Is the recommendation of, usage of, or belief in modern versions of the Bible, which translate the modern critical text, compatible with or representative of conservative Christianity?   Religious Affections Ministries (RAM) board member Michael Riley writes at their blog site in essence an answer to that question in a series entitled, “Conservative Christianity and the Authorized Version,” of which he completed the introduction in a post on October 8, 2019.

Riley explains that a primary motivation for starting the series was a consequence of a sabbatical that RAM executive director, Scott Aniol, took in the UK and found that the conservative pastors with which he found the greatest unanimity also use the King James Version.  These British conservative evangelical church leaders see modern versions clashing or contradicting with conservative Christianity.  RAM uses modern versions.

I have already written here that the modern versions are at variance with true conservatism.  In the most fundamental way modern versions undermine a conservative view.  Riley represents the criticism:

The argument that conservatives should also embrace the AV is not one that is entirely new to us; others have poked at the apparent inconsistency between using old hymns and new translations. 

That sentence, I contend, misses the point.  I can’t imagine that the conservative pastors of Britain think this is the issue.  I will explain.

I’ve linked to the post above, but Riley lists what he sees as three different positions of criticism.  The first he says comes from contemporary worship advocates who criticize RAM for conservative music inconsistent with their modern version usage.  The second he says comes from those who say that RAM loses their natural audience that overlaps on the authorized version and traditional worship.  The third he says are the TR/AV proponents, who also believe in traditional worship and see the RAM position as inconsistent.  Riley is targeting this last group, even as that represents the British conservative pastors Aniol met.

Riley introduces the series by telling us where he will head.  He’s going to deal with the argument of the ecclesiastical text view and its relationship then to worship out of a high view of God, apparently showing a disconnection between those two things.  The second aspect hearkens to the sentence at the beginning of his piece, regarding the clash of modern language with conservatism.  Third, he’ll address the proposition that the Authorized Version is more reverent.   All of these are interesting, but they do not lay at the foundation of the clash between modern versions and conservative Christianity.  The first one comes the closet, but it still doesn’t get it.  Maybe these are what Aniol heard.  I can’t imagine that, but I haven’t talked to pastors in the UK about their support of the KJV.

The essay ends with this sentence:

I want to make the case that there is no necessary connection between conservative principles of worship and the use of the TR/AV as one’s Bible.

And I’m going to follow along with this series and give it a critique and analysis.  I want to start now though, because I’ve written that I don’t see these as the fundamental arguments.  I agree with the parallel between the AV and traditional worship that Aniol and Riley propose, but they miss the connection to conservatism.  I could incorporate the three they gave to an overall presentation, but they don’t buttress the point.  What does?  Not necessarily in this order, at least these do:

First, both the text of scripture and true worship of God proceed from objective truth or beauty, which are inseparably related.
Two, how we know what we know must be presuppositional, assuming that we can apply and are to apply scripture.  Since no one is neutral, knowledge comes from the pure mother’s milk of God’s Word, where there is neither variableness nor shadow of turning.
Three, there is one God, one truth, and one beauty.
Four, the Holy Spirit guides to truth and beauty, so neither will or should change.  This relates to no total apostasy.

As Riley moves along, I’ll deal with what he writes, Lord-willing, but I’ll also bring in those four and more.

The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 13:14:

Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ
Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof

Surpassed two million hits for this blog today.

The sinful nature of humanity wants what it wants.  It doesn’t want to be hindered from what it wants even on the best of days.  It will do many things to get what it wants.  I see it in scripture and I’ve watched it.

Everyone is going to do what he wants to do against the will of God.  Everyone.  However, I’m not writing about that in this post.  I’ve done many wrong, sinful things that I regret.  I’m writing about permanent positions or activities, where someone doesn’t turn from the belief or behavior.

All true believers have the same faith, based upon the same book, the Bible, with the same meaning.  God’s Word means only one thing.  It hasn’t changed.  2 Peter 1:1 says they (all true believers) “have obtained like precious faith.”  They obtained the faith, so they didn’t invent it or originate it.  True faith is of God.  Because of that it is “like,” the Greek esotimon, which means “equal, of the same kind.”

Peter begins his book by saying that faith isn’t going to be different for anyone as it is obtained from God, so what happens?  What’s the problem?  As you follow from the rest of the epistle, the problem is lust (1:4, 2:10, 2:18, 3:3).  Other related words or phrases are “self-willed” (2:10), “as they that count it pleasure” (2:13), “covetous” (2:14), “loved the wages of unrighteousness” (2:15), and “wantonness” (2:19).  In conjunction with the lust is the parallel problem with authority, essentially the same as lust, because if you want to do what you want to do, then you don’t want to do what someone else wants you to do.  This is represented by these two phrases or clauses in 2 Peter:

denying the Lord that bought them, 2:1
not afraid to speak evil of dignities, 2:10

They don’t like the authority of scripture (2 Peter 1) and they don’t like the second coming of Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3), when they will give an account for what they’ve done.

2 Peter mirrors what Paul writes in Romans 1.  They know God, so what’s the problem?  It’s not a knowledge problem.  Just because they know, doesn’t mean they’ll believe and then practice what they should.  They “hold the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom 1:18), that is, they suppress the truth.  It’s rebellion.  It is a will or a want problem, which is why, when God gives them up, He turns them over to their own lust (1:24).  They don’t want God or what He wants, so He gives them what they want, which turns to their own destruction.  It defiles everything in their life, and one tell-tale expression of their lives is “disobedience to parents” (1:30), the most rudimentary rebellion against authority for a person.

What I’m writing can be seen all over scripture, but right from the beginning, the two sides of the same problem manifest themselves.  Eve wanted the fruit from the tree that was forbidden.  She distrusted God against His commandment or authority, and the man, we know from 1 Timothy 2, abdicated his headship for her, which again indicates a problem with authority.  When Eve wanted to do what she wanted to do, her lust, she did it against the command of God and the headship of her husband, which he obtained from God.

John says that every diversion from the right path is lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and then pride (1 John 2:16-17).  Someone wants what he feels, he wants what he sees, and he’s putting himself first to get it, pride.  Scripture is what gets in the way of lust and pride.  God says, no, I want you to do what I’m telling you, what I want.  A person either believes and does what God says, or he conforms what God says in some way into his own lust and pride.

I’ve established from scripture the real, actual reason for capitulation in doctrinal, practical, or cultural issues as stated in the title of this post.  There will always be the temptation to capitulate.  It’s also what I’ve witnessed in my lifetime.  Let’s take something doctrinal, like the doctrine of preservation of scripture.

Only two positions exist.  God either preserved all of His Words and they’ve been available to every generation of believer, or He did not.  In scripture, God says that He did.  The uncertainty of God’s Words diminishes authority.  If we don’t know what the Words are, then it’s also less likely we would know what they mean.  There is also the pride of scholarship, fitting into the academy, which says we can’t and don’t know because we don’t have the evidence to know.  This all describes the lust, very much akin to what we read in 2 Peter.

The false teachers say that we can’t call scripture the Words of God.  They are closer to fables, writings that came by the will of man, not holy men of God speaking by the Holy Spirit.  What’s real is uniformitarianism, no sign of direct divine intervention, explaining why no fulfillment of the guarantees of the second coming.  Those prophecies can’t be trusted, because they aren’t being fulfilled.  Real evidence debunks the authority of scripture and a real Jesus, one who would come back as he supposedly promised.  Hence, they can walk after their own lust and ask, where is the promise of his coming?  Eschatology itself is too hard to be understood, nothing to be certain about, so why should we deny ourselves the pleasures we desire to please someone we’re not certain exists?

The preservation of scripture is intervention from God, but according to the critics, there isn’t evidence of what God said He would do, so those promises are debunked.  If that’s the case, why should they change on any number cultural or social issues either?  Maybe they will hold on to the major teachings, but why should they regulate everything in their lives based upon a book that they aren’t certain about?

David in Psalm 16:4 writes:

Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god: their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips.

The truth is that sorrows will multiply for those who go after other gods.  Because of that David will not participate in their worship, nor will he take up their names into his lips.  David is trusting the Lord, so he will associate himself only with the true God.

What would tempt David to associate with other gods, take up their names into his lips?  The other god might be more popular than the true God.  This is where lust and pride have their affect.   Lust and pride motivate association with the world’s music, entertainment, celebrity, and causes.  Rather than trust the Lord about their multiplied sorrows, they will take up their names into their lips.

An at least small tremor erupted within Big Evangelicalism in the last several weeks when celebrity evangelical Josh Harris announced he left the Christian faith.  Many other big named evangelicals followed his declaration with an analysis, including Albert Mohler.  I think another evangelical, Carl Trueman, makes a more accurate assessment of the relationship of Joshua Harris to evangelicalism in his post at FirstThings, called “Kissing Christianity Goodbye.”   He writes:

While Harris seems to be making a clean break with his past, the style of his apostasy announcement is oddly consistent with the evangelical Christianity he used to represent. He revealed he was leaving the faith with a social media post, which included a mood photograph of himself contemplating a beautiful lake. The earlier announcement of his divorce used the typical postmodern jargon of “journey” and “story.” And both posts were designed to play to the emotions rather than the mind. Life, it would seem, continues as performance art. 

In a sense, that is exactly how and why the YRR was so successful: savvy harnessing of fashionable idioms and marketing strategies, exceptionally clever use of social media, large and well-organized conferences, and professional-grade websites—all fronted by attractive personalities and brilliant communicators. Orthodoxy as performance art, one might say. And Harris was both a product of and a player in the YRR project.

Later he continued:

But the movement’s leadership was often arrogant. In public, critics were derided and then ignored; in private, they were vilified and bullied. An extensive informal network of individuals, institutions, and organizations who wanted a slice of the YRR action was happy to oblige the padrini by keeping critics on the margins. And one by one big leaders fell from favor: Mark Driscoll, James MacDonald, Tullian Tchividjian, C. J. Mahaney, now Josh Harris. On Friday the news broke that The Village Church, home of YRR megastar Matt Chandler, is being sued over alleged mishandling of sexual abuse.

Sing! 2019  has all the earmarks of Trueman’s words about evangelicalism, which I’m calling “A Mess” here, and with Sing! 2019 an exhibit.  It mixes many and varied contradictory characters in the name of the life of Christ and worship.  It really is the jello running into the mashed potatoes and gravy into a soupy matrix, the latter evangelicalism for a lot of reasons, but a major one because its leaders either can’t or won’t draw necessary lines between the holy, the good, the true, and the beautiful with the profane, the bad, the false, and the ugly.  Because of the confusion arising from association and toleration, most of these, like the Samaritans of Jesus day, think they really are worshiping God.

Trueman lists C. J. Mahaney, who brought Josh Harris into the “sovereign grace ministries.”  Mohler writes like he knew all along there was a problem with Harris, even though Mahaney was his close friend as part of the smash, Together for the Gospel quartet.  Mahaney seemed like an outlier in the four, because even though they were all Calvinists — Mohler, Dever, Duncan, and Mahaney — he was also charismatic.  Still working right with Mahaney is his longtime partner and still assistant, Bob Kauflin, a part of the Sing! 2019 line-up, which is packed with continuationists, who report extraordinary manifestations of the Spirit and God talking to them.

Sing! 2019 uses the world’s music, characterized by its fleshly lust, sensuality, and breathiness.  It uses ecstatic experiences as a counterfeit of the Holy Spirit, what John MacArthur has called, strange fire, the headliner of the conference.  MacArthur has allowed his image, associated with his preaching and preaching about worship, to syncretize with the worldly, entertainment spectacle of Sing! 2019, it’s rap, rock, country, and other forms of popular music.  The promotional video includes the “worship” of Irish dancing.  The Gettys, who lead the conference, promote their national tour on their website with more of the same.

MacArthur called charismatic worship, Strange Fire, an offense to the Holy Spirit and counterfeit worship.  The worship of the Sing! conference is strange fire.  Open the lid and look into what the “artists” of Sing! 2019 and you see the influences secular, godless, and pagan, just the opposite of what God accepts in worship.

There is only one true imagination of God and it is according to what He has revealed in His Word.  The god of Sing! 2019 uses the name “God,” but it isn’t the same God.  The God of the Bible would not be represented by what its adherents say is their worship.  If you are a professing Christian, who keeps the world’s music in your life and then think God accepts it in worship, you have a different God than what I have.  We are not worshiping the same God, and a different God than the true God isn’t the one who can and will save from sin and death.

Part One — “Artists”

Our church doesn’t use the following psalter, but it’s available at Psalters Online.   I chose, The Book of Psalms in an English Metrical Version, founded on the basis of the Authorized Bible Translation and Compared with the Original Hebrew, by Richard Mant.  Here is Psalm 106:11-22 from this psalter, a versification of the Hebrew Masoretic text, the same text from which comes the King James Version, just like the title says.

The word “artist” is like the word “culture” — in common usage, its meaning has disappeared. People don’t know what they mean, when they are saying it.  The knock-off entertainers sure aren’t artists, no matter how many times someone says they are.

God is the prototypical Artist.  Art proceeds from the Bible in definition like everything that can be right and good, except the word in the King James Version isn’t “art,” but “craft,” and the artist is a “craftsman.”  The Hebrew word could be translated “artificer,” which is someone skilled.  As late as 1828, Webster’s defines:

The disposition or modification of things by human skill, to answer the purpose intended.

If you go back to the etymology of the word, it is “artifice,” and the “artist” is an “ingenious workman.”  The assumption of artifice from which comes “artificial” is that it is a copy, not the original, so something imitating something else.  Someone is able to make something very close to the original, so that it looks like the real thing.  The artist is imitating something, originally something of God, not inventing something new.

God, of course, is the Creator, and though we can’t create ex nihilo like God, something out of nothing, we take the components of God’s creation and orchestrate them into portrayals of God’s handiwork, which is divinely defined reality.  Since beauty starts with God, it is objective, reflecting His nature.  The handiwork of God declares His glory (Psalm 19:1), that is, the perfections of His attributes.  Anything that clashes with the nature of God isn’t beautiful or lovely, but is ugly.  This takes us to the objective nature of beauty and, therefore, art.

1 Chronicles 16:29 says,

Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come before him: worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

Beauty relates to the glory due unto God’s name and His holiness.  Glory, God’s name, and holiness are essentially the same.  They all relate to His attributes, their perfection.  This is a baseline for beauty.

The skill of art is the ability through both nature and nurture to represent the divine reality.  It is objective, because it focuses on the object, which is a proper object, one that is right and true and of the highest value.  The object is what makes the effort worth it.  The term “depiction” is a good word to associate with objective, because Someone (God) and something (His creation) is being depicted according to God’s perspective.  This contrasts with the subjective or relativistic.

Modern art shifted from the objective to the subjective, like modernism, and even worse then, postmodernism.  Some today think that they are more “artistic,” even and sadly professing Christians, because they are modernistic and postmodernistic.  They’re imitating others, that is, being worldly.  They don’t know what they are talking about.  They’re just saying it and anything goes today.  Hardly anyone is going to judge, because hardly anyone judges anything, except whether someone’s feelings are hurt.

The subject became “art” according to the “eye of the beholder,” which is in reality to turn from God to man, man becoming the center of things.  This made autonomous imaginings of the “artist” the standard, which are his expressions.  He’s expressing himself.  This philosophy of art in general is expression or expressionism, with lots of sub categories.

A biblical understanding, a Christian worldview, says that man is depraved, so the shift to the subject brings distortion.  The subject isn’t neutral, even if he thinks he is.  He’s affected by his own evil imaginations.  Today someone might say, “he’s messed up.”  Modern art allows the “artist” to create his own reality out of his own imagination, so that he shapes his own subjective reality and in so doing, becomes a god-like figure.  It is a subjective reality that leads people astray in modern culture as much as anything.  Sadly, some of you reading this don’t even care, and you think it’s a joke.  You’ll find out before everything is over, but the earlier the better.

Professing Christianity has started buying into a false view of art, the modernist and postmodernist view, for awhile, even when judging children’s finger paintings like they are something great.  They are without skill.  The child may not need an art lesson, to teach him how to “depict” what he sees, because it doesn’t even matter.  Just keep “expressing yourself.”  It’s wrong.  Several very bad things also happen.

Objective reality, the depiction of God, is not separate from emotions.  Some of you reading might have been wondering about feelings, because you think or feel they’re the essence of art.  They are not, but even so, scripture teaches rightly ordered emotions, what Jonathan Edwards called affections versus passions in his Treatise on the Religious Affections.  This also represents God, who is impassible, not subject to mood swings.

C. S. Lewis wrote about feelings or emotions in his book, The Abolition of Man, and this was a concern of his.  The two greatest commands of God are “Love God” and “Love your neighbor,” and both of those are at risk without getting them right.  Someone can’t obey God when he disobeys those two commands.  “Inordinate affection” is a sin (Colossians 3:5).  Lewis exhorts (pp. 28-29) of  “the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind and degree of love which is appropriate to it,” asserting that “the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.”  He continues (pp. 31-32):

[B]ecause our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore, emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason. . . . The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

Lewis wasn’t promoting the expressions of someone’s imagination, but the correct emotional response to the right or true thinking about what is of the greatest value.

People who still want to profess to be Christian are changing exegetical and historical Christianity by merging it with modernism or postmodernism under the guise of “freedom.”  I read the language of “personal and creative liberation” that had been pent up by conservative Christianity, which put the “artist” in a “box.”  The limitations held back the creative expression of the artist that now he can unleash.  This freedom is called “grace,” so that now they’re really experiencing grace like they haven’t before, and that feeling flows through the art.  This isn’t actual Christianity.  The attempt to conform Christianity to lust is just departing from Christianity.

Another term, that I often hear to describe a modern or postmodern emotional quality, is “authentic.”  The “artist” is really “authentic.”  Most often this term is associated with someone who isn’t authentic, according to the dictionary definition of the term, but using it instead in a subjective fashion different than its objective meaning is apropos.  From the wrong usage, a postmodern variety, “authentic” is a highly subjective expression of someone’s feelings, usually distorted and often corrupt.  That also makes it “true,” true simply because the subject “feels it.”  It is unlikely that the “artist” “truly” or “really” feels the way he is expressing, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s what he’s expressing at the moment in an ironically inauthentic way, which is what does matter.  Instead of being “authentic,” usually it’s contrived, because it is entertainment, intended to “relate” with the audience (fool it), giving approval to the same feelings it might have, which very often are lust.

What motivated me to write this post was a recent promotion by someone of “country artists” out of Nashville.  I wasn’t expecting art or artists, which it and they were not.  The expressions reduce art to the lost wanderings of fallen men, rebelling against God’s created order, which brings chaos.  It perverts truth, goodness, beauty, and validates inordinate emotions.  It denies God as the true basis for all reality and conflicts with the truth of scripture.  It is not denying self, but expressing self with all the lack of constraint.  God is not and cannot be glorified and others are likewise influenced.

Rather than expressing imagination, true art, what Christians should solely accept and enjoy, shapes the moral imagination.   This is the true meaning of the world that God created.  The thinking and the emotions reflect God.  God is known in an accurate and better way.  The hearer can turn to God or grow closer to God, which is what a Christian wants.  He shouldn’t be promoting either the world’s twisted  perversion of art or artists or the depraved expressions of the ungodly culture from which they come.

Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed, A. D. 325/381 

(with Filioque) on the holy Trinity

(sung to the tune of “Of the Father’s Heart Begotten”)

Part One   Part Two

Since Peter commands “abstain from fleshly lust” in 1 Peter 2:11, a believer can know what “fleshly lust” is.  Someone can’t abstain from something he can’t ascertain.  God doesn’t have a word that is indecipherable.  God wants us to know it and do it.

In the first two parts, we have established that “fleshly lust” isn’t synonymous with a particular sin, but it is in itself sin.  It also leads to further other sins.  Someone should abstain from fleshly lust itself as sin, but also abstain for the sake of other sins.

“Fleshly lust,” however, must be identified.  The command to abstain from fleshly lust must be applied.  What I’m writing here is that people are not applying it because they can’t, but because they won’t — it is deliberate, convenient ineptitude at applying the lust passages of scripture.

The lust passages need to be applied in a number of different areas, but I’m applying it especially where I am not seeing it applied.  The convenience is that people, who very often call themselves Christians, want to keep their pet lusts.  They want to be a Christian, but they also want their lust.  Are they saved people?  Maybe not, and they should be concerned about that.  Peter deals with this in 2 Peter, himself concerned about false professions related to lust, to help give assurance to true Christians and not false ones.  The chief differentiating factor is lust, the false ones operating on lust and not true faith.

Lust Passages Applied to Music

Lust for professing Christians surfaces in their music and entertainment with the infatuation with pop culture.   A better adjective to use to describe either the music or entertainment, when it is characterized by lust, is carnal.  Carnal music violates the lust passages of scripture.  It is not abstaining from fleshly lust and what is it?

It is the seductive soft rock rhythm, the sensual scooping and sliding voice technique, and the non-resolving chord cadence.  It has a sensuous effect, stylistic intimacy with such techniques as sliding, flipping, crooning, scooping, delayed vibrato, and intimate use of the microphone.  It has the rock beat, achieved by beat syncopation, a rock feel with a highly syncopated rhythmic pattern, which promotes sensual body movements.  It brings a compulsion to move the body.   It is the boogie and the blues rhythm, jazzy, dance rhythm.

What I’m describing is popular music, the music of which the world approves.  It is worldly.  It is carnal.  It is fleshly.  It is profane.  It is rock, rap, blues, jazz, hip-hop, and country western.  It isn’t for a Christian, because Christians are to abstain from fleshly lust.  It is sin of itself and it will lead to sin, essentially dialing a Christian into functioning on a fleshly plane.

I’m not saying the previous paragraph is the best representation of what I’m talking about, but I think it is enough to understand what I’m talking about.  Someone can just hear it.  This does not represent God.  It violates the lust passages.  It is fleshly lust.

Sure, the Bible doesn’t say “no” to rock, country, hip-hop, over syncopation, sliding, scooping, and everything else I used and described that is like that.  The lust passages must be applied.  What I’m writing is applying them.  I don’t think it is difficult to do.  People who keep lusting and don’t want to stop won’t like the application, but that doesn’t mean the application isn’t true.  Churches and church leaders that apply those passages need to keep doing it, despite the opposition.  God is the judge, not the pandering churches and the people to whom they pander.

Lust Passages Applied to Entertainment

I don’t think it is as hard to apply lust passages to entertainment.  Christians will violate most lust passages by participation with almost all modern or popular entertainment in the world today.  A lot of carnal music is used in entertainment just to start.  That already prohibits the entertainment.  However, it is more than that.

Immodesty, nudity, sex, and foul language disobey lust passages.  That makes up most entertainment.  Today I read professing Christians who advertise all the foul entertainment they are watching, including something like Game of Thrones.  Someone is not watching Game of Thrones or anything like it or even much better than it and obeying what scripture prohibits in lust for a Christian.

Almost all television commercials violate lust passages.  Some of what appears on the sidelines of NFL football in the way of cheerleaders is prohibited by the lust passages.  Those passages do not give the application.  They don’t list specifics.  That is for Christians to do.  When they don’t, they are disobeying those passages.

Disobedience to the lust passages of scripture characterizes most of evangelicalism today and a growing, if not majority, part of fundamentalism.  Violation of the lust passages differentiates fake Chrsitianity from true Christianity.  Not conforming to what scripture teaches on lust results in churches reshaping their doctrine and practice to fit the lust.  It corrupts their worship.  In short time, they have a different God.  God doesn’t conform to lust.

Evangelicals don’t care that they disobey the lust passages of scripture.  Fundamentalists say that they aren’t sure what to do.  The passages don’t mention specifics, so they wonder how to enforce the passages.  They are intended to be applied, like most of the rest of scripture.  Not applying those passages isn’t acceptable, it is disobedience to scripture.