Psalm 45 Publications

I have long considered music to be one of the most precious gifts that our bountiful heavenly Father has bestowed upon the world of men. Music is the food of the soul. It is the aged and well-refined wine of the affections, and no drippings of the honeycomb could fall upon the palate with a more pleasing and invigorating effect than that which well-crafted music has upon the heart. Music is the highest occupation of the holy angels, the radiant splendor of whose purpose can be expressed in no other way than to sing the thrice-holy of the Almighty God; and music will likewise be the highest and eternally delightful occupation of the saints, when they shall finally be gathered around the throne to sing, “Hallelujah! For the Lord God Almighty reigns.” Do you want a foretaste of heaven here on earth? Then come into the presence of God’s people as they forget their cares and dissensions for a time and lift up their voices in unified, vibrant, and heartfelt praise to the King of kings, whom to know is to love with a glory-filled and inexpressible joy. Continue Reading

The Occasion

Having experienced the manifold effects, in the fundamentalist blogosphere, of John Piper’s decision to have a rapper, Curtis Allen, perform at Bethlehem Baptist Church, I was eminently motivated to do some thinking on the nature of rap as a musical/poetic entity. Simply because, if there was one thing that bound together the various responses into a somewhat unified whole, it was the opinion that rap is inherently immoral, and therefore, illegitimate as a mode in which to frame gospel truth. Some of the responses were more than dogmatic – they were vicious and harsh to an extreme. And yet, in the ensuing debate, I found that it was actually the Christian rappers, rather than their opponents, who evinced the more gracious and Christ-like response. So the question that confronted me was this: Are the Christian rappers well-intentioned but misguided artists, or are they in fact to be commended both for their commitment to Christ-honoring truth and for their artistic excellence? The question propelled me into a serious reflection on the nature and history of poetry, and the place of rap in that essential/historical framework. Continue Reading

Although historically it has never been the overwhelming Reformed concensus, there have always been a few Reformed groups and churches that use the regulative principle of worship to restrict the number of legitimate songs that may be sung in worship to the one-hundred and fifty found in the Hebrew Psalter. Is this application of the regulative principle legitimate? I would contend that it is not at all a conclusion which derives from an unbiased examination of the biblical evidence, even granting a prior acceptance of the basic validity of the regulative principle. The regulative principle is simply not elastic enough to confirm or eliminate subsets of what God has commanded in general. And that is what it attempts to do, in its psalter-only garb. In validation of this point, let’s consider exactly what it is that the regulative principle requires, and how it relates to the biblical commands governing the use of music in worship. Continue Reading

The ultimate end of the church, both in the sense of destiny and of purpose, may be summed up as worship. We have been constituted as the peculiar people of God simply so that we might “show forth the praises of him who has called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). This is, in the subjective sense of what salvation intends to accomplish within those who are saved, the one overarching purpose for the church. And this purpose will find its ultimate tangible expression at the conclusion of history, when a multitude from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation lift up their voices in unity to proclaim, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain!” Hence, the unadulterated expression of perfect Christian unity is necessary for the final realization of the Church’s great goal: without perfect unity, we could not come to a full apprehension of our doxological purpose in the eschaton; and to the extent that we fail to display unity as the Church in the present age, we also fail to “show forth the praises” of God in the manner that the church was designed to do. That this is not an overstatement of the absolute necessity of Christian unity both for the Church’s purpose of showing God’s praises, and for the enjoyment of her destiny in glory, may be seen by two of the statements Christ made during his last supper with the disciples, as recorded in John’s gospel. The first of these implies that, when Christian unity is not observed, the “showing forth” of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus (and so a Christian and a member of God’s Church), becomes impossible: “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another” (John 13:35). The second demonstrates that absolute Christian unity is a vital element for the Church in glory – without it, the goal and mission of the Church must fail, short of her attaining to her ultimate end of seeing and enjoying the glory of Christ where he is with the Father: Continue Reading

Introduction

John Calvin’s doctrinal magnum opus, Institutes of the Christian Religion, begins with what seems at first glance to be a remarkably unoriginal statement: the knowledge of God and ourselves are interrelated. What is more remarkable is that, after a general explanation of that connection, he leaves its essential nature untouched, and begins immediately to examine the purpose of knowing God – that is, how knowledge of him is to our advantage. In so doing, he glosses over a question that was afforded a prominent place in the theological debates of the past one and a half millennia: does knowledge of God precede and predicate knowledge of self, or does knowledge of self precede and predicate knowledge of God? To this question Calvin gives no more thought than to acknowledge, “which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.” (1) This new epistemological approach is both profound and perceptive. It is also a foundation that has proved strong enough to support the enormous weight of one of the most notable Christian documents in history. Continue Reading