Where to Put What We Sing

Published on by D. G. Hart27 Comments

Hymnals are something that Presbyterians take for granted. Rare is the lay person who picks up the book to examine it like any other, looking say at the table of contents, then at some of the indexes, and then at one or two hymns to see which tune the compilers used for a certain text. Instead, most church members look at the bulletin at the specific time for singing in the service, find the number in the hymnal, stand, and sing the chosen hymn.

Perhaps just as rare is a church member who reflects on a hymn in relation to what goes before and after it in the service. Does it follow a prayer, a Bible reading, the sermon? Did the pastor choose the hymn for a specific reason? Was it to reinforce the theme of the biblical passage, to resonate with the sermon topic, or as is often the case for hymns before the sermon, just a way to let people stand and stretch?

And most important, did the pastor choose the hymn to function as a prayer in response to what just transpired in divine worship?

This is the most important question if the dialogical principle guides the way that we order a service. If God speaks and we respond, then the way God speaks is through word (read and preached) and sacraments, and we respond by prayer (and offering). This means that congregational singing needs to fit the category of prayer, which is exactly what Calvin considered worship songs to be, and which is also why he only sang psalms. The psalter is the Bible’s prayer book.

So what then should we do with hymns like “How Firm a Foundation”? Don’t get me wrong, it is a wonderful hymn and testifies to God’s faithfulness. And as the years pass it is very hard not to be moved by the line, “And when hoary hairs shall their temple to adorn, Like lambs they shall still in my bosom be borne.” It is a great hymn but it is not much of a prayer since almost all of the stanzas are in quotation marks, indicating that God is speaking to those who are supposed to be lifting up their voices to him. In which case, if we are responding to God in song, and if our response is actually words that God speaks to his people, then we are singing in a manner so that God is speaking to himself.

This dilemma may explain why Presbyterians are prone to regard hymns not according to their type of prayer – praise, thanksgiving, confession, petition – but according to the doctrine they teach. The Trinity Hymnal of the OPC puts “How Firm a Foundation” in the section dealing with “The Glory of God: His Faithfulness.” The old PCUS hymnal from 1955 put this hymn in the section, “Life in Christ, Faith and Assurance.” Neither are bad calls. But both hymnals are arranged, as reflected in their table of contents, according to doctrinal categories rather than forms of prayer for different parts of the service as part of the congregation’s response to God. In fact, the Trinity Hymnal goes so far in the direction of doctrine that it arranges the hymnal according to the chapters of the Westminster Confession.

This decision to arrange hymns according to doctrine makes sense if you buy the adage that more people learn their theology from hymns than from systematic theology. I for one do not buy this adage because of the way that most people use hymnals (mentioned above) they sing on command with little attention to the point of the song. I am also suspicious of the assumption contained in the adage because I am not convinced that the theology contained in hymns is all that clear. Granted, the answer from the catechism about saving faith may not rhyme, but it is clear.

But this begs the question of what songs are supposed to do in worship. If they are a form of prayer, then why do we have so many songs that are mini-sermons?

Where's Waldo Wednesday

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18. We believe that all our justification rests upon the remission of our sins, in which also is our only blessedness, as saith the Psalmist (Psa. xxxii. 2). We therefore reject all other means of justification before God, and without claiming any virtue or merit, we rest simply in the obedience of Jesus Christ, which is imputed to us as much to blot out all our sins as to make us find grace and favor in the sight of God. And, in fact, we believe that in falling away from this foundation, however slightly, we could not find rest elsewhere, but should always be troubled. Forasmuch as we are never at peace with God till we resolve to be loved in Jesus Christ, for of ourselves we are worthy of hatred.

19. We believe that by this means we have the liberty and privilege of calling upon God, in full confidence that he will show himself a Father to us. For we should have no access to the Father except through this Mediator. And to be heard in his name, we must hold our life from him as from our chief.

20. We believe that we are made partakers of this justification by faith alone, as it is written: ‘He suffered for our salvation, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish.’ And this is done inasmuch as we appropriate to our use the promises of life which are given to us through him, and feel their effect when we accept them, being assured that we are established by the Word of God and shall not be deceived. Thus our justification through faith depends upon the free promises by which God declares and testifies his love to us.

21. We believe that we are enlightened in faith by the secret power of the Holy Spirit, that it is a gratuitous and special gift which God grants to whom he will, so that the elect have no cause to glory, but are bound to be doubly thankful that they have been preferred to others. We believe also that faith is not given to the elect only to introduce them into the right way, but also to make them continue in it to the end. For as it is God who hath begun the work, he will also perfect it.

22. We believe that by this faith we are regenerated in newness of life, being by nature subject to sin. Now we receive by faith grace to live holily and in the fear of God, in accepting the promise which is given to us by the Gospel, namely: that God will give us his Holy Spirit. This faith not only doth not hinder us from holy living, or turn us from the love of righteousness, but of necessity begetteth in us all good works. Moreover, although God worketh in us for our salvation, and reneweth our hearts, determining us to that which is good, yet we confess that the good works which we do proceed from his Spirit, and can not be accounted to us for justification, neither do they entitle us to the adoption of sons, for we should always be doubting and restless in our hearts, if we did not rest upon the atonement by which Jesus Christ hath acquitted us. (Gallican Confession, 1559)

Bracketology

Published on by D. G. Hart28 Comments

During a recent trip to Wheaton College for a conference on evangelicals and the early church I talked to several faculty about president-elect, Phil Ryken. Everyone was favorably unanimous about his initial remarks to the faculty regarding his plans for leading the institution. Some still wondered, though, whether Ryken will escalate the Reformed influences at the school. For Wesleyans, that would not be a welcome development. Who knows where the Episcopalians at Wheaton are on Wesleyan-Reformed spectrum (they have enough trouble walking the tight-rope of via media as it is)?

I responded to many on the basis of what I have observed about Ryken. He will likely distinguish his own Reformed convictions from the centrist-evangelical identity of Wheaton. After all, he grew up in that environment, has studied Protestantism enough to recognize differences between the seventeenth century and today, and is capable of working along side Protestants from a different theological tradition (Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, for example). In other words, Ryken will bracket his Reformed convictions (whether on soteriology, ecclesiology, or worship) and work within the boundaries established by Wheaton’s statement of faith and other normative guidelines.

While this seems like a reasonable way to proceed – not to expect Wheaton to be the PCA – I wonder if the critics of two-kingdom thought would see such a distinction between the kingdom of Wheaton and the kingdom of a Presbyterian communion as either possible or laudable. After all, isn’t this bracketing of one’s ecclesial identity precisely what two-kingdom proponents advocate for the public square? We don’t expect public life to be the Orthodox Presbyterian Church but bracket the church’s norms when engaging social and political matters.

The point is that the sort of bracketing I imagine Phil Ryken will do at Wheaton is no different from the distinguishing of kingdoms performed by two-kingdom believers.

A couple of side issues do arise with this analogy. One complication is that Reformed believers who do work in environments like Wheaton’s may come to think that the interdenominational fellowship Christians enjoy at the college should really be the case in the church as well. In which case, the sort of boundaries the church draws to keep out non-Reformed teaching and practice will over time become an incumbrance or embarrassment for a Reformed Protestant. This is what happened to the New School Presbyterians.

Another complication is that critics of 2k will be tempted to think nothing wrong with the two-kingdom position imagined here. These critics might think that if only the United States were as religiously and morally plural as Wheaton College – meaning, only inhabited by evangelical Protestants – then two-kingdom theology would be acceptable. But if that’s the case, then why are two-kingdom critics willing to tolerate so much unbelief, idolatry, and immorality? Why don’t they all move to DuPage County where Republicans outnumber Democrats roughly 5.5 to 4.5?

Whatever one makes of these complicating considerations, the point stands: the sort of distinction between churchly and political identities involved in two-kingdom theology is already the experience of millions of Protestants in their vocational responsibilities here in the greatest nation on God’s green earth. It’s not radical. It is ordinary.

Forensic Friday: More Machen

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Very different is the conception of faith which prevails in the liberal Church. According to modern liberalism, faith is essentially the same as “making Christ Master” in one’s life; at least it is by making Christ Master in the life that the welfare of men is sought. But that simply means that salvation is thought to be obtained by our own obedience to the commands of Christ. Such teaching is just a sublimated form of legalism. Not the sacrifice of Christ, on this view, but our own obedience to God’s law, is the ground of hope.

In this way the whole achievement of the Reformation has been given up, and there has been a return to the religion of the Middle Ages. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, God raised up a man who began to read the Epistle to the Galatians with his own eyes. The result was the rediscovery of the doctrine of justification by faith. Upon that rediscovery has been based the whole of our evangelical freedom. As expounded by Luther and Calvin the Epistle to the Galatians became the “magna Charta of Christian liberty.” But modern liberalism has returned the old interpretation of Galations which was urged against the Reformers. . . . it has returned to an anti-Reformation exegesis, by which Paul is thought to be attacking in the Epistle only the piecemeal morality of the Pharisees. In reality, of course, the object of Paul’s attack is the thought that in any way man can earn his acceptance with God. What Paul is primarily interested in is not spiritual religion over against ceremonialism, but the free grace of God over against human merit.

The grace of God is rejected by modern liberalism. And the result is slavery – the slavery of the law, the wretched bondage by which man undertakes the impossible task of establishing his own righteousness as a ground of acceptance with God. It may seem strange at first sight that “liberalism, of which the very name means freedom, should in reality be wretched slavery. But the phenomenon is not really so strange. Emancipation from the blessed will of God always involves bondage to some worse taskmaster. (Christianity and Liberalism, pp. 143-44)

Good point here on why the forensic is prior to moral renovation, not to mention the ricochet against the legalism inherent in the “Lordship of Christ” over all things without first establishing the saviorship of Christ.

Where's Waldo Wednesday

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

This is a true apostolic saying: What he elsewhere referred to as: “Baptised into Christ’s death and buried with Him in baptism,” he here describes as “planted together into the likeness of His death.” Thus he binds and knits together Christ’s death and resurrection and our baptism, in order that baptism should not be thought of as a mere sign, but that the power of both Christ’s death and resurrection are contained in it. And this is so in order that there should also follow in us both death and resurrection. For our sin is slain through His death, that is, taken away, in order that it may no longer live in us but die and be dead for ever.

Thus, that in baptism we are sunk under the water indicates that we too die in Christ, but that we emerge again means and imparts to us new life in Him, just as He did not remain in death but rose again. But such a life should not and cannot be a life in sin because sin has already been slain in us and we have died unto sin; but it must be a new life of righteousness and holiness. Thus we are no called “planted into Christ” and “made one with Him,” and, as it were, baked into one loaf, and we receive into ourselves both the power of His death and His resurrection, and also, the fruit or consequence of it is found in us, since we have been baptised in Him. (Martin Luther, 1535 sermon on Romans 6)

Hug Me, I'm Protestant

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

A word to the wise Old Lifer who may be out celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. Don’t! It’s an Irish festivity for a Roman Catholic Saint. You’re Protestant. Just stick to Sundays, Mother’s and Father’s Days, and July 4th.

But if you do go out to make up for the Roman Catholics who gave up whiskey for Lent, keep in mind that Bushmill’s is the Protestant Irish whiskey, produced as it is in Northern Ireland, which may be the oldest active distillery in the world.

Jameson, by contrast, is the Roman Catholic whiskey, made in County Cork.

A recent piece in the Washington Post made the arresting point that the religious identities of Irish whiskey is nonsense:

There is a dicey — and misguided — aspect of Irish whiskey loyalty that splits along partisan lines. I’ve known a lot of older Irish Americans who will drink only Jameson because it is considered the “Catholic” whiskey, as opposed to Bushmills, which is perceived as the “Protestant” whiskey. During grad school in Boston, I drank once or twice in a hard-core Irish pub where you might come to physical harm if you ordered a Bushmills. (That bar also passed around a hat once a night, and you were strongly “encouraged” to donate to “the cause”).

This idea of Catholic vs. Protestant whiskey is bunk. For one thing, from 1972 to 2005, coinciding with some the worst of The Troubles, both distilleries were owned by the same company, Irish Distillers, before Bushmills was sold to Diageo. Jameson is now owned by Pernod Ricard, a French conglomerate. Also, John Jameson was a Scotsman, and therefore in all likelihood a Protestant.

Still, the perception persists. As we were tasting, one of my friends, Kevin Meeker, who owns an Irish pub in Philadelphia called the Plough and the Stars, gave a thumbs up to Bushmills Black Bush blended whiskey. He texted his Irish managing partner, Patrick Nester, at the bar and asked whether they sold a lot of Bushmills. Nester’s reply: “Not much because u idiots think it’s a Protestant whiskey.” Perhaps it’s best, as usual, to avoid discussing religion and politics while drinking.

Maybe the confessional difference between Irish whiskies no longer holds. But in the age of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, maintaining the legitimate antagonisms between Rome and its Christian protestors is imperative. For Old Lifers it’s a treat if you can do so with spirits.

Be careful out there.

Scott Clark Has a Point

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(Or, show me your confessionalism!)

In Recovering the Reformed Confession, Scott Clark argues for and understanding of the Christian ministry and piety that informed the confessions of the Reformed churches pretty much all the way down to when Boy George (Whitefield) set foot in the North American British colonies. Among the points Clark makes is that the teachings affirmed and practices prescribed in the Reformed confessions are a better gauge of Reformed identity than the sort of zeal and experience that the likes of Whitefield encouraged and sought.

One way to test Clark’s argument is to ask by what measure do we evaluate a college that claims to be Protestant. Some who are sharply critical of Clark have recently faulted one of the leading evangelical institutions on two grounds: first, a majority of the faculty voted for Barack Obama; second, its teachers education program encourages students to embrace notions of tolerance and diversity that various secular state teachers’ agencies affirm, thus forcing Christian college education majors into a secular mold of “social justice.” (The same critics of Clark have faulted Covenant College for its faculty’s support for Obama in the 2008 presidential contest.)

What does not seem to matter in such evaluations is whether the college’s faculty are members or attend churches where the Reformed creeds are the confessional standard. In fact, one could well imagine a college qualifying as a flagship institution because it was consistently pro-Republican (as long as the pro-life plank of the platform was in place) and minimally doctrinal. If memory serves, this was exactly the kind of place that Wheaton College was before 1990. Culturally activist while doctrinally tolerant on dogmatic minutia is likely the ideal for Clark’s critics, meaning that creeds and confessions do not matter significantly when evaluating Christian higher education.

So why do such critics object if the confessionalist shoe does not fit? It isn’t an accusation of infidelity (though it has implications for this.) It is simply a question of definition: do the creeds inform the way you assess Christianity or do you have a different list of allegiances and personalities that in effect constitute your confession? If you are confessional you are going to evaluate Christian institutions and expressions on the basis of the creeds, as well as the health of the communions with which an institution affiliates. But if you are more inclined, in this case, to Whitefield and Edwards, you end up criticizing a school for its politics. In other words, pietism generates activism; while confessionalism nurtures perseverance.

Put another way, a confessional “world view” (as much as I hate the phrase) esteems the cult and the culture in inversely proportional relations. The higher one’s view of the creeds, the less one cares about politics. And the more one cares about culture, the less the creeds matter.

Makes sense to this confessionalist.

Unhuggable Lutherans

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Garrison Keillor’s Life Among the Lutherans has arrived. It is already rewarding with merriment. Here are a few stanzas from “Lutheran Song.”

I was raised in Iowa, went to Concordia,
Swedish, I’m proud to say.
Got a job at Lutheran Brotherhood.
And I never was sick one day.
Bought a house in south Minneapolis
Over by Cedar Lake.
If you ask me, this latest merger
Was nothing but a big mistake.
Now I have nothing against Episcopalians;
I believe in an open door.
I’m sure it’s good to get new ideas,
But we never did that before. . . .

Espiscopalians are proud of their faith;
You ought to hear ’em talk.
Who they got? They got Henry VIII
And we got J. S. Bach.
Henry VIII he had six wives
Trying to make one son.
J. S. Bach had twenty-three children,
And wives, he had just one.
Henry VIII would marry a woman
And then her head would drop.
J. S. Bach had all those kids
‘Cause his organ had no stop. . . .

Once in a while we go to shows,
But a Lutheran is not a fan.
We don’t whistle and we don’t laugh;
We smile as loud as we can.
If you come to church, don’t expect to be hugged;
Don’t expect your hand to be shook.
If we need to know who you are,
We can look in the visitors’ book.
I was raised to keep a lid on it,
Guard what you say or do.
A mighty fortress is our God,
So he must be Lutheran too. . . .

Forensic Friday: Pauline Indignation

Published on by D. G. Hart73 Comments

Have you noticed lately what tends to make conservative Protestants mad? In public life we see a lot of consternation about abortion, gay marriage, the thievery of the federal government, and outrage over secularists. And let’s not forget a whole lot of anger doled out upon two-kingdom theology and the spirituality of the church. (If you wonder how the critics feel, just look for the word, “radical.”)

But have you ever considered what made the apostle Paul mad? Well, his dealings with the church in Corinth were not pretty. There he found sectarianism, sexual immorality, insubordination, blasphemy, with a theology of glory worked in for good measure. But how does Paul open his letters to these Christians whom today many of the proponents of public righteousness would deem antinomian? In his first epistle he addresses them as “those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. . .” And he follows that with the apostolic salutation, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” In the second epistle, even though many problems still exist at Corinth, Paul again calls them “saints” and adds the same salutation as the first letter.

But what about those Galatians, the church that may have been excelling in its zeal for the law? He refers to them as part of the church but not as saints. And while he does also extend an apostolic salutation he does not dally with affirmations of the Galatians piety or the encouragement he takes from them. Instead he cuts to the chase and says he is astonished that they have turned away from the gospel. And within 8 verses of his opening, Paul anathematizes any one who would turn from the gospel he preached. One could well imagine in our times that if a minister were insisting that believers picket at abortion clinics to show the authenticity of their faith, many would fail to object. What damage could be done by such a worthy cause? Granted, you don’t want the picketers to think they are earning merits with God because of their righteous deeds. But that is certainly not a danger in our day and besides, the wickedness of abortion is truly a blight on our nation. So why would it hurt?

But if a pastor was guilty of tolerating incest among his flock, well, the opposition would not be pretty and the minister would likely be out on his ear. But Paul’s reaction was just the reverse. He condemned those who added any works of the law to salvation through Christ. Meanwhile, he was willing to work with the church that had turned a blind eye to all sorts of immorality — even the sexual kind.

J. Gresham Machen detected a similar difference in the way Paul dealt with preachers in Galatia and those in Rome (who were preaching out of envy and strife). Machen observed that Paul was tolerant of bad motives among Roman preachers but intolerant of the Judaizers in Galatia because of the content of the respective evangelists’ messages. And this was a distinction that Machen believed his contemporaries in the Presbyterian Church were incapable of making. The differences between Paul and the preachers in Galatia, Machen wrote:

would seem to modern ‘practical” Christians to be a highly subtle and intangible matter, hardly worthy of consideration at all in view of the large measure of agreement in the practical realm. What a splendid cleaning up of the Gentile cities it would have been if the Judaizers had succeeded in extending to those cities the observance of the Mosaic law, even including the unfortunate ceremonial observances! Surely Paul ought to have made common cause with teachers who were so nearly in agreement with him; surely he ought to have applied to them the great principle of Christian unity.

As a matter of fact, however, Paul did nothing of the kind. . . . Paul saw very clearly that the difference between the Judaizers and himself was the difference between two entirely distinct types of religion; it was the difference between a religion of merit and a religion of grace.

I am no believer in historical laws, but I do see the pattern repeated throughout the history of the church that when Christians begin to make the faith practical by insisting that Christianity’s vitality can only be proved by its effectiveness in changing everyday life, the Christian religion becomes moralistic. At that point, Christians become indignant about urban crime, wayward elites, and national hypocrisy. But when the church is more concerned about the gospel and the forgiveness of sins that only comes through the shed blood of Christ, they may like Paul get indignant about moralism and neo-nomianism. The reason could be that like Paul and Machen, these forensic-centric Christians know that by emphasizing good works in public life the moralizers and neo-nomians implicitly embrace the idea that being good is what makes someone or a society Christian, not faith in Christ.

So here’s a proposal: if you want truly religious affections, start by letting Pauline indignation be the norm for your anger.