Musical instruments, Biblical authority and liturgical integrity

This principle is deducible by logical inference from the great truth—confessed by

Protestants—that the Scriptures are an infallible rule of faith and practice, and therefore

supreme, perfect and sufficient for all the needs of the Church. "All Scripture is given by

inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in

righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."

This truth operates positively to the inclusion of everything in the doctrine, government and

worship of the church which is commanded, explicitly or implicitly, in the Scriptures, and

negatively to the exclusion of everything which is not so commanded

There is no nobler pass than being allowed by the Father to delve in a manner more comprehensive than ever before, into His Word! Nothing is more ennobling than being led by His Providence to the point of conjecture which both causes us to more deeply respect the doctrine and fellowship of other defenders of the true Reformed faith and challenges us to re-examine our own. For the first time in many years, my faith has been challenged to the point of posing the question: "How well do I really serve Christ?" Finally, it reaffirms the gravity of God's Covenant with the elect; as we well know that all are not granted the mercy of this unmerited portion!!!!

To this end,there remains much in the vein of spirited discourse in the Reformed circles concerning what is and is not appropriate for worship. In the previous article, I gave reflections regarding hymnody in worship. I would feel derelict not to address the issue of the use of instruments.

Pictured above is the Rev Dr John Girardeau, a great champion of Old School Presbyterianism in the southern United States. This revered South Carolinian of French Huguenot blood served as GA Moderator in 1874. In the American South, his presuppositionalism is ranked with this great champion:

Robert Louis Dabney; who was a pastor, professor of systematic theology  and became the tenth GA Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the United States in 1870.

Their soteriology was and remains a standard bearer for those truly Reformed and committed to the preservation of classical Reformed worship and doctrine! They championed the Regulative Principle of Worship ;which is considered compromised if the use of musical instruments is permitted in public worship.

The argument is that the use of instruments in the New Testament is simply not there and that  their use was permissible by God during the Old Testament as part of the Old Dispensation. Foreordained mortal vessels like Dabney, Thornwell and John Girardeau ( GA Moderator,1975) held that the ceremonial laws which applied to the Levites in the Temple of Jerusalem are tantamount to idolatrous worship if and when applied to public worship under the New Dispensation.

I'd be the last person on earth to object to any impregnable resolve to rail against its tide of revisionism. I'd never directly or tacitly endorse any vestige of the godless pluralism and the kind of blatantly uncatechised yokelhood that has exceedingly debased and vulgarized our faith in the mainstream. But I pose the same question to this discussion that I posed in my previous article. Is the intent of tenacity geared more toward the preservation of classical Reformed worship or worship intertwined with cultural tradition? What becomes of worship in the event the culture or heritage which enjoyed historical plurality would begin to ebb? The latter can and has threatened soteriological maladroitness; which in turn has flagged laxity in doctrine and hermeneutics. The results of can prove disastrous for bodies politic, in general and have relegated once hale and hearty Protestant denominations to the course of a slow, agonizing and self inflicted death!!

                                                               ........need I say more?

Yet in the endeavor to maintain liturgical rectitude and doctrinal soundness, even the more prolific defenders of the Reformed faith have committing the following errors.These errors include, but are not limited to:

• Appealing to folkways, aesthetic tastes and the traditions of men in assertions regarding what is appropriate for worship and what isn't.
• Excessive succinctness in distinguishing the Old Dispensation from the New Dispensation. So much so that some of their platforms or arguments appear dispensational.
•     Dissociating with prelatics with such a fervor that proper emphasis on the Presbyterian construct is obscured.

And supplanting the emphasis in church matters from where it belongs...on Christ her bridegroom!

Here's a good case in point. Rev James Henley Thornwell wrote in the Southern Presbyterian Review, a magazine he established-by the way, that mankind is partitioned in the following way:

 the true children of God, among whom alone exists the genuine communion of saints; (2) those whom we have ventured to call the heirs apparent of the kingdom, to whom pertain what Calvin calls the outward adoption, and a special interest in the promises of the covenant; (3) Strangers and aliens, who though not excluded from the general call of the Gospel, are destitute of any inheritance in Israel. This class is properly called the world.

—Collected Writings, IV, 340; and "A Few More Words on the Revised Book of Discipline", Southern Presbyterian Review, 13.1 p. 5


Rev Thornwell clearly was so preoccupied in chiding the Halfway Covenant and its promulgators, he ran afoul of the soundly Reformed doctrine of "elect on the Father's Right Hand...the reprobate on the Father's Left hand". Isn't it more important to be on point with Christ than to prove you would have been at odds with Rev Solomon Stoddard and other proponents of latitudinarianism ?

Rev R L Dabney, Thornwell's contemporary, should have been struck by the urge to repudiate Thornwell for his rather reckless abridgement of Biblical and catechetical warrant, on this position. I've found nothing to this end. What I did find on Dabney was an otherwise prolific entreaties against the use of instruments in worship in Watchman and Observer; which was published on Feb 22,1849. Therein he includes this among his reasoning:

The organ is incapable of accentuation. The alternate notes played upon it cannot receive any variety of ictus or force, as should be the case in all music. The rhythm of English poetry depends entirely on the occurrence of accented and unaccented syllables, in a certain order. In reading it, the emphasis, or ictus of the voice must fall on the alternate syllables, intended to receive it. To neglect this rule, and to pronounce the syllables indiscriminately with equal force, would convert the most spirited lines of Scott or Burns, into an intolerable drawl. Now, this rhythm is equally essential in poetry, when sung. The alternate notes, corresponding with the accented syllables of the metre, must receive a heavier or stronger tone. To neglect this, in singing, is as insufferable to a cultivated musical ear, as the neglect of the accentuation in reading poetry, would be to the elocutionists.

 Are we defending the Biblical positions regarding true Reformed worship or the rhythm of English poetry? Was the urge or notion to include this as part of the litany of redress of instruments in worship grounded in the Westminster standards or the quinquarticular considerations outlined in the Synod of Dordrecht? Is it not any less inappropriate to use the cadence of English poetry or literature as a gauge in determining the solvency of liturgy than Popish grandeur or that of the historic episcopate? Would the former be no less as brazen an attempt to cater to rhythmic tastes and/or linguistic/ aesthetic palates of the Anglophile who has yet to savor the fruit of effectual calling; which would render a particular style needless, in due course?

..............................Or is the Word of God the only gauge?

Again, I am no less mortally opposed to what Dabney and Girardeau termed "incipient ritualism" than they were. However I take umbrage with Girardeau's employment of the Biblical account of Cain's offering not being answered by fire. In his great work Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church, he writes:

Cain and his offering. The brothers, Cain and Abel, had been in childhood beyond

all doubt instructed by their parents in the knowledge of the first promise of redemption to be

accomplished by atonement. They had, we have every reason to believe, often seen their father

offering animal sacrifices in the worship of God. To this mode of worship they had been

accustomed. Cain, the type of rationalists and fabricators of rites and ceremonies in the house

of the Lord, consulted his own wisdom and taste, and ventured to offer in God’s worship the

fruit of the ground—an un-bloody sacrifice; while Abel, conforming to the appointments and

prescribed usages in which he had been trained, expressed his faith and obedience by offering a

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lamb. Abel’s worship was accepted and Cain’s rejected. "And in process of time it came to pass,

that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought

of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his

offering; but unto Cain and his offering he had not respect." Thus, in the immediate family of

Adam, we behold a signal and typical instance of self-assertion and disregard of divine

prescriptions in the matter of worship. This was swiftly followed by God’s disapprobation, and

then came the development of sin in the atrocious crime of fratricide, and the banishment of

the murderer from the communion of his family and the presence of his God

The issues I have with this analogy are these:

 I don't infer from that passage that Cain customarily brought firstlings of a lamb to the altar; only to do an about face and capriciously offer fruits of the ground as an alternative. More to the point, God's foreordaining Abel to have the gift of faith makes a lot more sense than the idea of the Father's wrath being conditional on His observation of Cain's disobedience! After all, if the latter were the case,it would mean God learned, now wouldn't it? To my mind,the account in Genesis Chapter 4 simply teaches us that God has provided the inclination as well as the means to serve Him (see Westminster Confession of Faith Ch 3, Article 6).

I find the analogy catechetically preposterous. Rev Girardeau was irresponsible in his abysmal failure to recognize what is a clear exercise in anthropomorphic license in the Word of God. Is Christ not the Sole Head of the Kirk Invisible? Or are we to infer that our behavior can directly cause the disapprobation of a God we know to be omniscient? Furthermore, the development of sin was when Eve willfully disobeyed the Divine injunction by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was at that point that man fell from his 'previous condition of rectitude'. It was when the fruit was eaten that man lost his free will and became totally depraved (as per the "T" in the acrostic T.U.L.I.P.!

First of all, rigorous defense of the faith is a call felt by God's elect. Indeed, we are to be ready to defend the faith at all times. That is, "in season and out of season" (as per 2 Timothy 4). In this vain, an indellible impression made by Professor Manfred George Gutzke was made on the mind of a young seminary student named Dennis James Kennedy.

The profanation of His kingdom on earth through the milieu of mainstream American Protestantism is the just result of the elect's unpreparedness in this vain! Yet, let us not be so quick be so quick to rail to the integrity of the Bride of Christ that we entertain precepts not unique to Reformed "biology" in the process. For instance, many understandably shy away from drawing such definitive lines between the Old Dispensation and the New Dispensation because of the dispensationalist tendencies such rigid clarity tacitly provokes. I humbly ask how one eternal decree of election can serve as an antecedent to some Covenantal multiplicity?????????

The answer's simple..it cannot and does not. Let the elect be reminded:


"The sacraments of the Old Testament, in regard of the spiritual things thereby signified and exhibited, were, for substance, the same with those of the New" WCF XXVII sec V

Secondly, assuming the use of all manner of musical instruments is in keeping with sound doctrine, are we to consider that their use is objectively evil? I tend to disagree on the grounds that the Father would never decree or sanction the use of His trumpet to herald the return of Christ to claim the righteous ( as per 1 Thessalonians 4:16).

Thirdly, the idea that animal sacrifice is to be categorized with the use of instruments fails to hold water, in my view. That rite was quenched when The Lamb was sacrificed on the cross. I believe it to be soteriologically unsound, to say the least, to lump the two practices. I base my belief on the words of Paul in Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16.

Last-but not least-was it not Rev Dabney himself who described the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper as "symbolic"?  He stood, very correctly-I would add, against both transubstantiation and consubstantiation. Therefore we must consider that to wage war against ritualism and symbolism of all forms is to levy a de facto attack on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper itself!!??

Suprastantiation is what we believe in. That is to say, the Spirit of God transcends and parallels the plane of the liturgy and the Eucharist. Devoid of THIS caveat, we run the risk of elevating the sacrament to periculously idolatrous levels, if you really think about it.

From my vantage point, it seems as if the push for the preservation of cultural traditions, coupled with a stoic rejection of innumerable Biblical passages and an abysmally defective definition of what a "psalm" is form the basis for the defense of exclusive psalmody/ a capella worship.

 If our aim is to preserve our cultural traditions,more power to ya!!! My only bone of contention is that we should simply call it what it is....preservation of culture. It would certainly do more to maintain credulity than the employment of latently dispensational hermeneutics and dalliances with Arminianism in the defense of the Reformed tradition!

Until that gladsome morn when Christ Himself shall return to take His righteous chosen of the Father home...and at risk of being redundant....

Heralded by His Father's trumpet, the Bible says!!!