended to be forceful, dramatic

stood the test of much time, which is in fact what “catholic” in this sense means.

When people say to me, “After all, your liturgy is man-made,” I always correct them and say, “Oh no, it’s not man-made. It’s men-made.” Plural. In other words, it is not the art of one man.

It’s not the act of one man. And that’s where subjective, privatized, “me” orientations are overcome. A group of men can still err, but they are more likely to correct one another and bless each other than when they act alone.

MH: Especially when that liturgy has evolved over much time and from so many different cultures. In order to wrap things up, can you each give us some encouraging examples from your own contexts?

SS: In light of what Ron has just so wonderfully said, we find genuine catholicity comes to life the more we use historic prayers and confessions—the more, for instance, we weave into our texture the Heidelberg Catechism and the Confession of Faith and the rest of the Westminster Standards. One of the ways we enjoy our rich diversity of musical expressions without that being just privatized existential fancy is that we shape our liturgy more upon the Church’s historic liturgy. That liturgy has a traceable form; and as we champion it and use its wonderful words, saying and praying them together, it seems to do more than anything else to help our church family to get over thinking that “we” are the point.

MH: And your church isn’t exactly just the older demographic.

SS: No. In fact, our median age is probably about late 20s, so we are a young congregation.

MH: Ron, do you see signs that we are getting beyond the worship wars about music in your own circles?

RF: Yes. I remember meetings with African-Americans in our church about a new hymnal. I asked them, “Well, how can we help?” And they outlined what they earnestly desired. At first, I was a little alarmed at my own reaction—some of this was so alien to my own experience and I felt very uncomfortable about it.

And yet, as we began to talk more, I found myself opening up to the challenge put before me. If catholic-in-substance and evangelical-in-principle really are good standards, then they should be able to serve all of the community in every way. And this is what I am beginning to see is happening. There are also, in a recent hymnal supplement that came out in ’98 in our church, new songs from around the world that express the catholic faith marvelously. I’m very encouraged by that as well.

This transcript is an abridged and edited version of the original interview.

An audio CD of that interview may be purchased for $6.00 from our Resource Center (page 27) or by calling 215-546-3696. Log on now to www.modernreformation.org to hear a clip of this interview.

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stories about temptation, backsliding, death, damnation, and being washed clean in the blood of Jesus.

They were down-to-earth, real-to-life narratives that never flinched from the dark side of the human condition—songs often described as blood music.

Thus, the Louvin Brothers, as late as 1959, recorded an album entitled Satan Is Real. It includes such harrowing songs as “Dying from Home, and Lost,” “The Drunkard’s Doom,” and “Satan’s Jeweled Crown.” But not everything is brimstone here. The album also includes songs of grace and salvation, such as “The Angels Rejoiced Last Night,” “The River of Jordan,” and “He Can Be Found.” There is also the pointed evangelism of “Are You Afraid to Die?” Perhaps most representative is the old tune popularized by the Carter Family, “The Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea,” about an alcoholic at the end of his rope turning in repentance to Christ.

As the music became more commercial––and as American Christianity lost its theological intensity––gospel music began to lose its edge. Groups such as the Happy Goodman Family began to stress happy, optimistic inspirational and uplifting songs about moralism and sentimental family values, as opposed to the blood songs of tragedy, repentance, and bloody redemption.

Music historian Bill Malone claims there are now more genuinely Christian themes—more earnest, honest, emotionally searing blood songs—in country music than in today’s sanitized gospel music.

“Country singers are much more likely to sing the old-time ‘blood songs’ and world-rejection songs of early Protestantism than are the gospel singers. As gospel music has prospered and fused more directly with pop music, it has shorn itself of the sectarianism that once gave it strength and identity.”

Indeed, as is evident in the film, as well as the best-selling soundtrack O Brother, Where Art Thou?, gospel songs once mingled seamlessly with secular songs about love, work, and troubles. The old blood songs are still part of the repertoire of bluegrass music, which also blends songs of faith with those of everyday life without any sense of contradiction.

In the meantime, African-Americans were developing gospel music of their own. Expressing both intense suffering and intense joy, black gospel would mutate into the blues, jazz, and rhythm ‘n’ blues.

When these two strains of music by poor Southerners, white and black, came together—guitar-driven country plus rhythm ‘n’ blues—the result, for better or worse, was rock ‘n’ roll. As popular music drifted farther from its roots, taking a multitude of different forms, it became more and more commercial, and less grounded in its moral and religious tradition.

Ironically, it is this late, vapid, and purposefully

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superficial music that many Christians today want to bring into the church. As cultural critic Ken Myers has shown in his book, All God’s Children and Blue-Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture, pop culture has a way of driving out both the high culture of serious artistic creation and the folk culture of authentic human communities.

Christian musicians attempting to be contemporary today would do well to draw on the rich heritage of Christian music, both that of serious musical artistry and the folk traditions that gave Christian music its authenticity and its energy. They should also remember that there can be a distinction between Christian music addressed to unbelievers and, thus, set in the world, and Christian music written for worship in the community of faith. Another legacy of the history of America’s sacred music is that a Christian can live in several realms simultaneously and that even the secular sphere, in its very secularity, already belongs to God. The Church Culture o what does this all mean for churches embroiled in worship wars? Although Christians live in a culture, they also constitute a culture of their own—the community of faith that is the church.

Christians who have a vocation for music—the God-given gifts, talents, and opportunities that define a musician—should certainly exercise their callings. Vocation is generally lived out in the world. The culture needs Christians in the music business at every level. A Christian musician need not be involved in a music ministry to serve God because, as Christians have expressed through the biblical doctrine of vocation over the centuries, all honorable work—secular as well as religious— affords them a way to serve God by serving their neighbors. Consequently, Christians can pursue their musical callings in secular as well as religious settings. Of course, Christian musicians remain under the moral law—and their acknowledgment of this may distinguish them from their colleagues—but they need not fear being innovative and should pursue their art wherever it leads them.

As for Christians who enjoy music, their tastes may be wide ranging, and will depend on many factors, including especially their personalities and the groups with which they belong and identify. Again, Christians, as all people, are under God’s moral law; and this may influence what music they feel free to enjoy. Yet barring that, Christian freedom opens up the whole spectrum of music because the whole aesthetic realm is part of God’s creation and his gift.

So what kind of music should we use in church?

Many Christians, in trying to reach “the” culture,

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miss the point. In today’s postmodern society, there are many cultures and subcultures, and many musical styles. There is no one kind of contemporary music. Nor is there one contemporary culture that can be reached.

But once we have set aside the specifically theological issues that may come into play, we can still say this. In today’s climate, if a church seizes upon one particular style of popular music, then that will privilege those whose music is chosen and alienate everyone else. And it is not just that young people’s music will hinder elderly members from fully participating in worship, as serious a breech of Christian compassion as that is. (I have heard men and women who have devoted 50 years and more to their congregations, and who, facing impending death, are in need of its ministry, express feeling cut out of their own church by saying, “I don’t recognize my church anymore.”) More than that, the very young people whom the church is trying to reach prefer different styles of music, not all of which are likely to be represented. In fact, what usually happens is that a baby boomer is given authority and implements as “contemporary” the style of music that he grew up with thirty years ago.

Younger people may very well mock that music, seeing it as 1960’s Peter, Paul, and Mary music or as the music the Christian subculture at the high school listens to, which may not commend it.

It is good that churches want to reach the unchurched. Yet it is a mistake to think that nonbelievers are likely to appreciate praise songs projecting a very intimate, emotional relationship to Jesus Christ. Usually, those songs make the nonbeliever feel even more out of place. Nonbelievers become believers by hearing the gospel, which is conveyed

by God’s Word. Music that points to that Word and that proclaims that gospel will be far more effective evangelistically than out-of-date pop songs that are platitudinous and sentimental. Those songs can make Christianity seem fake and superficial. And to seem unreal is to seem untrue. And making the gospel seem untrue is, unfortunately, the end result of many platitudinous and sentimental pop songs used in some contemporary church services.

The church must offer people something different from what they have already experienced. To offer people, trapped in a materialistic world of commercialism and hedonism, a taste of transcendence and holiness can awaken their deepest spiritual needs. Ironically, an alien musical style can seem more “new”—that is, different and fresh—than some clichéd style with which we are all too familiar. Consequently, the church should affirm its own rich and diverse musical heritage. By doing so, it can draw people into a new corporate identi-

ty—that is, into its own culture as the body of Christ, the people of God. God’s church consists of people “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev. 7:9) and from every generation. Every group and every generation have contributed its own contemporary church music. Yet the church is always more than any one of its groups or generations.

So, instead of imposing one musical style and one cultural identity upon everyone, it is better for churches to use music that does not belong to any specific group or generation. The church’s music, in its vast range, is not anybody’s music. In a typical church service, there can be hymns in many different styles, from varied nations and eras. A song based on a sixteenth-century chorale can be followed by a nineteenth-century hymn filled with Victorian earnestness, interspersed with a Psalm from ancient Israel, followed by a medieval response, even as the choir sings an African-American spiritual in a twentyfirst century arrangement.

When people return home from church, they may listen to Big Band music, alternative country, jazz fusion, or teeny-bopper pop. But while in a service, they can all join together in the music of the universal church. And, thus, a local church’s music may truly come to embody the communion of the saints, the full diversity and yet the deep unity of the body of Christ, from whom arises a chorus that every Christian must join. ■

Gene E. Veith (Ph.D., University of Kansas) is professor of English at Concordia University-Wisconsin, cultural editor of World magazine, and a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Dr. Veith’s most recent book is God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Crossway, 2002).

Professor Veith’s section entitled “Sacred Music and American Culture” is adapted from his book with Thomas Wilmeth, Honky-Tonk Gospel: The Story of Sin and Salvation in Country Music (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2001), pp. 19–24. The quotation from the Rev. Phil Kerr is taken from Dorothy Horstman, Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy (Nashville: Country Music Foundation Press, 1996), p. 33; and Bill Malone’s remarks can be found in the liner notes to Country Gospel, Vol. I in the series The Greatest Country Music Recordings of All Time (The Country Music Foundation Official Archive Collection).

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We Confess…

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e have … five parts covering the whole of Christian teaching [namely, teaching about the Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, baptism and the Lord’s Supper], which we should constantly teach and require recitation word for word. For you should not assume that the young people will learn and retain this teaching from sermons alone. When these parts have been well learned, one may assign them also some psalms or hymns, based on these subjects, to supplement and confirm their knowledge. Thus young people will be led into the Scriptures and make progress every day.

Martin Luther, Larger Catechism, 1530

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t is the duty of Christians to praise God publicly, by singing of psalms together in the congregation, and also privately in the family. In singing of psalms, the voice is to be tunably and gravely ordered; but the chief care must be to sing with understanding, and with grace in the heart, making melody unto the Lord.

That the whole congregation may join herein, every one that can read is to have a psalm book; and all others, not disabled by age or otherwise, are to be exhorted to learn to read. But for the present, where many in the congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the minister, or some other fit person appointed by him and the other ruling officers, do read the psalm, line by line, before the singing thereof.

The Directory for Public Worship, “Of Singing of Psalms,” 1645

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he reading of the Scriptures with godly fear, the sound preaching and conscionable hearing of the Word, in obedience unto God, with understanding, faith and reverence, singing of psalms with grace in the heart; as also, the due administration and worthy receiving of the sacraments instituted by Christ, are all parts of the ordinary religious worship of God: beside religious oaths, vows, solemn fastings, and thanksgivings upon special occasions, which are, in their several times and seasons, to be used in an holy and religious manner.

Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XXI, 1647

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Why do we praise God? A. We praise God, not to obtain anything, but because God’s Being draws praise from us.

The Catechism of the Episcopal Church in the United States, 1977

Audiences typically gather to watch a performance. The Church’s worship, however, is anything but a performance; it is, rather, the gathering of God’s saints around His gifts so that they may receive and have life. It truly is unlike anything else in the entire world. How the people of God gather for and conduct themselves in worship will, then, reflect that reality, namely, that this is heaven on earth. Far from being solely a somber and grave experience, the Church’s worship will exhibit a full range of human emotions as God’s gifts are received. Joy and exuberance will be as evident as solemnity. No emotion, however, exists for its own sake, but is the response of faith to the goodness of God’s gifts.

Reflections on Contemporary Worship, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Commission on Worship, January 1998

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An Interview with Chuck Fromm

The Language of Worship MR: What is a good definition of worship?

CHUCK FROMM

Executive Editor Worship Leader magazine

CF: The apostle Paul did a pretty good job in defining worship as action in Romans 12:1–2. The key word here is “therefore,” which refers to Paul’s meditation regarding the work of God in Jesus Christ in the previous chapter. Worship is a holy spiritual sacrifice involving our whole being to the praise and glory of God. It is not merely an existential leap or a “feel good” experience or even satisfaction of institutional or informally produced ritual.

choose? We are just now discovering a treasure trove in the twelfth century! At the other pole, there are those obsessed with new production in the present. These people say or act like the only form or style that really matters is one that is created today. The problem with this group is that style generally rules over substance.

MR: What are the contemporary trends in the overall philosophy of worship?

CF: Frankly, I don’t see theology driving these trends as much as sociology or culture. For example, from the first century there has been a succession of what has been termed “Jesus Movements.” The first century Jesus Movement birthed many different forms of fellowship with the first order of worship generating in what is known as the Didache around the first century [a short Christian manual on morals and church practice].

Within the nature of man is the need to organize (especially in the West) into hierarchical institutions. This has led to successive flow of Christian movements and institutions.

Today we see such structures from very loosely formed organizational networks like Calvary Chapel to the rigid hierarchies of denominations.

But I think the information age is flattening the hierarchies somewhat, and more and more Christians are involved in worship events and social action across what in the past would have been theological, worship tradition or denominational lines. I believe this can be done without sacrificing either our big “I” identity, which we have in common through the work of our

CF: There has been a long-term trend in the [baby] boomer culture to discover authenticity in worship. Mainline religious institutions that had maintained and produced a variety of Western European worship forms since the beginning of the colonization of America were rejected by the majority of the largest (if not greatest) generation ever to be born in America. There are those who gather around the heap of rejected forms and say, “This is where true and authentic meaning can be found.” “Our ancestors heard from God and we should follow in their footsteps.” Of course, this group suffers from one key issue: the abundance of history and resulting overwhelming number of artifacts. And while these worship artifacts may be highly substantive, few people are educated in the styles that would translate their performance into worship communication.

The question is with what tradition should we align, east or west? And after that decision is made, what time period or context do you wish to

MR: What are the theological traditions or distinctives that drive these trends?

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Father in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, or our little “I” identity, which is the specific language of worship in which we have been rehearsed and trained.

MR: What do you make of the rapid transformation of American church music from a “high culture” or “folk culture” approach to music to a more “pop culture” approach to music?

CF: Again, this is more of a function of language than theology. Language is our most basic cultural form. As we move from the fresh well of experience our figures of speech tend to move from metonymy to metaphor. Metaphor requires more interpretation. Metonymic understanding comes from living within the culture and understanding the cultural clues. For example, in the days of the gold rush here in California, it was not uncommon for the miners to be entertained from the works of Shakespeare. In 1849, Shakespeare was part of popular culture. Today, one needs a course in literature to interpret the meaning of Shakespeare.

So it is axiomatic that the further the culture that created the product moves into history, the greater the requirement for study on the part of the audience to gain insight and understanding to the meaning of the language.

own musical history is not reflected by our Western pop culture?

CF: I think the trend is more local today than global. We see this in the indigenization of worship forms in the United States. Rock music and the blues are American innovations and these have merged with the European sounds of the cathedrals. I think the late communication prophet Marshall McLuhan was right regarding the Global Village. But today we are aching for the village and the sounds of the village.

MR: What influence does Worship Leader magazine have in churches across the country?

CF: You would have to tell me about this. I hope and pray for good and to the Glory of God! MR: What is the driving philosophy of the magazine?

CF: Those who work at Worship Leader are passionate about worship. At the same time, we believe in a creative God who has inspired an abundance of form old and new. We try to celebrate this diversity, and at the same time gain a greater understanding of what God is telling us in Scripture about himself and how he is to be worshiped. We have a saying orship…is not merely an existential leap or a “feel good” around Worship Leader that goes like this, “God created experience or even satisfaction of institutional or infor30,000 species of flies and then proceeded with the mally produced ritual. creation of cockroaches.

There is not one right fly!”

Thus, the cultural products become what have There is also not one right worship form. I think been labeled “high brow” culture. This, by the way, of the cacophony of praise that generates every is an ethnic slur against “low brow” nations. There Sabbath to our Father through the mediation of is obviously a role for the classics. Much of what Jesus Christ and prompted by the Holy Spirit as was recaptured in the Reformation by the great just that. A wide variety of words that ultimately Martin Bucer and the singing of the Psalms at spell action meeting the personal, local community Strasbourg, for example, was due to regaining the and the world’s needs. ability to read Hebrew. Bucer’s innovations inspired John Calvin, and the rest is, as they say, MR: How do writers such as Hughes Oliphant Old and Robert Webber shape the context of the purpose and editorial history!

So, I guess my short answer is that I wouldn’t direction of the magazine? label anything as “rapid transformation.” Perhaps the contemporary music style innovations have CF: These two worship authorities bring the high reached a cultural tipping point of some sort. But value of making the past present to our readers. then I would be on the alert for classics to reassert One of the two words of worship introduced by the themselves. Currently, the most popular album at New Testament, “Maranatha,” ties the past, present, and future into one reality for the worshiper.

Warner Brothers is an album of opera.

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MR: What are some of the ramifications of the dispersion of this style of music across the globe, even into countries whose

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MR: What are the most significant changes in the Contemporary Christian Music genre that you have witnessed over the past twenty years?

CF: I don’t see Contemporary Christian Music as a genre. I think of CCM as more of a marketing brand name or an industrialized expression based on the spiritual renewal of what was known as the Jesus Movement. Of course, it can symbolize many things to different people depending upon their relationship to CCM, whether users of or producers of CCM products or competitors and critics of CCM. Like most labels, CCM is a fiction and, therefore, does not exist in reality. But it is not a genre. CCM has produced music and new hymns that have been adopted by worship communities.

But CCM also produces a form of popular cultural romance music with a “Sweet & Low” kind of sugar content. I think the significant change in this industry has been the centralization of the capital and resources in Nashville and increasing patronage of this industry.

Also, the boundaries of distribution have been increased through significant new direct selling channels and general retail marketing opportunities. On the creative side, I believe that there have been significant breakthroughs with writing talent emerging from the United Kingdom and Australia with great substantive lyrics. Perhaps the greatest change, however, has been the sheer volume of production in music in general in all categories.

Of course, the problem of overproduction faces nearly every item in our culture. Have you tried to make a decision on what tennis shoes to buy lately?

MR: How does music shape and affect the nature of a local congregation?

CF: Greatly! Even the absence of music is the defining element of some denominations. When you speak of music, I assume we are speaking of both lyrics and tunes. Today, many congregations label themselves essentially by style or how they say their worship, for example, contemporary or traditional. What we must always remember is that while we take great pride in our language of worship, our Father is looking for an integrity that transcends our forms. His ear is tuned toward the heart of our worship, spirit, and truth.

Chuck Fromm, a doctoral candidate at Fuller Theological Seminary, is the founder and executive editor of Worship Leader and HalfTime magazines. Mr. Fromm has been involved in the Christian music business from its earliest years.

In 1975 he was asked to lead the fledgling Maranatha! Music company, an outreach of the Calvary Chapel church networks, and spent the next 25 years as its president. In the 1980s he founded the Ministry Resource Center. He is the

author of "New Song: The Sound of a New Awakening," a paper delivered at Oxford University in 1983. More information on Worship Leader magazine can be found at www.worshipleader.com.

SPEAKING OF

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rom the folk mass to coke and potato chip communion to

gospel entertainment, the church cannot wiggle free

from its lovers' quarrel with the world.

— Calvin M. Johansson

Preaching from the Choir

[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8]

of confession or follow the sermon? Such placement has bearing on the choice of repertoire.

Text and music should be well matched. At times one encounters a solid, doctrinal text set to a trivial tune—this can be true of contemporary music or of a favorite hymn from the early twentieth century.

Familiarity is a strength in worship, sentimentality is not. Fresh, new music is needed, but cheap, banal music is not. Musical style can be a particularly subjective matter. Association and appropriateness to the text/occasion are factors that will help to determine how fitting a certain style may be. The corporate worship of God should be set apart from the mundane tasks of everyday life (although it should be a regular activity). As such, one may conclude that music used to worship God should be other than common. May the Holy Spirit help us to find it, write it, rehearse it and offer it for the glory of God.

Paul S. Jones (D.M., Indiana University) is the organist and music director of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. To hear a Real Audio lecture by Dr. Jones on “The Role of the Church Musicians” go to http:// www.wts.edu/alumni/conted.html.

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BOOK | A Free Church, A Holy Nation: Abraham Kuyper’s American Public Theology

Abraham Kuyper: Legacy or Captivity?

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he energy and accomplishments of Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) are

mythopoetic perspective,” and not solely, or even undeniably impressive. After beginning his career as a Reformed pastor and primarily, from the perspective of his theologian, he expanded his work into the realms of journalism, education, and philosophical or theological ideas. Bolt portrays Kuyper politics. His ultimate achievements as a man who captured the imagination of the included the formation of a new Dutch Reformed people and who moved them to ecclesiastical denomination, the founding action more by stirring biblical imagery and of a university, and a stint as Prime national mythology than by logically developed Minister of the Netherlands. Interpreting intellectual concepts. Bolt’s second purpose is to such a complex man—who was also a appropriate Kuyper for the American scene, voluminous writer—presents many particularly for the confused world of Evangelical challenges, but his influence and appeal cultural engagement. Kuyper, Bolt believes, offers demand that such interpretation be needed “theoretical and strategic help” for offered. In A Free Church, A Holy Nation: marginalized American evangelicals who find Abraham Kuyper’s American Public Theology, themselves in a social position somewhat John Bolt of Calvin Theological analogous to that of the orthodox Dutch Reformed Seminary presents a stimulating analysis volk whom Kuyper led.

In pursuing the first of these purposes, Bolt is and appropriation of Kuyper’s work, even if it is not, in the end, the book on quite insightful, helpful, and persuasive. His portrait of Kuyper, the poet, helps to explain why Kuyper that we really need.

A Free Church, Bolt’s volume is ambitious. It is long and yet is Kuyper’s writings can be so compelling without A Holy Nation: clearly such because of the author’s deep affection being entirely coherent, and more moving than Abraham for his subject—he calls Kuyper “the dominant lucid. Kuyper’s thought is not easy to systematize, Kuyper’s spiritual-intellectual-theological figure in my life.” and Bolt himself acknowledges several points of American Public Bolt not only attempts to interpret Kuyper within inconsistency in it. Yet Kuyper stirred the soul of his own historical context, but also compares his a nation—as only a poet can do. Bolt’s analysis Theology thought and work to many other European and brings to light a theme that is clearly evident even

by John Bolt American intellectual-cultural figures of the past in some of Kuyper’s writings that have appeared in Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, centuries (including Burke, Tocqueville, Acton, Leo English translation, namely, that Kuyper was at 2001 XIII, Edwards, Rauschenbusch, and M. L. King) heart a Dutch patriot, a man who loved the Dutch $38.00, 527 pages, Paperback and presents a case for why American evangelicals language, history, and customs. Kuyper the patriot need to learn from Kuyper for their own cultural wished to stir Dutch patriotism, and it is in the and political endeavors. heart rather than the mind where patriotism Bolt has two primary purposes, one of which I resides. For Kuyper, however, Dutch patriotism judge to be much more successful than the other. was inseparable from his theological-ecclesiastical The first is to offer a new interpretation of Kuyper’s concerns. In calling for a renewal of Dutch culture, public theology. Bolt proposes that Kuyper’s work Kuyper hoped for renewal of a “Calvinist” culture, be viewed first of all from a “rhetorical and for he believed that historic Dutch culture was

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thoroughly Calvinistic. This is an aspect of Kuyper’s work that is too easily and too often overlooked. Though Kuyper is the common source of inspiration for appeals to “transform” culture, his calls for transformation were more a conservative plea for renewal of an already latent force than a program for foisting something new on his society.

The second purpose of this book, the appropriation of Kuyper for American Evangelical public life, is less satisfying. To be sure, Bolt does offer a number of helpful critiques of various religiously inspired political agendas that compete for the allegiances of American Christians, and Kuyper’s work certainly offers useful correctives for many of their excesses and shortcomings.

Nevertheless, this is a book that appropriates Kuyper critically only on the surface. This claim is not meant to imply that Bolt is simplistic or naïve in his project, for he is not. But Bolt does little to probe the foundation upon which Kuyper builds his larger cultural program, and instead virtually assumes the theological solidity of the foundation.

This foundation is the idea that there ought to be a specifically Christian sociopolitical task and that emerges out of some Calvinist worldview. To his credit, Bolt includes some brief discussion of a few contemporary critics of Kuyper who questioned his claims to be a rightful heir of biblical, Reformed Christianity on such matters. This discussion does not appear until an appendix, however, where it is safely removed from the argument of the book.

The very fact that Bolt can relegate such concerns to an appendix says something about the present theological environment and the degree to which Kuyper’s assumptions have also become the assumptions of not only the Reformed world but also of significant sectors of Evangelicalism.

For readers of this magazine, for whom the Protestant Reformation is dear, Kuyper’s assumptions need at least to be acknowledged as fundamentally different from the “two kingdoms” perspective on social life offered by Luther and, yes, even by Calvin. For these reformers, social institutions were legitimate and divinely ordained, but were never to be confused with or transformed into the kingdom of God. Those still sympathetic to the reformers may look at Bolt’s work as nearly 500 interesting pages in which the biggest questions are never asked. Readers who do not assume that there is a distinctively “Christian” cultural-political task, or that the kingdom of God is the measure for all earthly kingdoms, or that the present social order is supposed to be transformed, or that Reformed Christianity is a Calvinism consisting of a “life-principle” or worldview, will

probably come away having eaten much but not finally satiated. The book that we still need is one that critically challenges rather than promotes the Kuyperian captivity of the church.

Dr. David VanDrunen Westminster Theological Seminary in California Escondido, California

Growing Up Protestant: Parents, Children, and Mainline Churches

by Margaret Lamberts Bendroth New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002 $20.00, 195 pages, Hardcover In Growing Up Protestant, Margaret Lamberts Bendroth offers a fascinating account of northern mainline Protestant attitudes about families and children in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Bendroth, professor of history at Calvin College, begins her account with the domestication of the family in the North during the mid-nineteenth century. As programs of catechesis were replaced

by Sunday schools influenced by Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nature, and the later educational insights of John Dewey, mainline Protestants shifted their attention from training children in the faith to developing personalities to meet the demands of modern life.

Concomitant with this shift in religious training goals was the Protestant exaltation of the family as the chief institution ordained by God for the salvation of children, which, in turn, led to the denigration of the church and its ministry of Word and sacrament. By the 1930s, however, ecclesiastical experts influenced by social science and psychology became convinced that parental nurture would not achieve the goal of psychological adjustment to modernity. In response, denominational leaders developed a plethora of educational programs, light on doctrine but heavy on moralism, designed to replace family nurture as the chief influence in the child’s “salvation.” But parents failed to heed the denominational bureaucrats: instead, in the 1950s and 1960s they increasingly allowed their children to abandon the church, following the dictates of pop psychologists rather than ministers. The result was the increasing absence of theological awareness in the mainline church as well as the precipitous decline of adherence to church teaching over the past thirty years.

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Though she does not draw out the moral of the story, Bendroth’s account points to the mainline church’s failure to prioritize doctrinal understanding and ecclesiastical centrality as the chief culprits for its decline. As a result, this book raises several issues for confessing evangelicals seeking to pass on the faith to their children. First, what is the relation of the household to the church? Whereas some evangelicals are drawn to a home-based mentality where the household is school and church as well as family, Bendroth’s work suggests that evangelicals need to be careful.

To be sure, the visible church consists of household heads and their children; still, the church does have a disciplinary role in the life of the family, and elders work with and through household heads in order to discipline noncommuning members. In short, although the family is the basic integer of the church, the church at times has priority over the family because Christ gave the keys of the kingdom to the church, not to individual families.

A second question is how should Christian parents nurture their children and pass on the faith?

Bendroth’s work should give encouragement to the recent revival of catechesis, represented in publications such as Starr Meade’s Training Hearts, Teaching Minds (P&R, 2000), Donald Van Dyken’s Rediscovering Catechism (P&R, 2000), and Tom J. Nettles’s Teaching Truth, Training Hearts (Calvary Press, 1998). If the downfall of the mainline was due to lack of the doctrinal instruction of the young, then contemporary Protestants should heed the lesson and ensure that their church’s educational programs emphasize not simply Bible facts, atomized verses, and moral virtues, but doctrinal knowledge as well—mental furniture that will help young minds conceptualize the depths of their sinfulness and the wonders of the Redeemer and his salvation.

In all, Growing Up Protestant is an intellectually satisfying and compelling book. Full of insight and nuance, Bendroth successfully demonstrates the failures of recent mainline Protestant reflection on religious training of children and subtly urges contemporary believers toward the recovery of older ways of raising their children in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

Dr. Sean Michael Lucas Southern Baptist Seminary Louisville, Kentucky

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SHORT NOTICES Arius: Heresy and Tradition

by Rowan Williams Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001 $24.00, 378 pages, Paperback The republication, with a substantial new afterward, of Rowan Williams’s Arius should be welcomed by the thoughtful Christian public for several reasons. First, at the time of writing, Williams is one of the main contenders for the vacancy at Lambeth Palace and may well be the head of the Anglican communion by the time this goes to press. As such, he stands on the brink of being one of the most significant worldwide church leaders of the next decades; his writings, thus, have more than mere scholarly significance, and Arius, as his masterpiece, must form a central part of any assessment of the man. Second, the work is itself perhaps the single most detailed and rigorous analysis of the thought of Arius, “the archetypal heretic,” ever to have been written. For those who have ploughed through R. P. C. Hanson’s The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God (T&T Clark, Ltd., 2000) and been left with the feeling that the way in which orthodoxy emerged in the early church was immensely complicated, then Williams’s book is bad news, demonstrating that even Hanson’s account makes things more straightforward than they really were.

Williams’s work, while not an easy read, will repay careful study. In three parts, he reconstructs what little can be known of Arius’s life and writings, then addresses the nature of Arius’s theology, and finally contextualizes Arius’s thinking against the background of late classical philosophy. In each of these sections, Williams interacts extensively with previous scholars and presents a highly nuanced and complex picture of the types of questions and influences at work upon Arius’s mind. Then, in an appendix, he surveys the literature that has emerged since the first edition of 1987, including the magisterial work of Hanson noted above.

Underlying all of this discussion of Arianism is Williams’s subtheme: How do concepts such as tradition, heresy, and orthodoxy emerge? Here, the picture Williams paints in Part One of the interpenetration of doctrinal issues and political and personal factionalism is highly illuminating and one that has obvious parallels with many of the doctrinal debates of far less moment which rage in

the North American scene presently.

Williams’s book should be purchased and studied by all those who are serious about understanding the nature and development of Christian orthodoxy. First, Arianism, the tendency to divide God the Father from the Son and to make the latter ontologically subordinate, is a perennial problem within the church. Trinitarianism is not strong within Evangelical circles even at the level of the ministry, with many pulpits echoing to the sound of types of tritheism or, more commonly, modalism. Protestantism has defined itself so carefully in relation to Roman Catholicism on the issue of justification that the fundamental identity of God as Three-in-One and One-in-Three has too often been taken unjustifiably for granted.

Thus, books which explain why the church has come to think of God in the way she has are of crucial importance today.

Second, while the debates and the doctrinal formulations which the church adopted are highly technical, the question which lies at their base is really very simple: If Christ saves, then must he be God? The church’s answer was ultimately an unequivocal “yes.” We neglect the wealth of patristic debate on this subject at our peril.

Dr. Carl Trueman Westminster Theological Seminary Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Educating for Life: Reflections on Christian Teaching and Learning

by Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, edited by Gloria Goris Stronks and Clarence W. Joldersma Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2002 $19.99, 298 pages, Paperback After several years of discussing the nature and possibility of Christian scholarship, a discussion prompted largely by evangelical scholars, Alan Wolfe wrote a piece for the Atlantic Monthly (October 2000) entitled “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind.” The essay’s title was promising and Wolfe gave reasonably high marks to Evangelical liberal arts colleges. But he did have one significant reservation. The creeds and doctrinal statements of these institutions were a detriment to full-blown academic excellence. As long as Christian schools insisted on confessional statements “that shut them off from genuine intellectual exchange,” Wolfe warned, Christian

scholars would “find it difficult” to develop “intellectually exciting institutions.”

Wolfe’s understanding of the inverse relationship between creedal theology and intellectual creativity will need to be revised if Nicholas P. Wolterstorff’s new book, Educating for Life, is any indication. It is a stimulating and enjoyable collection of addresses that Wolterstorff, a longtime professor of philosophy at Calvin College who recently retired from Yale University (see “Between the Times” in Modern Reformation, July/August 2002), gave in Christian school settings over the course of his career. The editors have arranged the talks around four themes: 1) the nature of Christian education; 2) the challenges to Christian schools; 3) Christian learning in a pluralistic society; and 4) the purpose of Christian education.

Aside from answering the question, What makes an education Christian?, the book also provides answers to, What makes Nicholas Wolterstorff so smart? To be sure, readers will not agree with all of his arguments. But the book demonstrates that a family and church can be an incredibly fertile environment when oriented to the complexity of Christian teaching. According to Wolterstorff, his own family gatherings in rural Minnesota were filled with “Enormous discussions and arguments… , no predicting about what: about the sermon, about theology, about politics, about farming practices, about music, about why there weren’t as many fish in the lakes….” What he learned in this setting was that “the Bible had to be interpreted; one could not just read it and let the meaning sink in. I was aware that I was being inducted into one among other patterns of interpretation, the pattern encapsulated in the Heidelberg Catechism.” Of course, Wolterstorff made his own contributions to the tradition he inherited. But this collection of essays shows that theological rigor is no barrier but rather may actually encourage substantial learning.

Dr. D.G. Hart Westminster Theological Seminary in California Escondido, California

What is gained and what is lost through a postmodern reading of the gospel?

Read D. A.

Carson's article reviewing Stanley Grenz's Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era at www.modernreformation.org.

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Revivals?

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wing not least to the fact that it carries a variety of meanings, the word

conferences of covenant renewal (Neh. 8-9); it is “revivals” makes many of us uneasy. Some long so much for genuine revival transparent at Pentecost (Acts 2) and beyond: “After that they slump into a stupor of waiting, wringing their hands and neglecting they had prayed, the place where they were meeting to evangelize and pursue the common means of was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy grace because they are waiting for “revival.” In the Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (Acts South, many Christians still commonly speak of 4:31). Even where sin erupts and discipline is “holding revivals,” by which they mean something imposed, the result is salutary: “Great fear seized like “holding evangelistic and deeper life meetings, the whole church and all who heard about these preferably in the Finney tradition.” Some churches events” (Acts 5:11). Not only Scripture itself, but even hold “annual revivals.” But for most who read the history of the church testifies to times of these lines, lying as we do in an older tradition, extraordinary gospel strength, when God raised up revivals are movements of the Spirit of God in a Howell Harris or a George Whitefield or a which God’s power is much more than usually Jonathan Edwards, and countless others.

D.A. CARSON (2) We need revival. By “we” I am not referring displayed in conversion, transformation of life, and in a deep and reverent sense of the holiness and primarily to the culture at large, or to other goodness of God. The notion of “holding” such Christians. I am referring to “us,” the believers Research Professor of revivals strikes us as a painful and slightly ridiculous reading this magazine. Too many of us simply New Testament domestication of God’s majestic power and want to be nice, but have long since forgotten, at Trinity Evangelical freedom. We applaud the distinction championed the experiential level, that the fear of the Lord is Divinity School Deerfield, Illinois

by Iain H. Murray’s title: Revival and Revivalism: The the beginning of wisdom. Or we may be prepared Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism, 1750- to argue our corner on doctrinal matters, but our prayers are brief, perfunctory, and cold. Some of us 1858 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994).

Our nervousness when we reflect on the abuses, wrestle very little with sin—not, I fear, because we however, should not become an excuse for avoiding are very holy already, but because we have so little some truths that must never be far from our minds. grasp of holiness, and therefore we are little (1) Revival is a biblical concept. It embraces but ashamed of our sins. Many of us can talk theology goes beyond the truth expressed in passages such very fluently, and are quick to correct our brothers as Ps. 127:1, “Unless the Lord builds the house, its and sisters in Christ, but we have long lost the builders labor in vain,” and Zech. 4:6, “‘Not by ability to articulate the gospel humbly, might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the compellingly, and gratefully to our pagan Lord Almighty.” It recognizes that there are times neighbors. We need revival. when, prompted by the dearth of the age, God’s (3) But never are we to despise the day of small people cry out, “Oh, that you would rend the things (Zech. 4:10). In his own wise counsel, God heavens and come down, that the mountains would raises up a Jeremiah as well as an Ezra, apostles with tremble before you!” (Isa. 64:1). It takes place massively different roles (John 21:20-22), a when the Lord stirs up not only the leaders, but martyred James as well as a fruitful Paul. also “the spirit of the whole remnant of the people” Press on; walk humbly; serve faithfully. And (Hag. 1:14). It may manifest itself in massive Bible beseech God for mercy.

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UPCOMING PROGRAM TOPICS: November 3

How Does the Holy Spirit Work in Our Lives?

November 10

In What Ways is the Holy Spirit Misunderstood in Today's Culture?

November 17

What is Regeneration?

November 24

How Can I Know if I am Truly Converted?

December 1

Is the Carnal Christian Saved?

December 8

Is it Possible to Lose Your Faith?

December 15

Why is Music Appropriate in Worship?

December 22

Why Did God Send His Son?

December 29

What Music is Appropriate for Worship?

January/February 2003 preview — a series on Eschatology followed by the Alliance Council on “What Christians Believe.”

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