December 4, 2017 Show with John Price on “Exclusive A Cappella Worship Defended” (Part # 2 of 3: “History”)

The Iron Sharpens Iron Introduction and the Theme of Exclusive A Cappella Worship

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Today we are returning to our discussion that we began over a month ago on the theme of Exclusive A Cappella Worship Defended. This is part two of our discussion focusing on the history of music in the church, and specifically on a cappella worship in the church.

And we have as our guest today, to defend a cappella worship for the second time, John Price, who is pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Rochester, New York. He's also the author of a book called Old Light on New Worship, Musical Instruments in the Worship of God, a Theological, Historical, and Psychological Study.

And being part two, this is the historical aspect, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor John Price.

Good afternoon, Chris, and it's good to talk with you again.

And before we go into our subject at hand, I want to bless our listeners with some a cappella worship music. This is from the new Wonderful God CD by Praise and Harmony A Cappella Worship. And I am really excited about this CD.

This is a new CD, especially for the Christmas season, but you can listen to it any time of year, obviously. And it actually comes with instructions for singers. There's a second CD in this CD set with instructions for singers, so I think that might be very helpful, especially for those of you who are leading the worship in your congregation or you just love to sing and would like to improve your skill.

But here is just one of the tracks from this beautiful new CD, Wonderful God by Praise and Harmony A Cappella Worship.

Wonderful God by Praise and Harmony. A Cappella Worship.

Well, that was beautiful, and that was just a part of that song. I faded that out because of time restraints that we have today, but that was obviously O Holy Night off of the new CD, Wonderful God by Praise and Harmony A Cappella Worship.

I hope that you look that up, and I will give you a website at some point during the program where you can order your own CDs and give them away as gifts for the Christmas season and so on.

Thank you, Chris.

My pleasure. And John, tell us also something about Grace Baptist Church of Rochester, New York, for those of our listeners who did not have the opportunity of hearing part one of this discussion on a cappella worship.

Well, Grace Baptist, my wife and I returned to Jersey. My training, we returned two years, and.

This would be a Reformed Baptist Church adhering to the 1689 London Baptist Confession as a summary of the biblical teachings that you embrace, and it's also known as the Second London Confession, very close, nearly identical to the Westminster Confession of Faith that our conservative Presbyterian brethren adhere to, and also very close to the three forms of unity that our other Reformed brethren adhere to, and the Savoy Declaration as well.

That's correct, Reformed Baptist Church, and the Second London Confession is our...

And we should state at the outset, because people may be scratching their heads and saying, wait a minute, I'm a Reformed Baptist, and all the Reformed Baptists I know use some kind of musical instruments in their worship, we would have to admit that this is, today, in the 21st century, that is, a rarity amongst even Reformed Baptists, this strictly a cappella view of worship.

Back of my mind, why do we have it? I could not find one in the New Testament. It wasn't on study of this matter. And the last time we were on, I invite all of you listening who missed.

Part one of this discussion, when we were focusing in on the theological aspects of this topic. Last week, or should I say last time, that we had Pastor Price on to discuss exclusive a cappella worship defended, we focused on the theology, and today we are discussing the historical aspects of this, the next time that he is coming back on, which is a week from today, correct?

That's right. Yeah, a week from today we are discussing the psychological aspects of this study, and some of you may be wondering how on earth could there be psychological aspects when it comes to what kind of music we use or don't use in a worship service, but you will be surprised if you have that understanding.

You'll be surprised that there are indeed psychological aspects. And when it comes to this issue, first of all, some people might wrongly use the phrase that Pastor Price does not believe in music in worship.

Now, using your voice as the sole instrument of worship does not mean that you.

Don't believe in music. That is music. Right, absolutely. You know, I think the, this is Calvin and other Reformers and the Puritans, I mean, they were men who enjoyed in the university, Jewish musicians who were coming into God's house, and in God's house, Christ has never commanded the use of instruments in the New Testament scriptures.

We have no example of any musical instruments being used in any of the churches, of many others.

Yeah, in fact, I want you to read a list of great men of God throughout the centuries who believed.

In exclusively a cappella worship. I will do that. Now, would you mind if we kind of traced out the whole history first, and then we reviewed it there? Oh, yeah, that's fine,.

If that's what you prefer. And also, I want... Okay, that's fine. And I want our listeners to also know that we did, I'm repeating myself here, but we did address the theology of this, which is the most important aspect of it, because my guest and I, and all Reform Baptists, believe strongly in what is known as sola scriptura, that the scriptures alone are our sole, infallible, inerrant authority in the church, and no matter what we see in history, doesn't prove unquestionably any teaching.

But, obviously, history is a helpful guide as to see to see what the church, what the body of Christ has believed throughout the centuries, and what a more dominant view may have been. And it's always good to know what great teachers have believed, even if we view them as fallible.

It's always a helpful thing, because we would be arrogant to ignore history and ignore great men of God whose minds are far greater than many of ours, or most of ours, especially mine. And it would be as if we are rejecting the scriptural mandate that there are certain qualifications for teachers and elders, and that the Bible does not in any way condone lone wolf or maverick Christianity, where people are wandering around developing their own opinions.

And so, it is a helpful aid to know what the church of the past has believed, even if the church of the past on this earth has always been imperfect, and has always contained sinners, and has always contained people veering off into error.

And even heresy. It's still a helpful guide. Am I right? That's correct. And so, we are, the importance of history, speaking of here, and the importance or the value of it is that we are not the first thousand years of church history, and, or two thousand years approximately, pretend to be the first ones to wrestle with the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ.

There have been many men who have gone before us, and Ephesians shows that Christ gives pastors and teachers a maturing of the church. And so, if I studied the scripture in some way, and no one else has gone in this direction before, then that would be of great value.

And another thing, if I might, if I might just read a quote. Sure. And I just looked this up this morning. This is a quote from one of my historical theology, and he says, after we, that may be applies 20 years, as, and we are arrogant to a, that our minds are unaffected by sins.

Amen. Amen. Excuse me, and I think it's wise for us to make a couple of more clarifications.

Quickly. Number one, as much as you highly respect, love, value, and appreciate our brethren, who are not only exclusive acapella in their worship, but also believe in exclusive psalmody, that only the psalms of the Old Testament are to be used in the singing portion of our worship services, as much as we love and appreciate them and agree with them on this part of the discussion in regard to acapella worship, you do not believe in exclusive psalmody, nor do I.

That's correct, Dishon, if we could say it in that way. I'm always careful that the content must be as pulpit in you, and then you are, from that, saying I'm not an exclusive psalmist.

And I know from having a number of discussions with you, that you do not want this to become some kind of litmus test for fellowship. You are not seeking to divide churches and cause animosity amongst brethren in Christ over this.

You believe it's a serious issue, as most things that are taught in the scriptures are, but you don't believe it's something that should divide brethren, unless, of course, somebody is so overwhelmed by conscience's that they have to leave a particular congregation over this.

I mean, these things do happen. We can't hide from the fact that that is just a fact of life. Even many of us who are Reformed started our Christian lives in Arminian churches, for instance, and then we found that we could no longer sit idly by and just hear incorrect teaching week after week, and we had to leave.

But it is not your goal to be divisive about this.

I'm glad you brought that up, and that's certainly divisive in dealing with this issue, with many men who are not in agreement with me. But at the sanctity, it's not a matter that can, and it's not a matter that we need to pay attention to.

Now, I think you may have slipped there. You don't worship on Saturday, do you, as far as you're getting?

Oh, I'm sorry. I meant every seven days, first day of the week, yes.

Okay, and I'm not laughing at those who are listening who do worship on the seventh day, I'm just saying I know that that's not what my brother meant to say.

That's correct.

Well, let me just quickly have our email address if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question, and please try your best to stick with the history of worship in the church, but we will accept any question about music in the church, whether it be the use of instruments or acapella singing and so on.

But if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com, and please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA, and please only remain anonymous if the question involves a personal or private matter.

Okay, brother, well, let's go back into time and begin with a study on the history of music in the church.

The Church Fathers and the Early Rejection of Instruments

Yes, we found last time in our study because they do have a bearing on what we're talking about today. Yes, and they are the most important matters. Right, and what we found before in a very brief summary is that musical instruments were commanded by God to be used in the Old Testament temple in Jerusalem, and they only entered into the temple use by and through the prophets.

But now that we have come, now that Christ has come and we've come into the temple worship, in all of its rituals, in its ceremonies, and in the use of its musical instruments, the entire temple worship has been abolished.

And so, as New Testament worshipers, we need to look to Christ and His apostles. We are not temple worshipers, and when we look to Christ and His apostles, there is neither any command nor any example of any musical instrument being used in any of the New Testament.

We have no authority, no right, and they have always been on this subject throughout the centuries, and that's what we're going to...the period that we want to come to is the period of the church fathers immediately after.

And what we find with the...did the use of any musical instrument, and they did so unanimously, and they did so. They did so based upon those same principles that they regarded the altar Christ and His...but now that Christ has come, the church can use for any of the aspects, including the...now just mention some of the days...

By the way, Pastor John, Pastor John, your voice is.

Dropping. I don't know if you're moving your mouth away from the phone or what's going on.

Can you hear me again? Now you're perfect, yes. Okay, I'm sorry. You know, in the book, we have quoted the words of the church fathers. I'll mention a few of them. Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Clement, Eusebius, who was an historian of the early church, Justine, all of these men, men who rejected the use of instruments.

The instruments...now, sometimes the question is asked, and nothing was said to them to be there, meaning that the word that...what happened to them immediately after the death, the unanimous and the vehement rejection of the instruments in the...they did not exist.

Now this continues for hundreds of years being used, but we're talking about the year 6 being used, is in the year 812...into a Roman...50 years later, come to the 9th century, and we only have...ever being used.

Now what happens in the 900s is...but these organs become by many men, and when we come to the year...talking about the year 12...not use musical instruments in case she should seem to fall back into Judaism.

For musical instruments...and create inner moral goodness...they use instruments as the people were more coarse and carnal, so that they needed to be...Aquinas, in the year 1260, states that musical instruments were still not being used.

And then that's where we're going to have to just temporarily come to a pause,.

To go to our first station break, and don't forget that we stopped right where you quoted from Thomas Aquinas, and we'll pick up right where you left off. If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter, on the topic that is, such as if you disagree with your own pastor on this issue, or if you're a pastor who disagrees with his own denomination, or something like that, you don't feel like drawing attention to yourself.

I fully understand that, and we will respect your wishes to remain anonymous, but other than that, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, if you live outside the USA.

Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back with John Price. Tired of box store Christianity? Of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert? Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship?

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This is Chris Orens, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today is John Price. And John Price is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Rochester, New York. He is the author of Old Light on New Worship, Musical Instruments and the Worship of God, a Theological and Psychological Study.

And that is a publication of Simpson Publications. So we'll be giving more details on how you can order that book later on. Simpson Publishing Company, to be exact, as far as the publisher. And we are addressing today part two of a three-part series that we are conducting.

Acapella, or should I say exclusive acapella worship defended. And this is part two, which is focusing on the history of music in the church. We already addressed in a previous broadcast the theology of music in the church.

Today is the history, and the next time we meet, God willing, which will be a week from today, Monday, December 11th, we will be addressing the psychological aspects of music in the church. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. And I'm going to let you finish your thought. You had just quoted Thomas Aquinas, and there are some listeners who have already written questions. I'd like to get to them as soon as possible.

But if you could finish your thought right after you had quoted from Thomas Aquinas. Are you there, John? Hello, John.

Yes, I'm here, Chris. Thank you. I think the main point of what we were discussing is that thousand years, musical instruments, and it's a remarkable thing from the church fathers who, they were unanimous, and until the point of Thomas Aquinas in 1260, in the 13th, were not used in the church.

And there were those few exceptions that I mentioned, and it's the historian agreement. Now, what happens is, in the 1300s, the organ begins to become, especially in the 1400s, there's the increasing use of the organ, and then also other instruments enter in too.

And so, by the time of the Protestant Reformation, music really dominates the worship in many ways in the Roman Catholic Church. Let me read Erasmus and what he said. He said, modern church priests and monks listen to Paul in college or monastery, nothing but, and then he says, they perform everything with cornets of men contend.

Men run to church.

Isn't that amazing? You would think that that was something that was read or written, I should say, today or a week ago in regard to the music in the church. Now, I don't know if you are certain on all of Erasmus's positions on music, but was he misusing the term music and including in that singing?

Did he believe in a prohibition of even singing in the church?

He did say, you know, they sang in Latin.

Okay, but to your knowledge, did he believe that we should be singing.

Psalms or spiritual songs? Well, I really don't know. Erasmus, he mentions the slide trumpets, the trombones, cornets, little flutes that they used, and I think my point here now into that musical instrument.

And I think that you might want to add, unless you had a different time.

That you wanted to include this, because this was really eye-opening for me when I read this from your book. It was your book that I first learned this, that even Orthodox Judaism today in the 21st century, I'm not talking about the liberal forms of Judaism, but Orthodox Judaism even today is strictly a cappella in its worship because once the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, the Jews knew that the instruments that were commanded of God to be used in the Old Covenant were no longer required or even proper because there was no sacrificial system, and the synagogue system that began has remained for 2 ,000 years a strictly a cappella worship synagogue.

That's correct, and I think that one of the things that's not noticed very often is the fact that we have much said about Jerusalem in the Old Testament, but the men of Israel went to the temple only three times a year during the annual feasts, and the worship of Jerusalem was their gathering for worship, and all of it, there were no instruments ever used in any of the in the synagogue, and that's an important historical fact as well because the worship of the.

Jewish nation. Yeah, because you will frequently have proponents of musical instruments. In fact, every single time, if they believe in the Bible and they believe in the inerrancy of Bible, they will allude to musical instruments in the Old Covenant, and they'll say, how can you say these are unbiblical?

And even the Jews themselves, who use the Hebrew scriptures exclusively as their canon for God's Word, even they stopped using the musical instruments when.

The temple was destroyed. That's true, and if we were to go back and find every week we went to be no musical instrument in Jerusalem three times a year for the feast, there we would find musical and by the Levitical priest we would find, and the worship found its roots.

Okay, so pick up again where you are entering into the Protestant Reformation. Yes, and so when we come to the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers look at their, you know, they discover so many truths from their Bibles, and what they discover, we mentioned earlier, that the Old Testament temple worship has been abolished by Christ, and we are now New Testament gospel worshipers.

We must look to Christ and his apostles for the commands and the ordinances of New Testament worship. We find no instruments commanded or used, and therefore we cannot use them in the church, and this became the conviction of the Reformers.

And with the exception of Martin Luther, Luther, and in other areas, Luther never, you know, he, one man can't do everything, and so Calvin, and he begins to just read you a few of the names of the men who directed the.

Use of instruments in the church. Yes, read as many as you can. We do have a two-hour interview,.

So you have time. Even before Calvin came, John Wycliffe and John Huss say that back into the beginning, he had not been present in the, and so then we have John Calvick did the use of instruments. We have John Knox, Book of Ephesians, making melody with your heart to the Lord, Ephesians 5 and verse 19, and Colossians 3 and verse 16, and admonishing one another.

And it might be interesting for our listeners to know.

Also that Martin Luther kind of being a holdout there amongst all of the Reformers in regard to music, he, when he started his portion of the Reformation, he originally had no intention of starting a new church.

He believed he was being a faithful Roman Catholic, an Augustinian, and he retained some other areas of Roman Catholic belief and practice that the rest of the Reformers had strongly opposed. In fact, he even believed it was completely appropriate to have a crucifix in the sanctuary, you know, a cross with an actual statue of Christ on it, and other things like that that made him not quite in harmony with his fellow Reformers.

That's true, and.

Luther was willing to maintain many of these existing forms of medieval worship from the Catholic Church, and I'll just read you one quote. I must admit that images are neither here nor there, neither evil nor good, as we please, and so that there matters of indifference, clearly, of music on this subject.

He says, celebrating the praises of God would be no more suitable than the burning of incense, the lighting up of lamps, and the restoration of the oil, as many other things, from the Jews. Instruments are not now to be used in public thanksgiving, the playing command, and Calvin would argue that instruments are among the children, and they bury the light of the gospel, and they introduce the shadow of his influence many hundreds of years later, and the Reformed churches that come out of the Protestants, there are no instruments in worship.

Now, what happens is this continues. This continues into the, we come into the time of the Puritans and the same views, and the other Reformers continues. We're talking about various on Bunyan, and I'm just trying to give, what I want to do is just give a complete summary.

Then what you should do is pick up where you left off, because we have to go to our midway break, and I don't want to interrupt you in mid-sentence there, because I'd like you to even trace the history closer to present time, including men from the 19th century and so on, that are very recognizable by most Christians today who shared your view of strictly acapella worship.

But we are going to our midway break now. It's a longer break than normal because our friends at Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, who air our program twice a day in a pre-recorded form, they require that we have a 12-minute break in between our two-hour segments.

So please be patient with us as we go to our midway break now, and please take this time to write questions in, if you have them, on worship in the church, especially in regard to music, and even more especially in regard to acapella worship, exclusive acapella worship.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, your country of residence, if you live outside of the USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

It's interesting that we have several people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, and none of them are from the United States right now. They're all from overseas, including Africa, Ireland, and Slovenia.

So we will get to as many of you as we possibly can, so don't go away. God willing, we'll be back very soon with our guest John Price and our discussion on a defense of exclusive acapella worship in the church.

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Today, Wonderful God, Praise and Harmony, Acapella Worship. And if you'd like to order this, go to acapella .org, acapella .org, and you will find this listed among other CDs and DVDs that you can purchase featuring acapella Christian music.

And in particular, the thing that I love about the Praise and Harmony series is that it is congregational worship. It's not merely just acapella groups that are providing special music, which are included on that website.

There are groups, including a group called Acapella that I actually hired way back in the early 1990s to perform at a fundraising concert for the Timothy Hill Children's Ranch in Riverhead, Long Island.

That's a home for abandoned children out there in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, and I had a fundraiser for them featuring the group Acapella. But the Praise and Harmony Acapella Worship series is specifically congregational worship, which makes it to me even more beautiful and more meaningful, especially in regard to our topic today, because that is one of the facets of our discussion, is that our guest John Price not only believes that our worship today in the New Covenant not only should be strictly acapella when we are having worship services, but also that the worship should be congregational and not feature choirs and special music.