Newsletter Vol.3, #8—March 18, 2007

Matthew 10 ²¹Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, ²²and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Old Light On New Worship

By Geoff Thomas

It is time for a little stir about worship, isn't it? We have had Iain Murray's booklet, The Psalter - the Only Hymnal? (Banner of Truth) which rejects exclusive psalmody for the New Covenant Church. Now we have this 250 page book, Old Light on New Worship, Musical Instruments and the Worship of God. A Theological, Historical and Psychological Study, written by John Price, a graduate of Trinity Ministerial Academy, Montville, New Jersey, and currently the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Rochester, New York, which he has served since 1995 (Simpson Publishing Company, P.O.Box 100, Avinger, TX 75630 www.simpsonpublishing.com).

Old Light on New Worship focuses on a single issue. Is there a place for the use of musical instruments in the new covenant worship of God? Ted Donnelly, the pastor of Trinity Reformed Presbyterian Church, Newtownabbey, and Principal of the Reformed Theological College, Belfast writes the Foreword to the book. He points out three damaging weaknesses in modern evangelicalism.

1] The first is a failure to apply the principle of sola scriptura, the conviction that the Bible is our supreme and sufficient guide and that, specifically, we are to worship God only in the way appointed in his Word. This perspective, once the common property of Reformed churches, is now so overlooked as to seem bizarre or fanatical to many, while others choose to exempt worship from its scope, as if God had little or nothing to say about that which most intimately concerns his glory.

2] Another weakness is a kind of historical blindness, the neglect of what previous generations have discovered from the Scriptures. It almost indicates contempt for the past, a careless dismissal of how God has over the years been guiding the church into a fuller understanding of truth. This "chronological snobbery," as C. S. Lewis called it, can masquerade as a commitment to "Scripture alone." But it is at least curious that those who lay such stress on what the Spirit has taught them from the Bible are so little interested in what he has taught others. Those believers are self-impoverished who will not listen to their forefathers.

3] A third characteristic of today's church is a frightening (?—unreadable). Like children playing with high explosive, too many Christians seem unaware of music's potential for harm as well as good. Closing their eyes and ears to the manifold evidence around them, they introduce musical innovations with little reflection or discernment, apparently oblivious to the risks they are running. It is a lemming-like rush towards the coarsening of worship and the trivializing of spiritual experience.

Ted Donnelly points out that the author addresses each of these weaknesses. He demonstrates, with an impressive accumulation of scriptural evidence, the absence of any reference to musical instruments in the worship of the early church and the silence of the New Testament on this matter. For their use in the public worshipping assemblies of new covenant saints there is not a shred of scriptural warrant. His overview of church history will surprise many, with its weight of evidence that the church has sung praise unaccompanied for the greater part of her history and that this has been the position of many of the greatest and wisest of her leaders. A penetrating analysis of the psychology of music points up its frequently deceptive effect upon the human emotions and the very real danger of confusing a merely sensual excitement with true worship.

In these pages we find a two-fold appeal. Where musical instruments are part of worship, pastors and churches are urged to think again, to examine the evidence and to change to a more biblical pattern. Such a change would admittedly be startling, a radical step. True reformation usually is. But if our repeated assertion that "the reformed church stands in constant need of reformation" is more than a cliché, we need to have the God-given boldness to do what is right, no matter what. And, as the very word "re-formation" implies, this often involves a return to a purer original. In this sense, to go back to the practice of the New Testament would be the most constructive and forward-looking step possible.

But perhaps more urgent is the plea not to change. For we find ourselves at a moment of crisis in reformed worship. Churches which have up to the present accompanied their singing with a single instrument are contemplating moving to multiple instruments. Perhaps they are being influenced more deeply than they realize by the surrounding evangelical culture. It may be that they feel that this is one way of retaining the loyalty of their young people, an argument which Robert L. Dabney describes as "the most unsound and perilous possible for a good man to adopt." They may genuinely believe that this would make their worship more biblical. But this book is a call to pause and reflect.

The only possible scriptural basis for the use of instruments in worship is to be found in the Old Testament passages where the worshippers are described as using them or commanded to use them. "Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals! . . ." (Psalm 150:3ff). But the overwhelming consensus of the church has been that these instruments were an integral part of that ceremonial worship fulfilled and abrogated in Christ. We sing in the Psalms of the hyssop (5 1:7), the altar (43:4), the sack-cloth (69:11), the evening sacrifice (141:2), the goats and bulls (66:15), the cherubim (80:1), the ark (132:8) and the new moon (81:3). No one applies these with a wooden literalism to the church today. On what grounds, then, can we place the musical instruments of the temple in a different category than other ceremonial elements? We may not as clearly understand the typical significance of musical instruments, but that is no warrant for assuming that they had none. "Musical instruments," wrote Calvin, "in celebrating the praises of God would be no more suitable than the burning of incense, the lighting up of lamps, and the restoration of the other shadows of the law.

“Music was useful as an elementary aid to the people of God in ancient times . . . . Now that Christ has appeared, and the Church has reached full age, it were only to bury the light of the Gospel, should we introduce the shadows of a departed dispensation." How wise is it to introduce such a momentous change on such a slender and dubious basis? The controversies which may well arise will be the responsibility of the innovators. New Testament practice is against it. The majority verdict of the past is against it. The dangers are patent. If, as reformed Christians believe, the words of our praise must always be primary, how much can instruments add to the singing of those words? Will the trumpets, tambourines and cymbals which the Old Testament requires really enhance our appreciation of what is being sung? How will churches organize the dancing which is an integral element in such passages (Psalm 149:3; 150:4)? Is this a constructive, edifying course to adopt?

"I write," says Ted Donnelly, "as one who, for a lifetime, has sung unaccompanied praise to God. It puts us on our mettle, makes us depend on each other, for there is no fallback - singing or silence! And it can be wonderful! No equipment needed, no obtrusion of human talents, no controversy, nothing to distract from the glorious words - just the voices of the redeemed harmoniously worshipping the Lord. It is my prayer that the following pages may persuade more of God's people to experience in Christ this liberating simplicity. 'Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name' (Heb.13:15)."

So here is the book of 250 pages. Its scheme is as follows: The Regulative Principle Applied to Musical Instruments; The History of Musical Instruments in the Christian Church (these two chapters are found in the first 150 pages); The Psychology of Music (20 pages); Argument in Favor of Instrumental Music Considered (35 pages); then some brief chapters conclude the book, "The True Glory of Gospel Worship", "The Exalted Place of Singing in the Church", "An Exhortation to Unity," and "Some Suggestions For Reformation."

The entire article can be found at:

http://www.banneroftruth.org:80/pages/articles/article_detail.php?907

At a time when some of “our” brethren are starting to use the instrument, doesn’t it seem a little strange for a Baptist to write against its use? –Larry