Musical Instruments in Divine Worship VI.
James Dodson
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CHAPTER VI.
THE MODE OF REASONING BY INSTRUMENTALISTS FATAL TO THE THEORY OF A PERMISSIVE WARRANT.
A recent pamphlet by a brother* in the United Presbyterian Church, has professedly traversed the whole ground upon the theory of a permissive warrant. The brother says, “I do not propose to prove that such music is commanded, and hence obligatory, for that I do not believe.” Again, “no one supposes their use to-day is ordinarily and universally obligatory.” Let us keep in mind the position here defined. He affirms instrumentation in the case of Miriam to have been within the Patriarchal dispensation, as a part of Patriarchal worship. He puts it upon the same footing with the Sabbath, and affirms it to be a moral as distinguished from the Levitical institutions. He says, “enough has been said to show the fact that incorporation of any institution into the Levitical dispensation did not render that institution a Levitical, as distinguished from a moral one.” “In this respect, then, praise rendered with instrumental accompaniment simply comes under the rule recognized by my opponents as being applicable to the Sabbath and other Patriarchal institutions incorporated into the Levitical system.” If instrumentation be upon the same footing as the Sabbath, then it is of universal application, and there is no option about it. The reason that the Sabbath comes to us from the Patriarchal dispensation, or rather from the creation, is that it is universally binding. If it be meant that it only has the feature of perpetuity like it, still it must have its perpetuity
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*Rev. D. F. Bonner.
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in the fact that it contains an imperishable moral principle. It is the moral principle that is the perpetual life of vowing and tithing (if it be perpetual, and we believe it is), with which the writer compares instrumentation also. Now, what is a moral principle, or is based upon it, is obligatory and universal. If instrumental music has come down to the New Testament dispensation, as the Sabbath has, it is just as obligatory as the Sabbath; and as an institution in the worship of God, it is of universal obligation.
Again, the argument professed to be found in the New Testament is guarded against the theory that there is any binding force in the warrant for it. Thus the pamphlet referred to declares “the use of such music, while not obligatory, was yet warrantable.” The first argument following this is, that “the primitive church beyond question received her songs of praise from the former dispensation.” “It would be a violation of all probability to suppose that, while retaining the songs, they at once abandoned the ancient, almost immemorial, method of performing them. That, as every one admits, was with the instrumental accompaniment.” But it is enough to reply to this, that the primitive church received her songs and retained them under a mandatory and exclusive warrant. If she received and retained the instrumental accompaniment, she would receive and retain that accompaniment under the same obligation. The argument, if true, would suffice to establish an obligatory, but not a permissive warrant. No ingenuity can find a place here for a permissive warrant.
Again. It is claimed that “the absence of any murmuring in reference to it on the part of the Jews clearly indicates that neither Christ nor his apostles taught that the new dispensation recalled the privilege * * * of accompanying their songs of praise with music.” It is sufficient to reply again that the argument implies that to keep down all such murmurings there must have been instru-
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ments in not only all the churches among the Jews, but in all the churches among the Gentiles where there were Jews. There were Jews in the Colossian Church who complained of the neglect of the Jewish law in reference to meat and drink, of holy days, new moons and Sabbaths. But our brother thinks he has shown that the Colossians did not employ musical instruments in praise, and that this accounts for the difference in the verbiage in teaching the Ephesians and Colossians respectively on the subject of Psalmody. Can he tell why the Jews, who were among them and at the business of murmuring, did not murmur because the law respecting musical instruments was neglected? Moreover, if the Jews had mourned over the want of the instruments, they would have used the same plea with which we are so familiar, “Ye must keep the law”—that law that required the use of instruments as it required the observance of new moons, &c. After all the chief difficulty with which the apostles had to contend in reference to the Jewish Christians, was their inclination to return to the Jewish ceremonies required by the Levitical law and to secure the adhesion of the Gentile Christians to the same ritual which required the use of instruments? The instruments are not particularly specified, neither is incense. The truth is that the music of the temple had become in the apostolic age to be a very insignificant affair in comparison with what it was when organized by David. In the temple of Solomon there were four thousand singers and players. “In the Herodian temple there were twelve singers accompanied by nine citherns, two harps introduced by one pair of cymbals.” And this was their national representation in the matter of music!! They would be likely rather to object to the neglect of the occasions of their solemn meetings under the law than of the neglect of the music of these occasions.
Again. The interpretation of the words in the New Testament, supposed by the advocates of instrumental
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music to warrant its use, if it proves anything for them, proves that the warrant is obligatory and not permissive.
We notice these words in the order in which they are considered, in the pamphlet to which we have already referred. We express no opinion as to the correctness of the process by which the author reaches his conclusion in reference to the force of the words upon which the argument is based. It is with his conclusion we have to do now. In reference to the Greek word Psallo, as employed in Jas. v., 13, “Let him sing Psalms,” after stating circumstances, which, in his opinion, add force to his interpretation of the word, his conclusion is thus expressed: “Under the circumstances, there can be little room for doubt that there is here a clear indication of the lawfulness of such music in the Christian church. Any other supposition violates all the probabilities in the case.” In this declaration the little word Psallo is made to carry four distinct ideas, and two of them, in principle, opposite ideas. First, it means to play with an instrument; second, it means to sing; third, it means that playing with an instrument is permissively warranted; fourth, it means that singing with the voice is specifically required. Now, we believe that with all the capabilities of the Greek language, it has not a word in it that is capable, without any other qualifying word or phrase, of describing two different acts and assigning to each different and opposite principles. Permissive and obligatory warrants are so far from being in harmony that the theory of instrumental music can only be based on the one in opposition to the other. In the nature of the case, therefore, the same word cannot express an obligation to sing and a permissive warrant to play on an instrument. If Psallo includes both to sing and to play, it puts them both exactly on the same footing. The brother will not say that it does not impose an obligation to sing. He does not say that it imposes an obligation to play. For this would uproot his whole theory. The only translation of the
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passage, according to the position so elaborately developed in this pamphlet in order to give Psallo its full force, would be: “Is any merry? Let him play optionally and sing imperatively.”
Is not this wresting the Scriptures?
The only other passage in the New Testament claimed as explicitly warranting instrumental music is Eph. v. 19: “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in your hearts to the Lord.” The author has evidently exhausted his powers of research, “compassing sea and land” to find authorities to justify the interpretation of this passage as warranting the use of instruments. Psalmoi (the term for psalms) according to his argument, carries with it essentially the idea of playing on instruments. And this idea is intensified in this passage by the use of “psallontes” (from “psallo.”) He says “adontes” is, properly rendered, singing. Psallontes is playing, in the use of a composition, (psalmoi,) which is so lyrical, and has the idea of instrumentation so embedded in its very nature, that it never can be employed in its native force without it. Yet he calls the passage an exhortation. There can be no question that what is enjoined or exhorted by Divine authority is imperatively binding. If we, as United Presbyterians, admit that there is anything in this passage that is a mere matter of optional warrant, we at once abandon the argument that we have so long based upon it in reference to the matter of praise. The author, to escape the conclusion to which his argument has brought him, and to guard himself, says, “The exhortation seeks only the sanctification of existing practices.” But if the apostle is referring only to existing practices, that which is sanctified by his exhortation is made simply imperative through all time. His reference to the Savior’s exhortation in the Sermon on the Mount, respecting the mode of prayer, almsgiving, &c., is again unfortunate for him. For, what the Savior enjoins as to the matter of
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things that were already imperative, makes the manner of the service imperative also. He refers us also to the fact that psallontes is omitted in the corresponding passage, Col. iii. 16. The effort is to show that the warrant is optional on the ground that instruments not being employed, as is alleged, in the Colossian church, there is no allusion to them. Hence, it was a matter of option. There is not a particle of evidence furnished to show that there was such a distinction between these churches. But if the Ephesians were warranted to play on instruments, so were the Colossians. For in both injunctions the term “psalmois” is used, a word which the writer thinks he has proved has in its very nature the idea of instrumentation. The two injunctions must therefore, upon his theory, be placed in the same category, and establish the same principle in reference to the mode of worship, whatever that may be. Moreover, the exhortation to the Ephesians, it is claimed, contains in it a principle which is general and warranting the use of instruments by the church in all future ages, and hence it must have been applicable as a principle to all the primitive churches, and so to the Colossians It cannot be of any private interpretation. These passages adduced from the New Testament, therefore, like everything else alleged from the word of God in this discussion in favor of a permissive appointment, utterly ignore the theory.
We present here a brief resume of the discussion thus far. We have endeavored to show that the character of the warrant claimed for instrumental music throws it without the pale of Presbyterial supervision, and that it is inconsistent with Presbyterianism itself, which we as a church maintain is of divine right—that human nature is too strong in its tendency to corrupt divine worship to be entrusted with the prerogative of regulating an institution that exerts so much influence upon the church—that the means of divine worship are not according to the dictates
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of human wisdom, but contrary thereto, and, therefore, divine wisdom makes every appointment in worship obligatory as necessary to its observance in its integrity—that we have an impressive lesson in the particularity with which the whole Levitical service was prescribed that God would not warrant such an institution in his worship and leave it at loose ends without any regulative enactments.
We have examined the examples referred to in the word of God to prove that there may be a permissive warrant for an institution in his worship. We believe that, instead of giving any countenance to the principle, they very much strengthen the evidence for the opposite principle. The example of Miriam, in which the playing on instruments is alone accepted, and every other circumstance connected with it persistently and arbitrarily discarded, has not a word or a circumstance in it to show a permissive warrant, but, on the contrary, if its principle descends to the New Testament dispensation, it must, in its nature, be obligatory. The only application that can be made of passages adduced from the New Testament is that of imperative requirement, and there is not a hint in the passages themselves of a permissive warrant or anything that can be construed so as to imply it. We feel that it is safe to affirm that, in the labored efforts of the advocates of instrumental music, there has not been a single evidence produced of an optional warrant for any institution in the appointments for divine worship. Everything that can be shown to have a legitimate place in that worship must have the seal, not of permission, but of obligation. It is a principle that occupies the very threshold of God’s house. It is most reasonable that he who is the sole proprietor of a house should prescribe the rules of conduct for all who enter it, and that every one of them should be imperative. The principle is illustrated every day in common life. Why should the Great Head of this mysterious and glorious spiritual house be less rigid in regard to all its appointments?