The Artistic Theologian 4 (2016)

The Artistic Theologian, published by the School of Church Music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, ‘focuses on issues of worship, church music, aesthetics,  and culture for Christian musicians, pastors, church music students, and worship leaders’.

Below are the essays and their introductory paragraphs published in volume 4. Individual essays are available from here; the whole volume is available as a pdf here.

Scott Aniol

Editorial: “Thus Says the Lord”: Biblical Worship in Contemporary Practice

God’s revelation is the basis and foundation of everything in Christian life and ministry. God’s inspired Word is the ultimate standard for what Christians believe, how they live their lives, and especially the manner in which they approach God in worship. Since worship is to God, for God, and about God, God alone has the prerogative to determine how he will be worshiped... This fourth volume of Artistic Theologian is not a themed issue, but providentially every article relates to this matter of the sufficiency and authority of God’s Word in worship.

T. David Gordon

Commentary: Partial Psalmody

Within the Reformed tradition, there has been considerable discussion of the question of exclusive psalmody (the belief that the Church of Jesus Christ should sing in worship only canonical psalms). There has been less discussion of the propriety of what I call “Partial Psalmody,” singing portions (or even snippets) of psalms but not in their entirety. I think we should discuss this question also, ideally with the same mutual respect and charity with which we discuss exclusive psalmody. I ordinarily object to Partial Psalmody, on grounds I will mention below. Let me say beforehand that contemporary worship music is the graver offender here. Exclusive Psalmist communions, such as The Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA), frequently sing partial psalms, breaking biblical psalms into several portions, and singing each of those as its own separate part of a service of worship, ordinarily to different tunes. But at least the parts of psalms they sing are larger parts, whereas in the contemporary worship music it is common to sing very small portions.

Paige Patterson

Ultimate Mystery: The Disappearance of Holy Scripture from Evangelical Worship

The Southern Baptist Convention, identified by most as the largest Protestant denomination in America, revised its confession known as The Baptist Faith and Message (BFM) in June of 2000. A blue-ribbon committee chaired by Adrian Rogers and including Richard Land, Chuck Kelley, Al Mohler, and Jerry Vines – among others – worked diligently to rid the 1963 revision of the old New Hampshire Confession of the neo-orthodox language that had infiltrated the document at several points. After one of the most interesting debates in Baptist history, lasting more than an hour, the convention approved the changes by a vote of better than 95% of the thousands of registered messengers.

Matthew Ward

Baptism as Worship: Revisiting the Kiffin/Bunyan Open-Communion Debate

Baptists in America have very strong feelings about the conditions for church membership. In this article, I want to focus on one: believer’s baptism by immersion. My current church constitution lists as a requirement for church membership baptism by immersion on repentance of sin and profession of faith. The same qualification appears in both the Philadelphia and New Hampshire confessions of faith, in Pendleton’s Baptist Church Manual, and in the Baptist Faith and Message. Indeed, many Baptists in America consider believer’s baptism by immersion to be a non-negotiable prerequisite for local church membership—but perhaps not as many as did a generation ago. Some significant Baptist churches have begun accepting members without that requirement, and that trend will certainly continue. Indeed, I broached this subject with some colleagues in Britain, and they were confused by my intention because they have nearly unanimously removed that condition from their constitutions. It is no longer a debate for them.

Scott Connell

Implications for Worship from the Mount of Transfiguration

The Mount of Transfiguration has long been considered one of the most mysterious events in the New Testament (Matt 17:1–13; Mark 9:2–13; Luke 9:28–36). Some source-critical scholars have considered it no more than a symbolic (non-historical) story created to demonstrate the Messiahship and deity of Christ. Others have believed it to be an ecstatic vision experienced either by Peter or even Christ himself. Still others have considered it a misplaced resurrection narrative out of chronological order in the synoptic gospels. The reasons for attempting to explain away the miraculous nature of this event are predictable, though still unnecessary.

Steven Winiarski

Music, Culture, and Vain Repetition: Matthew 6 in its Context

There are many different views on the relationship between church and culture. One extreme believes that the church should look nothing like culture and operate as a counter-cultural movement. This view tends to accuse recent worship music of being guilty of vain repetition, which Jesus condemns in Matthew 6:7. However, this view often does not want a counter-cultural church, but rather a church that preserves the culture of a previous generation instead of embracing the culture of the current one. What pastor hasn’t heard questions and statements such as “Why are we singing that 7/11 chorus (a chorus with 7 words sung 11 times)? Why are we singing this new song with these new instruments? It causes us to look like the world! What’s wrong with our old hymns?”

Abstracts of Recent SWBTS School of Church Music Doctoral Dissertations

Book Reviews

Mission Frontiers 36, 5 (September-October 2014)

The September-October 2014 issue of Mission Frontiers, published by the U.S. Center for World Mission, contains a number of articles looking at ‘Ethnodoxology: Worship and Mission for the Global Church’.

Guest editor Robin Harris writes:

‘Why is ethnodoxology a crucial issue for the Missio Dei in this century? Unfortunately, the commonly held misconception that “music is a universal language” has long blinded us to the need for contextualization of artistic forms of communication, including music but also extending to all other art forms. One of the stubborn obstacles to effective mission today is that we are not consistently communicating the gospel in ways that allow it to thrive in local soil. Through foundational articles, stories from the field, and practical how-to advice, this issue demonstrates the remarkable results of applying ethnodoxology principles in cross-cultural ministry.’

Individual articles can be accessed from here, and the whole issue (3.4 MB) can be downloaded as a pdf here.

9Marks Journal (May-June 2014) on the Church Singing

The latest issue of the 9Marks Journal, available here as a pdf, is devoted to ‘The Church Singing’.

In the Editorial, Jonathan Leeman writes:

‘Think about what the New Testament emphasizes when it comes to the church’s corporate music. It doesn’t talk about crafting a highly charged worship “experience.” Interestingly, it doesn’t use the language of “worship” at all in this context (which is not to deny that corporate singing is worship). Instead, the Bible talks about the congregation singing to one another (Col. 3:16; Eph. 5:19), and doing everything for the sake of edifying one another (1 Cor. 14). That’s it: people singing together. When it comes to the topic of music, Christians might do well to talk about the church singing or the congregation singing because that’s what the Bible talks about.’

Centre for Public Christianity (June 2013)

The latest newsletter from the Centre for Public Christianity contains links to several interesting-looking features:

• A video interview with cultural commentator Mark Sayers, who ‘diagnoses our contemporary restlessness, our excess of choice and wonders what life might be like beyond an endless trip’.

• An audio interview with violinist Rebecca Irwin on ‘the craft involved in producing musical instruments and how such an activity might reveal something of humanity’s creative calling in the world’.

• A video interview with Lynn H. Cohick on ‘the life of women in the ancient world and in early Christianity’.

• An audio interview with Kara Martin, Associate Dean of Ridley’s The Marketplace Institute, exploring work-life balance as part of the wider link between life and faith at work.

The Artistic Theologian 1 (2012)

I’ve just come across The Artistic Theologian, which describes itself as ‘an evangelical theological journal published by the School of Church Music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’, which ‘focuses on issues of worship and culture for Christian musicians, pastors, church music students, and worship leaders’.

The essays and abstracts are below; I was particularly drawn to the final one on a biblical understanding of culture.

Individual essays are available from here; the whole volume is available as a pdf here.

John E. Simons

Introducing The Artistic Theologian

The Artistic Theologian is designed to provide a place for publication, research, discussion, and resources for those engaged in worship and artistic ministry. We hope it will create points of connection between worship leaders, pastors, church music scholars, theologians, and students preparing for ministry. The journal and its allied resources support the point of view that a church musician should be an artist and a theologian, and it addresses the need to increase dialogue between pastors and church musicians.

Kevin T. Bauder

Why Pastors Should Be Learned in Worship and Music

This essay addresses the following question: Should pastors be learned in worship and music? My answer offers a perspective arising from my experience and theological reflection upon ministry (over thirty years, about evenly divided between ministry as a pastor and as an academic theologian). My initial answer to the question is that a pastor certainly does not need to be a skilled musician in order to enjoy an effective ministry. Nevertheless, since right affection (including right worship) is at the heart of the Christian faith, and since right affection is both expressed through and evoked by the arts, and since the church is biblically required to employ certain arts in the execution of its ministry, then pastors should possess sufficient learning to lead the church wisely and knowledgably concerning the artistic productions that the church adopts in worship. I shall present my observations in a series of nine propositions.

T. David Gordon

Finding Beauty Where God Finds Beauty: A Biblical Foundation of Aesthetics

Philosophically, we are at a new moment in history. Today, most people are post-Realists, or Nominalists. Prior to Nominalism, the prevailing philosophies in the West were all variations on Realism. In those systems, Reality is a given, and perception is viewed as the ability to observe, in varying degrees, what is Real. Nominalism (from the Latin nomen, “name”), as a philosophy, suggests that there is no Reality, or that if there is Reality, it has no inherent meaning. To the contrary, what a realist calls “meaning” is his or her imputation of value onto an otherwise meaningless universe, somewhat analogous to how a critic might impute meaning to a canvas randomly covered with paint. As its own label suggests, “Nominalism” implies that words are mere “names” that humans give objects, but these names only reveal information about the “namers” and nothing about the objects so named.

Jonathan Blackmon

Scripture, Shekinah, and Sacred Song: How God’s Word and God’s Presence Should Shape the Song of God’s People

The song of God’s people plays a crucial role in the faith formation and doctrinal understanding of the church because the content of worship shapes the worshiper’s view of God. The content of congregational song must therefore be carefully scrutinized so that the songs on the lips of God’s people do not promote vain or even false worship. The words must be doctrinally sound, so they must reflect biblical truth in all that they teach. Christian worship proclaims, celebrates, and enacts the Gospel of Christ, so congregational songs must present the truth of God’s goodness in all that he says and does. The most outstanding feature of God’s people at worship actually has nothing to do with the worshipers themselves, but is instead the presence of God among them. Therefore, the words and music of corporate worship should reflect the truth of God’s beauty, for, as J.I. Packer so eloquently stated, “knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person’s heart.”

Scott Aniol

Toward a Biblical Understanding of Culture

The missional church movement has significantly influenced evangelical churches in recent years, especially through its philosophy of evangelism and worship. Missional advocates argue that the church is part of the missio Dei – the mission of God – and thus it must see its ministries as fitting within that mission. Essential to the accomplishment of that mission is embedding the church in its target culture, which missional authors call “incarnation.” In order to evangelize a culture, they argue, churches must contextualize the message of the gospel in the culture. According to the grandfather of the missional movement, Lesslie Newbigin, contextualization is “the placing of the gospel in the total context of a culture at a particular moment, a moment that is shaped by the past and looks to the future.”

Book Reviews

David T. Koyzis on Church Practices in Public Life: Communal Singing

David T. Koyzis, ‘Church Practices in Public Life: Recovering the Practice of Communal Singing’, Cardus (9 July 2012).

This is the third in a series from Cardus on ‘Church Practices and Public Life’, this one devoted to communal singing.

Koyzis suggests that there is ‘an integral connection between liturgical and folk music, which distinguishes both from the commercial popular music that has drowned out our collective voice over the past century’.

He points to three common characteristics:

(1) ‘both can be said to originate within a community rather than with an enterprising individual’.

(2) ‘neither liturgy nor folk music in its purest form has its roots in performance’.

(3) ‘both liturgical and folk music are modal in character, as opposed to the conventional major and minor scales, which we erroneously tend to see as exhausting our melodic possibilities’.

Jeremy Begbie on Sentimentality

This is a slightly longer version of an article first published in London Institute for Contemporary Christianity’s Highlights (March 2008).

Jeremy Begbie sometimes lectures from the piano stool, but he’s just as comfortable behind the lectern, using slide presentation and recorded music to engage expert and novice alike in exploring the connections between theology and the arts, particularly music. Jeremy is the founder and director of the international research project, Theology Through the Arts. A professionally-trained musician, he also teaches theology at the University of Cambridge, and is the author of several books, including most recently Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (SPCK, 2008). It’s mid-December, and he’s presenting to a full house at LICC on the topic of ‘Sentimentality in Christian Art & Worship: What’s Gone Wrong?’ Something tells me this is not the time to offer my solo rendition of ‘Jesus wants me for a sunbeam’.

Three characteristics of sentimentality
He begins by identifying three characteristics of sentimentality. First, sentimentality misrepresents reality through evading or trivialising evil; it is selective in what it chooses to notice (the world is a great place, really), and projects innocence where there is no innocence (she’s not so bad, really). Second, sentimentality is emotionally self-indulgent; sentimental art encourages an emotional reaction to reality that is shallow or one-dimensional. Jeremy referred here to Milan Kundera’s characterisation of kitsch: ‘Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.’ What really moves the sentimentalist is the fact that he’s being moved. Third, sentimentality fails to take appropriate costly action; the sentimentalist screens out darker dimensions, wants emotion without expense.

Insofar as Christian art and worship displaces honesty with niceness, wallows in self-indulgent emotions, refuses to face up to difficult issues, denies the reality of what is wrong with the world, deals only with what is comfortable, nice and builds self-esteem – to that extent, we have succumbed to sentimentality. Importantly, it’s not an issue of emotion per se, but whether emotion is theologically grounded, appropriately directed, expresses truth, and inspires us to engage with a damaged world.

Three days of Easter
In countering sentimentality, Jeremy encourages Christians to have ‘a three-days faith’. We need to experience the three days of Easter from an inside perspective: to feel the pain of Friday and the despair of Saturday before the joy of Sunday. Sentimentality skips over the tension of the story to the happiness of final resolution. But, by living inside the three days of Easter, pain is confirmed not erased, gratification is delayed, the tension is extended, and the true power of Easter morning is revealed.

Christian art and music must pause at Good Friday and not rush to Easter Sunday. In Rembrandt's ‘Crucifixion’, far from romanticising the scene, the light exposes the painful, ugly event. Jeremy related how works by the Scottish, Roman Catholic composer James MacMillan provide a Christian counter-sentimentality in combining two separate music ideas and layering them on top of each other to create a tension which is then resolved. Just as music moves from equilibrium to tension to rest, with the listener having to wait for resolution, so the biblical drama speaks of exile and return, of crucifixion and resurrection, of hope deferred and hope fulfilled.

The lecture was exemplary of the ‘Christian wisdom’ referred to in the subtitle of Jeremy’s latest book. Not only did it match LICC’s concerns that Christians be able to relate their faith to every aspect of their lives, it also provided a reminder of how theology nourishes the life of the church in its worship and mission to the world. A reminder that a Christian understanding of creation is significant if we are to celebrate as good all that comes from the hand of God, that a Christian understanding of sin is significant if we are to be realistic about the plight of the human condition, that a Christian understanding of church is significant if Jesus is not to become my personal possession, that a Christian understanding of hope is significant if we are to live with the tension between what is now and what will be. Theology which is embodied in life is inseparable from prayer and worship – thinking appropriately about God as well as engaging with God, as he has revealed himself in Scripture and through Jesus Christ.

An earlier version of Jeremy’s lecture was published as ‘Beauty, Sentimentality and the Arts’, in Daniel J. Treier, Mark Husbands, and Roger Lundin (eds.), The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts (Downers Grove: IVP, 2007).