Intro   Part One   Part Two

Bakss begins his second chapter, “Predicament with Worship Music:  Who Really Wins the War?”, decrying theological and spiritual battles fought through the history of Christianity.  The point implied is the very existence of these battles was bad.  Fighting over things in Christianity is bad, and the worship wars is just another latest sad chapter.  Then Bakss provided what he said was a quote from an American newspaper in 1723 criticizing Isaac Watts music:

There are several reasons for opposing it: It’s too new. It’s too worldly, even blasphemous. The new Christian music is not as pleasant as the more established style and because there are so many new songs you can’t learn them all. It puts too much emphasis on instrumental music rather than on godly lyrics. This new music creates disturbances, making people act disorderly. The preceding generation got along without out.

Bakss took the paragraph from a blog, which I couldn’t find, so I googled it and found the same quote ten other times online, all used by CCM advocates in the same way Bakss did  and in several instances the surrounding wording verbatim (note: plagiarism).  Furthermore, does anyone really think it was (1) in an American newspaper in 1723 or (2) even written in 1723?  No one wrote that way, the way the “quote” is written, in 1723.  Someone’s got to think his readers are morons to accept that quote as historic evidence.  I am sure it is a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote or maybe even more, but the original writer wasn’t quoting from a 1723 newspaper.

Isaac Watts, of course, was English and is buried in England.  He never came to America.  He is buried in England at the Bun Hill Non-conformist Cemetery in London.  No one was making the kind of commentary in 1723 about anything, let alone Isaac Watts’s hymns.  The first British American newspaper itself started in 1704, the Boston News-Letter.  No one should take this kind of argument seriously. You’ve read material from 1723 and it does not read like anything anyone wrote in that supposed quote.  The premise itself then is a lie.  I’ve read the same argument elsewhere and it is a superficial, fallacious invention.  Someone who makes it doesn’t really care about aesthetics and the meaning of style.

Watts’s music wasn’t new music, rejected then accepted, followed by one generation after another of new music, rejected than accepted, so that the music used in churches was already rejected.  Bakss’s CCM is not just the latest iteration of Isaac Watts.  Worship wars have existed generation after generation, but the wars themselves are not the problem.  Bakss strategy is to make warring over worship style a problem.

Since music itself is amoral according to Bakss, any judgment of musical style he would contend is “strife,” a work of the flesh in Galatians 5:20.  The music itself isn’t fleshly in his assessment. It’s the war that is fleshly, because it is “strife.”  The Greek word translated “strife” is selfish ambition, essentially striving for some greater position for one’s self.  The warring in worship war attempts in a godly manner to eradicate from the church worldly, fleshly music that doesn’t worship God.  It is concerned with the honor and glory of God, not given through fleshly, worldly, profane worship style, which can be judged as such.

Bakss further argues that the warring itself is about “us” and “our personal preferences.”  About this, he quotes Chuck Swindoll as an authority, Swindoll contending as one might expect him, that what’s important is the essence of worship, an internalized adoration, and not the expression of worship, the outward forms, which might vary.  He doesn’t provide a basis either for the neutrality of outward forms or the equality of the various cultures that use different forms.  Bakss writes:

If you were to ask the Lord what kind of worship fires Him up, God would always come back with the same answer He gave to the woman at the well in Samaria.

God isn’t “fired up” by our music.  He isn’t waiting in His holy place to be affected by our passions, hoping that His worshipers might fire Him up.  God is impassible.  He is not subject to like passions as we are.

Jesus’ teaching to the Samaritan woman, Bakss says, was not a perversion of place or pattern of worship, but the Person.   With no proof, he asserts that worship in spirit is the subjective side of worship and the worship in truth is the objective side.  You won’t get that out of the passage.  From that he then concludes that “God is not so much interested in the style of worship as He is the worshipper.”  The latter doesn’t proceed from the former, but He elaborates:

There is sometimes such an emphasis on Bible knowledge (truth) that we are in danger of ignoring, or even opposing personal spiritual experience.

Scripture isn’t sufficient for worship, Bakss is saying that Jesus wants the contribution of personal spiritual experience.  Paul said “the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God” (Ephesians 6:17).  Jesus said His Words were spirit and life (John 6:63).  Spirit isn’t subjective and Word objective.  Spirit conforms to a Divine standard as much as Truth does.  Musical style should be judged by the Word of God too and not by some subjective or personal experience.

Then Bakss connotes spirit with “emotions” so that spiritual music was emotional music.  If someone was spiritual, he wasn’t hiding his emotions.  On this point, emotions don’t proceed from something spiritual.  They are tied more closely with the physical, which is why you cry when you are tired or when you hit your thumb with a hammer.  How we feel about God does matter.  The right feelings proceed from the right feelings, not vice versa. This was a major assertion of Jonathan Edwards in his Religious Affections.  There is a right feeling about God that comes from the right thinking about God, true thinking, not from passions that start with the body.

Bakss parallels music without necessary emotion as “formalism.”  Formalism can come in a great many “forms.”  Jesus pointed out two different extremes of false worship forms in John 4, the Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim and the Jews in Jerusalem.  Both choreographed their adherents to something neither true or spiritual.  Neither were scriptural or sincere.  Bakss is essentially calling for Samaritan form and the rejection of the Judaistic form.

Fleshly, worldly music gives people a feeling that they interpret as the Holy Spirit.  It is manipulated.  A form is chosen that feels good, based on personal taste, and with the addition of ecstatic experience, which is very deceitful in corruption of true spirituality.  This is ecstasy and mysticism.  This is manipulating experience that Bakss calls the subjective side.

A few sentences from the end of the chapter Bakss writes:

Led by the Spirit, we have the right, even the responsibility, to express our praise to God in the manner that best reflects our individual personalities and cultures.

Bakss is calling for a subjective “leading of the Spirit” common in Charismaticism and revivalism, against the meaning of “led by the Spirit” in the New Testament.  The leading of the Holy Spirit is the same for every believer.  He leads through the Word of God.  This is something Bakss would call formalism, because it is just scripture, bereft of personal, subjective experiences, which people covet like a sign or a wonder.

Worship and praise should reflect what God says in His Word that He wants, not in our individual personalities or cultures.  Just the opposite, our reasonable worship should not conform to the world or our own desires.  We should look to scripture to find what God wants from us.  He does say and we can know from scripture.

Overall, chapter 2 for Bakss goes all different directions in an incongruous way.  What he wants his adherents to think is that music can’t be judged, that judging it or warring against certain music is bad.  Give God about whatever you want, because all of it is just personal preference.  These premises are not true, but they are also the recipe for rampant false spirituality and worship in the church.

Intro   Part One

Before I start, I encourage you to read a second post by Dave Mallinak along the same lines as the first he had written on his blog, the first was “Gone Contemporary” and the second, “Gothpel Style.”

Like any counterfeit, Bakss book, Worship Wars, has truth in it.  As a subtitle for chapter one, for instance, he asks, “Did you know you were made for worship?”  That’s true.  Then after testifying that he is a worshiper, he writes:

The issue is not whether we know how to worship but rather it is about Who we worship.

In his introduction, Bakss said he just wanted to be scriptural, because he isn’t any kind of expert, but this statement is divorced from scripture.  The issue is not just Who we worship.  Cain worshiped the right God in Genesis 4.  He brought fruits and vegetables.  Most often false worship starts with the error on the “how,” which leads to the wrong “who.”  God doesn’t accept the wrong “how,” hence the death of Nadab and Abihu.  Very often the most important question is whether the worship is holy and acceptable unto God.

Bakss says that because everyone has been made to worship, “there’s an internal homing device inside of us that perpetually longs for our Maker.”  Romans 3:11 says “no man seeketh after God.”  Whatever homing device man started with, made in God’s image, died because of sin.  Bakss says,

We have an internal Godward magnet pulling our being toward Him.

I don’t believe that.  It’s just the opposite.  Being made in the image of God doesn’t assume anywhere in scripture that after Adam’s fall, man by nature wants to worship God.  The best Bakss does to prove that is to tell a story of a Roman Catholic woman who saw Jesus in a piece of toast, followed by thousands who also came to worship before the toast.  Romans 1 says that men know God, but they glorify Him not as God.  Because of general revelation men know God, but they by nature rebel against that knowledge.  It makes sense that a faulty view of the nature of man lies at the root of Bakss’s false worship.

Bakss then tells another illustration, which he introduces with this statement:

Sadly, for some people the only type of church worship they have experienced is similar to the humorous story of a young boy’s first time in church.

The little boy couldn’t understand dressing up, being quiet, kneeling, and bowing at a pew in an old church building, maybe it was Roman Catholic, the kneeling the only clue.  The implication by Bakss was that these circumstances — dressing up, being quiet, kneeling, and bowing — are what turn people away from true worship.  He follows the story:

The amount of time we spend focusing on worship music styles is a strong indicator that many have little understanding of the heart of worship.  If we get so focused on how we worship, it’s easy to forget why we worship or even, at times, Who we are worshiping.

Huh?  There’s almost nothing to connect that conclusion from that short illustration.  The first sentence is almost impossible to decipher.  Who is “we”?  Is “we,” “many” that have little understanding of the heart of worship?   His own story focuses on worship style.

True worshipers will focus on both “how” and “Who,” and perhaps better put, “what” and “Who.”  Worship must recognize Who God is, but it also must give Him what He wants.  The “how” relates to what God wants from worshipers.  He doesn’t accept something that He doesn’t want, so that’s why true worshipers consider style.  You can’t focus on Who God is without focusing on what He wants, or how He wants to be worshiped.

Bakss says something very important and true, quoting 2 Chronicles 29:30, that is, worship is about God.  He says that the worship wars will end with ‘better understanding what worship is all about.’  Then he explains that the English word, worship, means ‘to ascribe worth,’ and “we worship the One who is worthy,” then quoting Revelation 4:11.  He defines worship as “acknowledging that God is worthy of all praise, from all people, for all time,” a definition, I believe, that falls short of sufficient.

Worship acknowledges Who God is, and then it gives Him what He wants.  If you don’t give Him what He wants, it’s obvious that you are not acknowledging Him for Who He is.  Bakss though continues with his incomplete understanding by saying that “true worship is simply catching sight of the greatness, majesty, and glory of an infinite God.”  That’s less than half right.  However, it is a definition that the reader will see buttresses Bakss next point.

Bakss says ‘that our worship is small, because our concept of God is small.’ It is true that God deserves great praise.  That would also say that someone can know what is great.  Isn’t that style?  All the way through, Bakss makes an obvious contradiction.  It’s the norm for men like him today.  Bakss obsesses over style while saying that style either isn’t important or doesn’t mean anything.  The men who think and then teach like Bakss does, all of them, are the most sensitive people that I see to style.  Style is almost everything to them.  It’s definitely not content, which is easy to see by reading Bakss’s book.  The little boy in his story got turned off by a worship style he experienced, one that Bakss says occurred because of a preoccupation with style.

The focus, writes Bakss, must be on God and he quotes Isaiah 6:3, the verse on the angelic worship Isaiah witnessed  with the angels chanting, “Holy, holy, holy.”  From that Bakss says, “Worship is declaring, with our lips and our lives, that God is more important to us than anything else.”  That’s not what the angels were declaring.  They declared that God was holy, not that He was important.

To that point, Bakss writes:

This is why, when we think of worship wars, we must ask ourselves, “Who really wins?  The answer is, “The devil.”

It doesn’t connect with what he’s been saying.  It doesn’t follow.  I don’t see that as the answer either.  I say, “If we don’t war, the devil wins.”

As if to explain that point, Bakss then says:

As I said, we are all worshippers.  In fact, some of the greatest forms of worship are found outside the walls of the church and have no reference to the God of all creation.

No.  The greatest forms of worship are not found outside of the church.  No worship of God is outside the true church.  No Christian should look to the world to learn about worship.  Scripture is replete with examples of men, who moved to false worship, because they looked at the world for worship.  Think at least Jeroboam and Solomon.  However, he defends this by providing an anecdote.  He says that “all you have to do is drop in on a rock concert or go to a sporting event at a nearby stadium to see amazing worship.”

Bakss’s point is that kids at rock concerts and athletic contests are really putting their heart into what they’re doing, valuing these events highly, as seen in their passion and enthusiasm.  As much as anything, they’re not worshiping anything or anyone but themselves.  These are entertainers and they’re being entertained.  The entertainment makes them feel good.  It’s something akin to the passion that a dog shows when someone puts out its bowl of dog food.

Another example was Oprah’s interview of Michael Jackson with the most viewers in television history.  Jackson’s fans, he says, waved “their hands in the air,” “some fell on their knees,” and “others strained with outstretched hands.”  He continues, “Seared in my mind is the image of one young girl with a look on her face of total awe.”

In each of Bakss’s descriptions, he focuses on how people acted or the style that they used.  If someone thinks really highly of something or someone, the way they do that is by using these types of methods.  He writes, “This clip was an amazing picture of worship.”  The problem according to Bakss was not the style.  That was amazing and wonderful.  The problem was the “not-so-great a god,” “Michael Jackson.”

In addition to singing, Bakss says that people worship with singing, giving, prayer, preaching, etc., all of these focusing on “how.”  Those are all legitimate he says, but he’s going to focus on music and singing.  After a few more illustrations, he ends his first chapter with what seems to be his main point:

So, when we truly understand Whom we are praising with our songs and our actions, then it takes the focus of worship off us and our preferences and directs us to be united in our worship of God.

His last sentence of the chapter reads:

It is certainly a privilege to be a part of the Rise of Music in our churches.

I have no idea what he means by that.  The “Rise of Music?”  Written in capitals.  No idea.

Overall, you can see where Bakss is headed.  Warring over musical styles can be stopped by focusing on Who we praise.  The people who have preferences, the ones who think that only certain music is acceptable to God, that occurs solely because they’re not considering Who they are praising.  If they would just start doing that, everyone would be united around God.  So, musical preferences are what causes war in music.  Perhaps this particular practice, accepting all musical style, as long as the focus is on God, is the “Rise of Music.”  He does nothing to prove that point, but it’s the only explanation that made any sense to me.

Bakss says he’s a lawyer and implies in the introduction this as an advantage for him.  He says that his goal is to rely on evidence, which for him, he says, is scripture.  He does nothing close to making his points from the evidence of scripture.  His conclusions are nothing more than his own biased assertions that he sets about to defend.  It’s possible that a lawyer lets evidence lead him to the truth, but I’ve noticed this is hardly the case of all lawyers, maybe not even most of them.

The problem for Bakss, like he expressed in his introduction, continues to be the warring.  And it isn’t even so much the warring.  As I said, Bakss is warring with this book.  He wars.  However, what he calls warring is not allowing him and others like him to have their position tolerated.  He gave me no reason to think otherwise.  The false worship he propagates deserves war.

Christians have to change.  They are predestined to conform to the image of the Son (Rom 8:29-30).  Not all change is good though.  Conforming to the image of the Son in Romans 8, good, but conforming to the world in Romans 12, bad.  Robert Bakss talks about changing in his book, Worship Wars.  The way he changes is not what I expect in the Romans 8 type of change, the kind authored by God.  He conforms to the world and he doesn’t want you to judge him for it.

The Title

Like the movie “Star Wars”, the battles rage from episode to episode, with Bible verses being used as the proverbial light sabres to attack and defend each other.  It is with this in mind I have used a “Star Wars” theme for the sections of the book, with a little bit of “tongue in cheek”! [He’s Australian and British punctuation can go inside or outside of quotation marks.]

I had introduced the intention to review Worship Wars, which I will, but this is a start.  I want to use this little space as I often do before I start writing, to point you to a sermon by a man who stood with me in my wedding 31 years ago.  I had 4 or 5 good friends in college and graduate school, and one was Dwayne Morris.  I was also a member of Calvary Baptist Church in Watertown, WI for 12 years, between the age of 12 and 25, one of which I pastored Immanuel Baptist Church of Elkhorn, WI, so I wasn’t there at Calvary that year.  To me a big irony, Dwayne is assistant pastor at Calvary now and he preached there this last week. It’s a sermon that ought to be common knowledge of every Christian (I put at least one disclaimer on running buses and handing clothes from a clothes closet as preaching the gospel — they’re not — almost everything else though is terrific).  He titled it, The Metanarrative.

A war started in the Garden of Eden and continues for the souls of men.  God calls it a war all over scripture (2 Tim 2:4, Eph 6:10-18, 2 Cor 10:3-5).  I’m saying it’s a worship war, because the first act of worship, accepted by God, is the offering of one’s soul to God by faith.  He will restore your soul (Ps 23:3).  Satan would have us hang on to (keep) our soul (psuche, translated life in Mt 10:39) for ourselves, which will result in losing our soul forever.

I have a sister three years older than me and a brother three years younger than me.  When my brother and I were juniors and teens, we would sometimes engage the brotherly conservation of “would you rather” or “do you like better”?  Would you rather get killed by drowning or by the direct hit of a nuclear missile?  That kind of thing.  Do you like this girl better or that girl better, neither actually good choices, but actually intended to leave the other with only bad choices.  The point of the exercise seemed to be leaving everything a bad choice.

For quite awhile, I have noticed a very common evangelical critique of fundamentalism is something to the effect that it’s evangelicals who spend their time defending the really important doctrines, like the Trinity, and fundamentalists quibble over non-essentials.  Evangelicals pump out paper after paper, dissertation after dissertation, journal article after journal article, and, of course, book after book, defining and defending major doctrines of scripture, putting their efforts where it really matters. Evangelicals wrangle over justification by faith, while fundamentalists arm wrestle over Bible versions.

In an assessment of the choice of hills to die on, the evangelicals fight with liberals, who deny the faith. Fundamentalists fight with evangelicals and other fundamentalists, what some people call shooting or executing your own wounded.  One person in my comment section characterized what I in particular do as just throwing rocks at people.  As a member of cub scouts, I remember actual mud ball or dirt clod fights, sometimes a stone inserted into one of the balls or clods.  I’ve thrown rocks and been hit by them, and this, what I do here, this is no rock throwing.

Certain conservative evangelicals especially list as their major critique of fundamentalism, characterizing it as at the most on life support after careening down this cliff of self-destruction, its obsession with non-essential issues.  Adults, these evangelicals, contemplate bare cupboards in the pantry while toddlers, fundamentalists, tug-o-war a plastic toy in the nursery.  Fundamentalists should consider this criticism.  Some self-identifying fundamentalists push back by dividing fundamentalists into the historic fundamentalists, the ones who wrote The Fundamentals and that heritage, from a more recent mutation. They grasp the mantle of the original fundamentalists and promote the initial idea of fundamentalism.

I have a great fondness for fundamentalism, because it has taught a doctrine of separation.  I said “a doctrine,” because I don’t believe it is a scriptural doctrine of separation, but it’s at least separation.  It’s got some scriptural separation in it, even if it isn’t following what the Bible teaches on the doctrine. Fundamentalists have written some good material about that subject that you will not see in evangelicalism at all.  Separation is holiness. Evangelicalism is not holy.  Unholiness and worldliness characterizes evangelicalism.  However, I do not self-identify as a fundamentalist in some part because of the same reason that evangelicals criticize fundamentalism.  That isn’t the main reason, but it is one of them, even if people call me a fundamentalist by whatever definition.

With all of the above in mind, I want to take the evangelical criticism of fundamentalism into consideration by asking the question of the title of this post as a type of thought experiment. Evangelicals would say that fundamentalists would get sidetracked from something very important like Trinity doctrine by their over emphasis on a “non-essential” like worship music.  Is Trinity doctrine more important than the issue of worship music?

It is true that some evangelicals have been deceived on the doctrine of the Trinity, that they have a less than biblical or distorted view of the Trinity, and, therefore, God.  Even though fundamentalists might not give much thought to what they believe about the Trinity, you don’t see the same kind of contortion of the Trinity among fundamentalists.  If it were a problem, there would be a greater emphasis on Trinity doctrine.  The reason there is a fight on the Trinity in evangelicalism is because that’s where the perversion is occurring and probably due to the lack of separation in evangelicalism.  Fundamentalists would think that there are already many good publications written in times past about and defending the biblical, orthodox teaching of the Trinity.  Rather than write another book, they’ll separate from organizations over their false Trinity doctrine, which is what the Bible teaches to do.  Evangelicals write a book on the Trinity, defending it, and fundamentalists separate from the false doctrine.

Ungodly, unholy, so-called worship music, I believe, is a greater danger today to professing believers to being deceived about God than wrong teaching about God.  The Mormons, Islam, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and even Apostolics I don’t see swaying people in church to the wrong thoughts about God. The music is a major factor though.  People get the wrong imagination of God through worldly, fleshly, sensual worship music.  They say they are offering the music to God and that shapes what people think about God.  It affects what people understand about loving God.

False worship starts with worshiping the wrong God.  Buddhism is false worship.  However, false worship also occurs when worshiping God the wrong way.  Israel started with worshiping God the wrong way and ended by worshiping the wrong god.  The former precedes the latter.  First, God isn’t worshiped, because He doesn’t accept false worship.  The understanding of God distorted by the false worship turns into having a false god.

Doctrine and practice are corrupted faster by the music than they are by some wrong doctrinal statement.  What I’m writing here is a little more difficult to explain why Worship Music is more important than the Trinity Doctrine, but it can be understood if someone cares.  Someone should care if He wishes to preserve true worship of God and then the right doctrine about God.

We want to love the Trinity:  God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, these Three are One.  We aren’t loving Trinity when we engage in false worship.  We might believe the Trinity doctrine, like a Roman Catholic, without worshiping the Trinity.  If evangelicals believe a true Trinity doctrine, but then don’t worship the Trinity, what is the point of believing the Trinity?

Nadab and Abihu worshiped the right God with strange fire.  God killed them for it.  The false worship music is strange fire.  God is holy.

In the King James Version, the word “art” is most associated with the past tense of the being verb, like “thou art.”  I say that tongue in cheek.  Then there is the word, “artificers” (1 Chronicles 29:5), which are craftsmen, men who create things with great skill, the “engraver” of Exodus 28:11 and the “carpenters” of 1 Chronicles 14:1.  God Himself is the Author of beautiful, creative works.  These are the works of His fingers — Psalm 8:3, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained” — and His “handywork” (Psalm 19:1).  He is the Master Craftsman, Whose work is characterized as showing His beauty in its characteristics.

The aspiration for premodern art was God Himself, defining beauty as transcendent.  Therefore, God Himself was the standard for artists, looking toward His creation or nature as the model.  Whatever described the work of God should also explain the work of the artist.  God alone is Creator and man is an imitator.  God is of the Highest value and in Beauty (Psalm 27:4) because of the perfections of His attributes, His glory.  What He creates proceeds from Him as beautiful and He desires beauty from His creation.  The garments for Aaron as high priest were for “glory and for beauty” (Exodus 28:2).

Value is judgment proceeding from imagination.  The values correspond to the attributes of God.  The heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1).  God revealed Himself in what He made.  What God made is beautiful in that it reflects His nature.  The criteria for beauty begins with the qualities of God’s creation and these allow or cause the apprehension of beauty in the mind.

Before the Enlightenment and modernism, art correlated to objective measures of beauty, found in the words actuality, proportion, order, dimension, form, concord, unity, harmony, integrity, and clarity. These arise from the manifestation of God and His beauty in and through His creation, which is beautiful in that it reveals His beauty.  Men can know beauty based on their knowledge of God through His Word and creation.  Creation itself is a language that expresses the qualities of beauty.

Since we understand God in our imaginations, our values should accord with what is beautiful.  Using the guidelines God has revealed, we value what is highest.  We do not remain indifferent. The contemplation of beauty affects us so that we love what God loves and hate what He hates.  We be done with lesser things.

In the nineteenth century the definition of art was changed, or put another way, the idea of art was revised.  Most people don’t care, because it seems like a side issue to them.  As I have so often said, the art department of the university rests on the other end of the campus from science, the subjective side in contrast to the so-called objective sides.  Today, in many cases the science is so-called science and itself subjective, like the university considers its art.  One should wonder how critics could judge art to be better than any other, since subjectivity reigns.  Perhaps the only criteria is popularity or personal taste.  Roger Scruton summed up the perplexity in his book, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, with the question, “If anything can count as art, what is the point or merit in achieving that label?”

Obviously “art” is an English word, and art itself existed previous to the English language.  However, how people have used the word reveals their understanding of its meaning.  Previous to 1800 the English regularly used the word “art” in such a phrase, “the art of” something, like “the art of poetry,” “the art of cookery,” “the art of swimming,” “the art of navigation,” or “the art of painting.” Described as such, one had achieved “art” when he had reached a high level of skill at whatever the particular performance.  In the 11-12th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, art was defined as “skill at doing anything as a result of knowledge and practice.”

Martin Archer Shee, a protege of Edmund Burke, was a portrait painter and ultimate president of the Royal Academy.  In 1809, he wrote Elements of Art, “including strictures on the state of the arts, criticism, patronage, and public taste,” where he described art:

The student reviews his progress, and proceeds with increased ardour–having ascended, through a course of preparatory studies, the prospect of Art begins to open before him, and he looks with confidence to the highest elevation of Taste.

The elevation of taste did not mean personal taste, but taste that corresponded to an objective standard. Someone developed the skill to reach an acceptable standard and elements that could be considered art. Elevating taste meant correlating what pleases you with what pleases God.  He says many other helpful statements, which mirror what Burke himself said in his, A Philsophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.  Going back further than the English language, Aristotle in his Works said:

Pleasures are an impediment to the energy of prudence, and this in proportion to the delight which they afford; as is the case with venereal pleasure; for no one, when engaged in this pleasure, can intellectually perceive any thing.  Again, pleasure is not the offspring of art; though every thing which is good is the work of art.

In his prefix to Scottish poet James Thomson’s The Seasons, eighteenth century doctor and writer John Aikin writes in 1811:

When a work of art to masterly execution adds novelty of design, it demands not only a cursory admiration, but such a mature inquiry into the principles upon which it has been formed, as may determine how far it deserves to be received as a model for future attempts in the same walk. Originals are always rare productions. The performances of artists in general even of those who stand high in their respective classes are only imitations; which have more or less merit in proportion to the degree of skill and judgment with which they copy originals more or less excellent.

Modernism shifted from God to man as measure.  Art became a matter of personal taste. Value was not found in the object, but in the participant.  Art is now the experience of the viewer or hearer. With that, anything could be art, and it eliminated the objective standard, beauty in the eye of the beholder. Heidegger, agreeing with Hegel’s Death of Art, in his Epilogue to “The Origin of the Work of Art, described:

Aesthetics takes the work of art as an object, the object of aisthesis, of sensuous apprehension in the wide sense. Today we call this apprehension experience. The way in which man experiences art is supposed to give information about its nature. Experience is the source that is standard not only for art appreciation and enjoyment, but also for artistic creation. Everything is an experience. Yet perhaps experience is the element in which art dies.

The experience becomes the standard of judgment.  Did I feel anything and how did I feel?  Did I like it?

Postmodernism brings truth is your truth, goodness is your goodness, and beauty is your beauty, eliminating judgment or criticism, except as either a matter of personal taste or against intolerance of personal taste.  The best art is now popular.  It’s good because the most people like it.  They like it not because it is better, but because how it makes them feel, making them to feel like they want to feel.

Man is diminished by merely feeling like he wants to feel.  He should admire and be moved by what is best.  He should also shape his affections to God’s attributes.

The knowledge of God includes beauty.  God is beautiful.  The beauty of God is found in Himself, seen in the revelation of Himself in creation.  Man comprehends God in his imagination.

When men determine beauty on personal taste, understanding of beauty changes.  Something other than beauty is valued.  God is not comprehended.  Men love something other than God.  God is not worshiped.  Worship itself no longer conforms to God, but to popular culture.

For regular readers, I’ve started on certain series, that I think I will finish, especially speaking of the one, French Protestants and the Waldenses: The Church and the Text of the New Testament (parts one and deux).  I’ve definitely not come to a conclusion there.  There are a lot of subjects I’m wanting to cover, based on reading I’ve done, but I’m going to go to a continuation of a dealing with some sessions from the recent Shepherd’s Conference.

In one session, Phil Johnson reported that one evangelical preacher tried to attract interest by starting his sermon with a zipline to the platform and in another he began with the following disclaimer:

This is the seminar titled, Young, Restless, But Not Reformed.  They’ve asked me to evaluate the New Calvinism, and if you read that title and came to the session thinking that I’m going to deliver a scathing critique, you might be disappointed.  And I also noticed that a lot of the books that deal with the New Calvinism, and I’ve read several of them — almost all of them have quite a lot to say about music and worship styles — and so if you’re hoping that I’m going to say something either positive or critical about worship and music styles, I’m not.  I’ll leave that to others.  I really have enough to say without firing a salvo into the worship wars, but most of what I’m going to say is in the affirmative.

Johnson, the executive director of Grace to You, John MacArthur’s radio program, gave two of the sessions at the 2016 Shepherd’s Conference in Southern California.  His two addresses dealt with similar subject matter that concern him in evangelicalism.  In his previous general session, Johnson took the first five verses of 2 Corinthians 4 as a text, especially parking on v. 2, what he calls “a very potent one sentence manifesto in which defines how biblical preaching should be done.”  He continues:

[T]here is a lot of really bad advice offered to pastors these days.  Preachers are constantly being told that they need to spice up their preaching.  You can’t just explain the scriptures and expect people to obey, and just exhort them and rebuke them and — you can’t do that.  You have to add gimmicks and attention getters to your messages.  We actually have preachers nowadays who are so desperate to grab attention or impress young people that they will make their entrance into the pulpit on a zipline.  Seriously, look it up on youtube.  And it’s not just one guy.  This is apparently a thing.  I don’t know how much that costs either.  I didn’t even consider it.  I imagine it’s expensive.

I agree with Johnson’s assessment about using a zipline on Sunday in church for a sermon.  Johnson charges the zipline gimmick with the violation of Paul’s teaching, which says in the King James Version:

But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

He quotes the English Standard Version, which reads:

We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

Johnson is sure enough to preach in this session that the Word of God is being subjugated to human cunning with these methods in preaching.  He next refers to the Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren:

Rick Warren was telling us, “You cannot start with a biblical text.”  These were his words.  “You cannot start with a biblical text, expecting the unchurched to be fascinated by it.  You  must first capture their attention.”  And today that approach is regarded as received wisdom.

Johnson refers to Rick Warren as a bad example with a bad reason.  In the same book, Warren though wrote about choice of music in a church plant:

The style of music you choose to use in your services will be one of the most critical (and controversial) decisions you make in the life of your church. It may also be the most influential factor in determining who your church reaches for Christ and whether or not your church grows. You must match your music to the kind of people God wants your church to reach.

You’ve got preaching and you’ve got worship.  Phil Johnson is sure, very, very sure, that ziplining preachers violate 2 Corinthians 4:2.  I don’t see “zipline” in 2 Corinthians 4:2.  He won’t say anything critical about music styles or fire salvos into worship wars.

In 2010, Phil Johnson wrote the following:

Let me say this plainly: It is a sin to impose on others any “spiritual” standard that has no biblical basis. When God gave the law to Israel, He told them, “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you” (Deuteronomy 4:2). And, “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it” (Deuteronomy 12:32). 

The same principle is repeated in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul was rebuking the Corinthians for their sectarianism, saying “I am of Paul”; “I am of Apollos,” and so on. His rebuke to them includes these words in 1 Corinthians 4:6: “I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written.” 

That is a good guideline for how we should exercise our Christian liberty: Don’t go beyond what is written in Scripture. Don’t make rules to impose on others; don’t devise rituals and forms of worship that are not authorized; and don’t speak on such matters where God has been silent. That’s the whole principle of Sola Scriptura applied to Christian living. If we really believe Scripture is a sufficient rule for the Christian life, then we don’t have to add anything to it.

Something Nathan Busenitz, on staff with Johnson, wrote at Pulpit Magazine in 2008 about music parallels what Johnson wrote in 2010:

The Bible does not prescribe a particular style of music as being solely acceptable to God, nor does it condemn any particular styles. But it does contain principles that we can apply to any situation and ascertain what course of action will please God. . . .  Some churches and Christian schools teach that any music with a drumbeat or electric guitar is worldly and sinful. We do not do so at Grace Church because the Bible tells us “not to exceed what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6). We cannot add to the Scripture without subtracting from its effectiveness in our lives. If we elevate personal preference and man-made tradition to the level of God’s Word (Mark 7:6-15), we risk entangling people in the bondage of legalism and diverting them from the true issues of sanctification (Romans 14:17).

I don’t see “ziplines” in scripture and yet Johnson’s application, according to him, does not violate sola scriptura.  In that case, he “does not “exceed what is written.'”  Take Busenitz’s first sentence and use “preaching” instead of “music.”

The Bible does not prescribe a particular style of preaching as being solely acceptable to God, nor does it condemn any particular styles.

Johnson and Busenitz both pervert the doctrine of sola scriptura.  The reason music can be judged is because of scripture.  Scripture does apply to music, sans lyrics.  Scripture does apply to style of preaching too.  Ziplines violate scripture, even though ziplines are not written in scripture.

Johnson sounds quite proud of himself for not firing a salvo into the worship wars and criticizing musical styles, but he squeezes every bit of rhetorical flourish and style to repudiate ziplines.  The impression one might take from the contrast is that worship is less important to Johnson and Busenitz than preaching.  They aren’t very picky about the worship God hears, but very picky about the preaching people hear.  People take a high priority.

Here’s my take.  Johnson defends John MacArthur’s preaching.  I applaud that.  Johnson defends the musical styles of his church.  He contradicts himself in doing so, but the common ground here is his defense of himself.  To do so, he and Busentiz and his church twist sola scriptura, pervert the meaning of 1 Corinthians 4:6 in its context, greatly harm the discernment of Christians, and offend God with their worship.

Phil Johnson and others have learned something that Rick Warren did before he wrote the Purpose Driven Church:  music is very important to numerical growth of a church.  No salvos will be fired on music — message to New Calvinists:  you’re safe with us.  It’s going to be risky, but they just have to cut down their ziplines and all will be well.  Rock and roll trap set stays; zipline goes.

Rock music violates numerous biblical passages.  This is not an arbitrary interpretation or application of God’s Word.  God hates rock music.  He doesn’t accept it as worship.

The experience of the rock music is the threshold through which victims enter the massive lie and fraud of the Charismatic movement.  It’s like someone said in 2013:

I’m convinced that the contemporary style of charismatic music is the entry point for Charismatic theology into churches.

Whoever said that seems like someone could and should judge styles.  Later he said:

The contemporary evangelical church has very little interest in theology and doctrine, so you’re going to have a tough sell. It’s about style. And style is the Trojan Horse that lets Charismatics in the church. Because once you let the music in, the movement follows. It all of a sudden becomes common. We sound like the Charismatics, sing like they do, have the same emotional feelings that they have. It’s a small step from doing the same music to buying into the movement. So the tough thing is you’re going back to a church that is thinking like that. It’s hard to make sound doctrine the issue when style is much more the interest of the leaders of the church.

At the same time, he said:

I would go so far as to say that evangelical noncharismatic churches are using music that is unacceptable to draw people in. They’re using the music of the world to suck people in as if somehow people would get saved through the music. The two have no connection. This is so close to what’s in a normal evangelical environment that it’s a very small step to getting sucked in, because the style is the same.

Those quotes come from John MacArthur at the Strange Fire Conference.   The New Calvinists won’t be judged for their music, even if it is a thoroughfare to Charismaticism, even if it is a pragmatic cunning, Finney-esque new measure, to lure people in to hear their Calvinistic expositional preaching.

You are who you worship.  Who you worship is how you worship.  People don’t know God as seen that they think He’s fine with rock music.  He isn’t.   This continues the mumbo jumbo of evangelicals.  How cunning.

We train future pastors in our church.  My philosophy or belief about training a pastor, which I believe I should be doing, is that I should be giving him what he needs to reproduce what I do.  I don’t want to give him less than what it is I am and do.  We offer the equivalent of an M.Div. academically.  One whole semester course is on worship.  Many don’t even understand worship.  We spend a semester course on it, and we easily fill up that time.  It’s difficult to get it done in a semester. Pastors are the worship leaders of their church.  They need to understand worship.  They should be able to explain what they are doing, coming directly from scripture to do that.

When you study the word translated “worship” and all the related words to worship, here’s what you’ll see it to be.  There are two parts.  The first part is the recognition of Who God is.  You don’t worship God if you don’t recognize Who He is.  You won’t know what He wants, if you don’t know Who He is.  You aren’t worshiping God if you aren’t worshiping God.  To be worshiping Him, you have to acknowledge Who He is.  If you do acknowledge Who He is, then you can treat Him like He deserves to be treated in affection and attitude.

Worship must match up with God.  He isn’t being worshiped if it is fallen short of or different than Who He is.  It must represent Him, parallel with Him, or fit Him.  All of us understand this on a practical level if we have a relationship with anyone.  We know if we have respected someone or loved someone and it relates to what we think about that Person.  We treat them commensurate to our apprehension of each of them as a person.  You don’t love everything in the same way.  You shouldn’t treat God or love God like you do everything else.

We expect the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier to be at a level that isn’t the same as some other guard at some other location.  This equates to Moses being told by God to remove his shoes because of his proximity.   That is the recognition of God.  He is greater.  He is scarier.  He is better. Nothing is as good as Him.  We can’t approach God the same as anything else.   A person has the wrong theology who has a casual approach to God.

The other part in the definition of worship, the first being the recognition of Who God is, is giving Him what He wants.  If we do recognize Who God is, we will give Him what He wants.  How do we know what He wants?  He tells us.  The Word of God tells us what God wants.

Some of you have heard of the regulative principle of worship.  The idea of that principle is that worship is regulated by scripture.  It starts with the elements of worship.  The elements of corporate worship should be those found in scripture.  Those should not be added to or taken away from. Scripture is sufficient.  God doesn’t want less than what He said or more than what He said.  He doesn’t accept something different than what He said.  Silence isn’t permission.

Giving God what He wants starts with elements and continues with the circumstances of those elements.  The elements are the categories and the circumstances are the logical means necessary to accomplish those elements.  The Westminster Confession of Faith defines “circumstances” with the following:

There are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and the government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.

The circumstances should not violate scripture, but they are non-scriptural.  You might ask, what are the elements?  If we are regulating worship by what God said, that is, giving Him what He wants, then we will keep the elements to those things that He said.  I believe they are the reading of Scripture (1 Thess 5:27; Col 4:16; 1 Tim 4:13), the preaching of the Word of God (1 Tim 4:6, 13-16; 2 Tim 4:2; Mt 28:20; Acts 2:42; 20:7; Titus 2:15), the hearing of and responding to the Word of God (James 1:19-20), prayer (1 Tim 2:1, 8; Acts 2:42; 4:23-31), singing of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs and making melody unto the Lord and giving of thanks (Eph 5:19-20, Col 3:16; Mt 26:30; 1 Cor 14:26, 1 Tim 2:1), baptism (Mt 28:19), the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:23, Acts 2:42), and the collection (Gal 2:10; 1 Cor 16:1-2, 2 Cor 9:1-12).

All of life should be regulated by scripture.  We are always supposed to give God what He wants. Romans 12:1-3 comes in here as a guide.  True worship is perpetual and spiritual and sincere from the heart.  As a spiritual priesthood, we offer spiritual sacrifices unto God.  This is akin to the Holy Spirit filling us, that is, controlling our life.  We are always submitting to Him, therefore, always giving to Him what He wants.

God is seeking for true worshipers.  To review, worship is recognizing who God is and giving Him what He wants.  You are not a success if you do not worship God.