An Untimely Response to ‘

If a Tree Falls…

’

…ἢ ἐῶμεν καὶ οὕτω ἡμῶν τε αὐτῶν ἀποδεχώμεθα καὶτῶν ἄλλων, ἐὰν μόνον φῇ τίς τι ἔχειν οὕτω συγχωροῦντεςἔχειν; ἢ σκεπτέον τί λέγει ὁ λέγων;—

Socrates

The other day I was reading an essay found in the Feb. 2007 issue of the Gospel Herald entitled ‘

If a Tree Falls…

’ and thought perhaps I should take a shot at a rejoinder. The article’s main thesis is toreassert the ‘principle of silence’, as often heard in Churches of Christ circles. This hand-me-down of the Calvinist ‘regulative principle of worship’ attempts to justify, logically, that only that which isexplicitly authorized by the New Testament is allowed in church worship—all else is forbidden— referring explicitly here, of course, to musical instruments.

Naturally, though, this turns out to be an ageold sophism—a mere play on words. And until we overcome the nature of this sophistry there is no point in arguing for or against the inclusion of musical instruments for when we gather together as theLord’s church.Before we start, it is perhaps best to give a quick synopsis of the essay in question. The essaymakes a couple of main points: (1) that truth is objective, (2) that God has told us how we are to worshipHim, and (3) to show the importance of the ‘principle of non-contradiction’ in navigating everydayreality. I want to be upfront here and say that I emphatically agree with all three points—however, it ismy contention, that as stated in the article, they all profoundly miss the mark of biblical truth. In whatfollows I hope to show why the doctrine espoused in ‘

If a Tree Falls…

’ misuses the ‘principle of non-contradiction’, confuses what God has told us about worship, and in the end is a dangerously subjectivereading of scripture. After, I hope to offer an alternative to the views contested—even if just a sketch.So, if this is a sophism, as I assert, then in what manner? Well, the essay states unambiguously thatwe can either worship God only by the authority of the “commands, instructions or positiveinjunctions”

that we find in the New Testament, or else we are obligated to worship God in every waynot explicitly forbidden (e.g. dancing, animal sacrifices, incense, etc.) This point is then made further, ina surprising move in the endnotes, by invoking the ‘law of the excluded middle’—that there are no other options logically—it is either/or. Is this, however, the case? It is my position that this is an unfortunateusage of logic;

that this is, in fact, a false dilemma—there are other options, if one were to look deeper.It seems that we are left in a similar position as when someone is asked, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” It is a classic either/or fallacy—there is more to the picture.

Subjectivity

But how is this so? Are we to look deeper into scripture to find some abstruse theology of freedom? No!—we need to look deeper into how we approach scripture—to the assumptions we bring tothe text. This is where subjectivity comes into play.

For in spite of the repeated claims to the objectivity

“…or shall we let it go and accept our own statement, and those of others, agreeing that it is so, if anyone merely says that itis? Or ought we to inquire into the correctness of the statement?” (in Plato’s Euthyphro –9e)

For another example see ‘

Richland Hills & Instrumental Music: a plea to reconsider

’, David Miller, pp. 78-110

I take this to be roughly equivalent to the more common notion of ‘commands, [binding] examples, and necessaryinferences’—or CENI for short.

I can find no formal deontic logic that follows this all-or-nothing approach.

Admittedly, ‘subjectivity’ is a sticky word. I’m using the term here in an epistemological sense, echoing Michael Polanyi[1958] that we, as the observer of the object of knowledge, always arrive holding prior truth commitments, values, and beliefs; that these are often held uncritically—thus subjectively. There is objective truth; but we, as the subject, are notdisinterested observers. This is the ‘myth of objectivity’—that often those who argue the loudest regarding objectivity arethemselves the most naïve regarding the various lenses they wear in interpreting the facts!

2of biblical truth, there is an obvious grid of non-biblical modern assumptions—i.e., nineteenth century presuppositions—brought to bear on the text.

Such assumptions tend to lift isolated biblical propositions from the fabric of the narrative and arrange them into a constellation of meaning that wouldhave been foreign to the first century believer. Put differently, it is good and right that we look

only

tothe bible for our standard of truth and practices, and it is good that we use our logic and reason; but beyond this, are the questions we approach the bible with biblical themselves? Or are we askingquestions that we

feel

require specific answers? For, in the end, it does not matter how

strongly

we holdthese worldview assumptions—are they themselves biblical?The Church of Christ tradition

has a well documented history of what is often referred to as aBaconian-Lockean reading of scripture

—that is, an inductive/deductive reading of the biblical textsearching for clear and certain patterns for the assembly of the church. The Baconian side reads the book of the bible in the way Bacon and Newton read the ‘book of Nature’—drawing conclusions from ‘barefacts’.

The Lockean side takes the perspicuity of scripture to an extreme and brings a grid of legal or constitutional questions to the text.

Both tend to flatten scripture through the uniquely modern focus on‘discursive reasoning’: distilling and mathematizing propositions by attenuating or eliminating theintuitive, which values language as image, metaphor, multivalent, affective, and parataxical (relational).It is through this lens of the CENI hermeneutic that scripture is forced to answer questions that itwas clearly not written to answer. This coupled with the primary assumption that as long as we copy theform of what the biblical church did then we will be on safe ground, is a gross misreading of the biblicalstory. This along with the epicycles and hidden rules,

ad hoc

dispensations and unwarranteddichotomies, puts us at great discontinuity with the early church. Hence, the Church of Christ’s“traditional” hermeneutic—naïve primitivism—is dangerously subjective.

Note, I do not believe that we can come to the text without our cultural assumptions and presuppositions. I do, however, believe that we ought to be aware of them, weigh them according to scripture. Not all ‘modern’ is bad—however, weshould seek to ‘restore’ a 1

century hermeneutic!

I understand that the watchword ‘tradition’ is difficult for those who desire to view the church ahistorically and in theabstract—but since the church that the Lord instituted is made up of people of a certain time and place, and that it has beencommunicated person to person by speaking and hearing, we must then take into account culture and history.

For more on this particular hermeneutical stance see ‘

The Organon of Scripture

’ –J.S. Lamar [1859] or ‘

Hermeneutics: AText Book

’ – D.R. Dungan (2

Edition, 1888). Also see ‘

The Churches of Christ’

– Richard T. Hughes pp. 43-44, 53 or ‘

The encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement’

– p. 625.

It should be noted that Francis Bacon himself would never have condoned such a reading of scripture. The following passage from his

The Advancement of Learning

should show that he had a more mature epistemology and respect for scripture than any 19

century primitivists: “…in the free way of interpreting Scripture, there occur two excesses. The one presupposes such perfection in Scripture, that all philosophy likewise should be derived from its sources; as if all other philosophy were something profane and heathen….But these men do not gain their object; and instead of giving honor tothe Scriptures as they suppose, they rather embase and pollute them…and as to seek divinity in philosophy is to seek theliving among the dead, so to seek philosophy in divinity is to seek the dead among the living. The other method of interpretation which I set down as an excess, appears at the first glance sober and modest, yet in reality it both dishonorsthe Scriptures themselves, and is very injurious to the Church. This is, (in a word), when the divinely inspired Scripturesare explained in the same way as human writings. But we ought to remember that there are two things which are known toGod the author of the Scriptures, but unknown to man; namely, the secrets of the heart, and the successions of time. Andtherefore as the dictates of Scripture are written to the hearts of men, and comprehend the vicissitudes of all ages; with aneternal and certain foreknowledge of all heresies, contradictions and differing and changing estates of the Church, as wellin general as of the individual elect, they are not to be interpreted only according to the latitude and obvious sense of the place; or with respect to the occasion whereon the words were uttered; or in precise context with the words before or after;or in contemplation of the principal scope of the passage; but we must consider them to have in themselves, not only totallyor collectively, but distributively also in clauses and words, infinite springs and streams of doctrines, to water every part of the Church and the souls of the faithful.” [Bacon,

De Augmentis Scientiarum

, book IX, chapter I]

In this manner the Church of Christ is also firmly situated in a liberal tradition of interpretation—epistemologicallyfollowing in the footsteps of the now defunct philosophical trend called ‘Logical Positivism’—which died because it wasself-referentially incoherent…

Worship

Taking, then, this CENI method in relation to worship—and focusing only on music—we findsome interesting oddities. First, we find the need to draw certain inferences and contrasts from the OldTestament to derive New Testament practices—that is, that while we are explicit that our authority mustcome from the New Testament for the particulars of church practice, we seem to use an Old Testament

structure

for this New Testament

content

. Thus, in the case of worship, we still see a ritualistic practiceof sacrifice—that is, a fulfilling of a pattern of outward signs in order to

please

God. In this caseverbally singing takes the place of Old Testament requirements. But is this what God is telling us aboutworship?It appears that in distancing ourselves from the narrative—in a modern attempt at objectivity—wehave lost the plot of the story. Eph. 5:19 & Col. 3:16 are certainly not prescriptive commands thatexhaust the nature of Christian worship—even with the caveat of being “corporate” worship! Yet thensurely some will ask, “Why then not animal sacrifices; why then not a return to temple worship?” andonce again we show our incredible ignorance of our place within God’s story (Rom 6:1ff & Heb. 10). No; something happened in Acts 2—when the Spirit fell on the crowd gathered in Jerusalem, anew song started that dispelled the tune that had held sway since the Fall. This new song, but a whisper among the prophets, now made fully clear who Jesus was, and what His life, death, and resurrectionmeant for this world. Our true pattern is indeed Jesus (Heb. 8:5-6).

We, as a community of believers,who are following after the early church, live our lives as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1-5). Our worship,then, should not be boiled down to what we do 1 or 2 hours each Sunday. But for the

how

and the

what

of our worship on Sundays, it must edify and encourage—it must retell and elucidate the Christian storythat we are enveloped in. Now it should be painfully obvious that the scriptures do not set down a Leviticus-style ordering of what New Testament worship is to be.

We should respect the silence of scripture in not making suchan inference. For as we have seen over and over in the Old Testament the prescribed forms of worshipcan be duplicated while our hearts are far from Him (Mar. 7:6-8). And we should know better than tosimply try and copy what the early church did—as if since they did X, we must do X. Again, runs therisk of missing the nature and plot of Christian worship. Christian worship is bound by the story of NewCreation and God’s kingdom come—Jesus’ rule—the now and not yet (2Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15).In song, in words, in melody, we sing of what God has done, and is doing. The inchoate church of the first century saw their lives as worship (Heb. 13:13-16). They sang because song is always prior to propositions. As Johann Georg Hamann puts it, “Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race, as thegarden is older than the ploughed field; painting, than writing; song, than declamation; parables, thanlogical deduction; barter, than commerce.”

Worship is a reflection and a participation in the ministryof reconciliation that we are bringing into this world.

“…Those who fix the reign or law of Jesus Christ after the death of Christ need to study the teachings of Jesus…All thatJesus Christ spoke or gave to the world constituted a portion of the will of Jesus that went into effect after his death…Thelaws of Jesus Christ are given in the sayings and teachings of Christ recorded in the four biographies of Christ…The law isgiven in the personal teachings of Jesus. The Acts of Apostles and the Epistles are the applications by inspired teachers of the king to the churches and the applications of the Bible to the facts of life as they arise in the. These applications andexemplifications of the truths of the Bible to the workings of the world greatly help in the study of the Bible by thecommon people. But there is not a truth or a thought in the application of these parables that is not in the teaching of Jesus…Jesus is the lawgiver. The whole law of God to the world is taught by him. The Acts of the Apostles and Epistlesexplain what the teachings mean, but they do not add to or detract from them. A change or modification in the teachings of Jesus would be treason against him and God.”—David Lipscomb, “When Was the Will of Christ Made?”

Gospel Advocate

54 (2 May 1912) 554.

Should we not then rethink the CENI method in light of Col. 2:8-14, 1 Cor. 10:31-33, & Romans 14?

‘Aesthetica in Nuce’

, Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge University Press, 2007)