Reformed Presbyterian Veritas

The State of the Union According to Tolkien

2011-02-11T15:40:00.000-08:00

[Updated 2/11/11]

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;

Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution

To summarize the recent State of the Union Address Jan. 25, 2011 by the President of the United States of America to a joint session of Congress is not difficult. It was already stated over fifty years ago on the opening pages to J.R.R.Tolkein's classic trilogy, the Lord of the Rings:

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie

In other words, to translate the latest Saruman speak and WashingtonDC.orc talk: More Big Government as the Savior of all our Economic Woes and American Sorrows.

And, of course, upon delivery of this august address, there was great rejoicing all through the House of Congress and the Cable TV Studios. Implicitly it was understood that the Great Ogre of Unemployment with his Hordes of Underemployment would not dare to show their faces within the city limits of the national version of Mordor on the Potomac. (Likewise faint hearts should not fear, Nationalsozialistische HealthCare for all will still be enforced freely and rationed as prudently and carefully as every case may require.) Neither did anyone have the unmitigated gall to interrupt and insist that someone was a liar as has happened in the past, regardless if lies, half truths or inaccuracies prevailed.

Yet as others have asked, is there any constitutional mandate for what was presented as the resolution of the problems that are facing the nation? But to ask is to answer, you silly goose. Perish the thought. May it never be.

Twin Siamese Parties

Still the real problem with all this, is not how does one go about electing a new president, or a new congress, but rather how does one elect a new electorate to replace the old electorate who voted for the incumbents. The same, who largely, the Tea Party not excepted, promise more of the same old same old that got us here in the first place. In case we haven't figured it out yet, what was pretty much a Republican version of a Stalinist personality cult preceded this administration's version - of the exact same thing. Neither is it mentioned in polite society or acknowledged by the corporate bought and paid for media, but the two political parties in America are actually Siamese twins.

Socialist Parties
Tweedledum and Tweedledee may be separate entities for tax purposes, but by and large, they are still both firmly rooted in the trunk of the Dire Necessity of More Big Government Management/Control of the Economy - whether indirect, through corporate collusions and cartels (fascism) or direct, through actual ownership of business, i.e. Government Motors (communism). In other words, whether direct or indirect, government control of the economy is of the essence and definition of socialism, however it escapes the talking heads. Ben Gleck can't understand that Social Security is a socialist program, however much that Jon Stewart Leibowitz might chide him about it on the Daily Show because at the least, both of them are really in favor of the fascist version of socialism, with respective emphases on either warfare or welfare. But it's all ice cream, regardless of the flavor.

Monetary Socialism

Not the least of the socialist indicators is the 1913 institution of the Federal Reserve, nominally under the derelict oversight of Congress, which is a cartel of private central banks that among other things, price fixes the prime interest rate. This, in the interest of central economic planning, without of course, the Five Year labels the Soviet Union put on their version. How's that for a free market economy, Mr Greenjeans? Pretty hard to beat, huh, when the FR bankrolls both sides of the Congress and their aggrandizing schemes of redistribution, graft, corruption and domestic/international empire through the inflationary printing of money. Just as the real Davey Crockett is one thing, the old Fess Parker metal lunch boxes another, so too, the free market economy and the constitutionally sound money of the founding fathers bears little resemblance to what passes for it today. But perhaps only experience can do what elections can not, though sadly the lesson of history seems to be that it is seldom learned.

Political Paradises and Pogroms

Furthermore, man is a sinner, however much Black Liberation Theology and Pastor Jeremiah Wright deny, if not politicize the historic Christian doctrine of original sin at the church where Barack Obama attended for twenty years. Nether is man perfectible as the myth of the Enlightenment teaches - or the state, made up of imperfect men, as the generic 20th century totalitarian states otherwise known as "The Peoples's Republic Of" have amply demonstrated in bloody living color, regardless that all was done in the most holy name of radical Jacobin egalitarianism and equality. For that matter, those who have in the 20th century denied any heaven above have been the most adept at turning life below into a living hell. Of Germany and the Soviet Union, never mind China and America, more below.

Likewise Burke told us (cf. 2 Pet. 2:19):

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Hence the conclusion that a genuinely free republic requires men free of the intemperate notion that the state can provide all the wants and necessities of its citizens. It therefore remains to be seen just exactly how many have continued to drink the koolaid and cheer on the utopian juggernaut as the pep talk of Jan. 25 disingenuously laid out the further game plan.

Private Property

There are those, of course, who think this all unnecessary and evil spirited criticism; unpatriotic if not - to play the current smear card trump - racist. (Sexist, homophobe, anti-semite and white supremacist/Nazi, all stand ready on combat alert for the opportune moment when yet another progressive/neo-conservative argument is fast losing both altitude and traction in the simple and manipulated minds of the hoi polloi.) Nonetheless, a word from an American icon is to the point:

Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Yes, that's right. The sainted Abraham Lincoln himself said that in a March 21st 1864 address. The same Lincoln, who, one of the most eminent literary critics of the last century, Edmund Wilson considered most responsible for the centralization of America, as Lenin and Bismark respectively were for Russia and Germany. Of course, Wilson's opinion is not the popular opinion of Lincoln, but it is probably closer to the truth than is comfortable for either of the two parties.

Abe's Apprentice
In that the present executive sees himself as following in Abe's shoes, if not that Abe made it possible for him to run and hold office (Abe's politically incorrect views notwithstanding), surely it's not too hard to connect the dots and apply Lincoln's sentiments to the current status quo and the answers the SOTU proposes to deal with our problems: More appropriation by the state of private property in order to achieve a sanctified equality of property, innovation and healthcare. But this is hardly the Spirit of 1776 according to early Americana writer Eric Sloane, who first alerted us to both quotes from Lincoln in this essay. Historically the exceptualism of America did not consist in the power of the government to jump start the economy, much more "rescue" it as it supposedly did recently in the meltdown of '08, never mind all the "stimulus bills" and the mythical panacea of inflationary Quantitative Easing.

The American Republic, Which Version/Upgrade?

But it gets worse, regardless that Lincoln, in refusing to let the South secede, arguably ushered in the Second American Republic. At the very least it has to be said that slavery was abolished in the rest of the western world without a resort to arms. Yet as Lincoln set precedents for Wilson and the Third American Republic with WWI in order to make the world "Safe for Democracy", so too FDR with the domestic New Deal instituted the Fourth version of the republic just as the composite Geo. W. Obama is welcoming the Fifth/Last American Republic with the unending, undefined and unconstitutional War on Terror.

The last, just like the other government wars on poverty and drugs, really only means subsidy rather than genuine animosity. America has been meddling for a long time in the Middle East and regardless if Islam is a wicked and vicious superstition - it is that and more - the Arabs have a right to self determination and government. And if you keep poking a stick in somebody's eye, chances are sooner or later they will retaliate if they can. The CIA term is blowback which pretty much summarizes the 9/11 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon regardless if the neoconservatives capitalized on the situation ala Hitler and the Reichstag Fire, with wars of occupation - not liberation - in Afghanistan and Iraq. And Iran, Pakistan, Somalia and Egypt?

Card Sharks and the Constitution
Which is all to say, the Patriot Act after 9/11, the TARP Bailout, and ObamaCare all tend to the same end, the supremacy and centralization of all power in the Federal branch of government - as well as Cap and Trade/Illegal Immigration Amnesty if they can swing it; later if not now. In other words, the powers that be are playing for a straight flush; whether a Royal Flush or an ace low Steel Wheel. But either way Joe Taxpayer or Joe the Plumber still gets ruled or rolled. Ain't hope and change grand, boys and girls? All it really means is that the Dimocrat Party is in charge of the Plunderbund instead of the Repuglicans, however transparent/invisible this may be to the great unwashed flag waving/burning public.

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Assassination

Even further, on Feb. 22, 1861 Abraham Lincoln stopped his inaugural journey to Washington at Philadelphia and gave an address at Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence had been signed.

I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is a sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it (it. added).

Granted, Father Abraham didn't expect John Wilkes Booth to take him for his word, but "sic semper tyrannis" or " thus always to tyrants" is what Booth said upon leaping to the stage after shooting the President in his private box seat at Ford Theater in repeating Brutus's line at the assassination of Julius Caesar, which is also the Virginia state motto. Not that either the North or the South really fulfilled the letter of the law when in came to the Bill of Rights in the War of Rebellion, but rhetoric is rhetoric, right? Nothing to get worked up about or take seriously?

An Arizona Aside
So evidently those, who would excuse the left, but excoriate the right, when it came to "violent" political rhetoric which was supposed to have provoked the recent shooting incident in Arizona. Neither did Obama in his speech at the memorial service in Arizona really do much more than overlook the left's prejudices after letting them freely play previously and then beg the question as to who was accusing who of what.

The Record and the Rhetoric
Regardless of all that, the question in light of Lincoln's comments on property and liberty still arises: Was the SOTU about liberty; about lifting the weight of government from the shoulders of men or was it about lifting the weight of our problems from our shoulders through more government? The last especially since we know how well The Government saved: the Economy, the Too Big to Fail Banks, Wall Street Speculators and Detroit at the sole expense of the taxpayer, who, while he was not invited to the shindig in DC, was supposed to be represented by his elected congressman when all of this took place

One may care to argue about Lincoln's record vis a vis his rhetoric, - after all he only emancipated the slaves to save the Union and was up to the day he died, intent on deporting all blacks back to Africa - but that's not the question before the house. Rather what can Mr. Obama say regarding his rhetoric and his record in office which again includes, among other things, something like the bureaucratization of one sixth of the US economy in health care?

Poor Presidential Precedent
Of course, if the whole truth be told, Obama is only following Geo. W. Bush's precedent with Medicare Plan D, if not RomneyCare and before that ClintonCare, not to mention the Nixon/Kennedy cartelization of the HMO's in the '70's, which is something else conveniently ignored in what passes for intelligent and informed discussion of the issue. Regardless of that, while it can be said that people might suffer under a govt. health care system in the name of the liberty of all to have "health care" somehow we don't quite think that was what Abraham was talking about in principle in Philadelphia. To be sure, he went on to honor it in its breach and he was a lawyer, just like Barak, but hopefully some lies are just too big to tell just yet and some things you just can't spin.

Yet the one big lie of the SOTU remains, if not that it summarizes the prevailing ethos of our Federal Government in general:

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the halls of Big Government where the politicians lie through their teeth,
All the while they smile for the camera and promise a neo-con/progressive for every office and enough deficits to secure our financial future forever. (Won't it be lovely?)

In other words, Tolkien has already spoken, any and all SOTU addresses notwithstanding. And Tolkien rules regardless if your average politician considers any kind of literature other than campaign propaganda to be only entertainment and fantasy.

Politics and Reality

Maybe the specific term "literature" never comes up on the teleprompters the political and media whores so zealously scan in order to vomit forth the latest in "news" on the teevee screen where everything is in High Definition except what really counts, the truth, but the word still reads quite well in black and white on the printed page these days. Not to worry. J.R.R. will not be running in any political primaries or sponsoring a candidate in a national election any time soon, if at all.

Which is just the point. Despite the fact that it is the prevailing lie, the atmosphere and ocean of assumption in which the political piranhas and predators roam and cavort freely these days, there are some things infinitely beyond the scheming grasp and conniving of politicians and tax collectors, the latest SOTU notwithstanding. There are some things beyond the gaping maw of Leviathan however much he rages and thrashes.

The God of Church and State

Even further and regardless if Cotton Mather correctly regarded it as a superstition, the practice of swearing an oath with one's hand on the Bible, is even part of the inauguration of US presidents. And while Obama was sworn into office using the same Bible Lincoln used, he hardly kissed it afterward as Lincoln did, though Abe made no claims to be a believer, Ps. 2:10-12 notwithstanding.

While arguably the state only recognizes God as Creator versus the Church's acknowledgment of Christ as Redeemer, we still live in a nation that has violated and trampled upon the natural light and law of Nature's God in legalization of abortion and homosexuality, never mind what the Scripture says. (For that matter, America was the first Western nation to incorporate without an official established religion. It remains to be seen if a totally amoral secularism will prevail as the sacred cow of choice and atheistic libertinism will become the law of the land.) True, things have not "progressed" so far that the state actively compels abortion per se, as the Nazi regime persecuted the Jews and promoted homosexuality or China enforces a one child policy, but among the certain inalienable rights granted by Nature's God is life, contra Roe Wade and Mr. Obama's rabid pro choice mentality, which exceeds even that of arch/rabid feminist Hillary Clinton.

That is not to say, his predecessor's policy of "pre-emptive" war bears any resemblance to the historic Augustinian and Christian doctrine of a just war (if not the same more resembles that of a certain German demagogue and dictator of the 1930's whom we shall not mention for fear of violating Godwin's law), but Obama has been zealous to double down on the worst of Bush's policies contra the campaign rhetoric. But what else is new? Hardly the excuses used to justify or obscure the obvious.

Saruman's Grim Courtier

In short, Pres. Obama resembles yet another character out of Tolkien's masterpiece besides Saruman when it comes to life and liberty - or even reluctantly, Lincoln, who began the centralization of the Union just as Geo. W. Obama wants to finish it - that of Grima Wormtongue. Granted, he is just one in the long line of the same, though a little more adept, polished and racially correct than the usual heretofore, but to choose to denominate the latest frontman for the Establishment as Grima instead of Saruman is, in that ironically curious way reality works, both a promotion to what one really is in truth: a courtier to the powers that be and yet also a demotion because of what one in truth really is: a glib, smooth talking and perjured sycophant to Big Pharmaceutical, Big Insurance and Big Banks/Wall Street, if not arguably Big Business in general, with the addition of Dailey from the Chicago machine to the White House staff, to replace Emanuel, who is now running for mayor of the Windy City.

No doubt of course, God can and does strike straight with both crooked sticks and tongues , while a nation and a people usually get the kind of rulers they deserve, but somehow those home truths, along with a few others, never made it into the latest SOTU. A pity that, and hardly complimentary.

Of Pimps, Prostitutes and Primadonnas: The PCA and the Federal Vision

2011-01-27T21:23:00.000-08:00

(updated 1/31/11)

A Report from the Friends of the First Amendment Society
As the Federal Vision more and more is starting to resemble a theological gong show, no doubt the Larger Catechism on the Ninth Commandment will be permanently drug (sic) out of cold storage and "hurt feelings" will be the de facto response to anything resembling plain and blunt speech, which in its turn will be labeled intemperate "hatespeech" and consequently dismissed via Geo. Orwell's memory hole. Even those who oppose the FV run the risk of being sucked in, as the following items might indicate.

Likewise, the title above has already transgressed the thin red line for the discerning reader, but we takes our chances in these days of declining literacy, theological or otherwise. That Scripture itself refers to heresy, idolatry or apostasy in terms of whoring around is, of course, completely beyond the pale of modern moderate calvinism and the finer sort of tea parties to which brazen faced women are seldom invited. But to continue.

The Green Hobbit Society
Over at the Green Baggins website, there was a discussion, entitled Misdirected Apology?, concerning what passes for an apology by Mr. J Meyers to the Missouri Presbytery (MOP) of the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). This, regarding his previous utterances, public and private as per the Federal Vision theology currently perturbing the modern P&R churches - which incidentally, MOP absolved him of all connection - in that the PCA, along with the majority of other N. American P&R churches (NAPARC), has declared the FV to be off limits.

Nevertheless Mr. Meyers in 2007 signed the Joint Federal Vision Statement, which makes for a prima facie case that Prov. 30:20 contains the substance of Mr. Meyers's apology, if it does not contain, at the very least, a wholesale, full scale repudiation of the JFVS - which it did not:

Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.

Likewise any discussion or critique of that same apology is misdirected/mistaken if it fails to aknowledge the obvious. To put it very mildly. Which is pretty much what happened at Bilbo's blog.

Partners in Crime/Band of Brethren
Of Meyers's PCA brethren, Messrs. Wilkins, Leithart and Horne, who also signed the JFVS, Wilkins of Louisiana Presbytery and his congregation has since fled - surprise, surprise - PCA jurisdiction in Jan. 2008 for the safe haven of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) to escape - what else? - censure for his FV theology. Peter Leithart, though a member of Pacific NW Presbytery of the PCA, serves a CREC church in Moscow, Idaho and is currently facing charges in the same presbytery after the PCA's Standing Judicial Commission directed the PacNW to re-examine Mr. Leithart's views. (As below, we think a standing judicial commission more pragmatic than presbyterian.)

Only Mark Horne, also of Missouri Presbytery and formerly an assistant pastor at Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, MO. where Jeff Meyers serves as senior pastor, is not under process. To his credit Mr. Horne has pulled many of his provocative comments from his website defending J. Meyers and others, but that could also be from a heightened sense of self preservation kicking into gear. Of the high profile FV personalities of interest in the PCA, he is the last on the official (JFVS) list. (As Mr. Horne undoubtedly knows – ominous drum roll here – "first they came for. . . .")

Other Correspondents
As mentioned below, RCJr. (the son of RC Sproul) is a defrocked minister of Reformed Presbyterian Church, General Assembly (RPCGA) which may or may not be a badge of honor, and at one time was a minister in the defacto FV denomination, the CREC, as well as member at one time of the secret conspiratorial Biblical Horizons FV insurgency email group headed by James B. Jordan. He is neither for or against FV as far as we can gather or he asserts (which in our opinion is not a good thing cf. Rev. 3:16). Mr. Carpenter pastors a PCA congregation in Sturgis S.D. and is currently engaged in process contra the FV theology in his own Siouxlands Presbytery of which Lane Keister, proprietor of Green Baggins, is also a member. Mr. Daniel Foucachon is a member of a CREC congregation and advocate of the theology and ministry of Douglas Wilson of Moscow, Idaho, founding father of the CRECs, commending the FV often enough at anti FV websites, including Green Baggins.

Further FV Clarifications/Incriminations
Yet it must just as quickly be mentioned that if Doug Wilson is the Dr. Jekyll of FV theology, JBJ is the Mr. Hyde. After all, Mr. Jordan is the one, who as the owner/moderator on the Biblical Horizons list at the Yahoo!®Groups, repudiated any number of items integral to reformed theology, not the least the grammatical historical method or principle of bible interpretation. Vide the following remark:

Well, John, sounds good to me. I’ve said for years that paedocommunion and non-pc cannot live together any more than infant and adult baptism. And by returning to pc, we drive back 1000 years, and definitely back before the Reformation. We also don’t like the rationalism of the “grammatical historical method” (a good way of weeding out about 95% of what the text means). I — and since BH is me, we — don’t think metrical psalms are real psalms and think Calvin and the Reformed tradition made a huge mistake by substituting metrical psalms for real ones — a gnostic move, since the assumption is that the IDEAS of the text are all that matter, and not the shape thereof. I could go on. . . . .

Oh, it’s true enough: We depart from the whole Reformation tradition at certain pretty basic points. It’s no good pretending otherwise. I think the PCA is perfectly within its rights to say no to all BH types. We are NOT traditional presbyterians. The PCA suffers us within itself, but we are poison to traditional presbyterianism. We are new wine, and the PCA is an old skin. So, for the sake of the people we are called to minister to, we do our best. But we don’t really “belong” there.

And all through the house, not a peep was heard, not even from a mouse.

A Nonexistent Followup

As for our valiant defender of the faith, one Jeff Meyers or even former assistant Mark Horne, who both are sworn to uphold the Westminster Confession of Faith - with a clean and clear conscience according to the plain meaning of the words and the original intent of the authors as per the JFVS - they seemed to be AWOL , if not guilty of gross dereliction of duty in speaking up in opposition to Mr. Jordan's blunt assessment. Unless perhaps they agreed with it. Nah, that can't be.

When challenged about providing the context to this comment over at Green Baggins discussing James Jordan Tells the Truth, if not the veritable landslide of reproofs and rebuttals, not to mention disagreements, Doug Wilson himself maintained a guilty silence after doing his best to spin launder this faux pas by the Great FV Leader hisself (sic).

The Revolutionary Enlightenment of the FedVision

For ourselves, we think George Jacques Danton's phrase quite apt. While Carlyle in his French Revolution quotes the orator as saying:

Il nous faut de l'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace,

To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare!" (Moniteur (in Hist. Parl. xvii. 347.)

Others translate “Pour les vaincre, messieurs, il nous faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace et la Patrie sera sauvée!” from Geo. J on 2 septembre 1792 as:

To defeat them, gentlemen, we need audacity, still more audacity, and audacity forever, and the Fatherland will be saved!

Obviously what he meant to say, if we run it through the FV© hermeneutic/grinder, with a liberal dose of the collegial spirits of one of John Frame's 'blur the boundary' applications splashed on for good measure, is more on the order of:

To defeat them, fellow presbyters, we need lies, still more lies and lies forever, and then the FV will be saved!

All in all, we think that enough said. If Danton was the master of the commanding phrase, the FV theology appears to have a command over even the minds of certain seminary professors or PCA presbyters.

Covenant Seminary?
While the judgment of charity might presume CREC rather than PCA, when it comes to professors, Leithart has taught theology at New St. Andrews College since 1998, though NSAC is not a seminary. But let's not get too picky about the details. Or is it merely coincidental that while Peter actually signed the JFVStatement, the PCA's denominational seminary, Covenant is located in St. Louis, MO? Are any of the CTS professors members of MOPresbytery? How did they vote on the question? Even further could Mr. Meyers backpedal enough to escape the obvious conclusion that he is FV regardless of the answer to the first two questions? Did his apology contain a repudiation of the JFVS? Hmmm. But to ask is to answer on far too many of these kinds of questions.

Alternative Perspectives/Realities/Universes

It is of course, to open another can of worms, to posit the thesis that perspectivilism necessarily, if not charitably dictates that there are at least a couple of views of the FV.

The first would be the point of view that arises out of the fevered swamps of Florida's Biblical Horizons and JBJ: FV is contra the reformed mainstream, if not flat out "poison".
The second would be that of St. Louis, Missouri Presbytery: Nothing to see here, folks, so move along.
The Pacific Northwest view would be that of the again, avuncular Uncle Doug and the saintly Peter Leithart: We are contra reformed as per JBJ, CREC member at large, ahem, wait a minute, make that as soundly and safely reformed as the PCA - or at least PacNW Presbytery.
The Badlands view is that the FV is a very bad dream, if not a nightmare and a digression from true pilgrim theology (theologia viatorum), never mind Bunyan's allegory.

Needless to say, we are verry much inclined to the latter POV.

The Credenda Agenda of Censorship

Likewise if the comments below were deemed unacceptable - to put it verry mildly - and pulled shortly after they were posted in the comment thread at Green Baggins on Meyers's Misdirected Apology?, assisted in part by a well intentioned push from JM's former understudy and FV advocate, just as obviously, we think them quite germane, if not a bit pungent and a necessary astringent to the PCAUnitythink that seems to be prevailing to the point the mental pores are clogged (maybe even over at GrBaggins). To be sure, we can not always say what we want to say anywhere at anytime, but again FWIW.

If it looks, walks and squawks like a duck, it's not really a dead duck, it's a merganser. So evidently, one modern ecclesiastical version of the Audubon Society. But let's not point out the obvious. It is not ecclesiastically correct. Neither is everyone a friend of the First Amendment Society in Middle Earth.

BobS said,
January 18, 2011 at 11:54 pm

[28] rcjr, I’m sorry, but with a famous name like yours, do you really think that someone such as Mr. Meyers with his very public and very boorish record, wouldn’t know which side his bread was buttered on and “spontaneously” apologize? The man is, after all, a highly principled opportunist. Those of us out here in flyover country who don’t count for anything, don’t cotton kindly to all the FV high jinks, including both those who perpetrate them and those who as their superiors enable them and therefore bear the greater onus.
Or if you prefer, Mr. Meyers and MOPresbytery.
Thank God the recent word is that some stalwart TE’s have filed a complaint with MOP.
It is long overdue.

Thank you very much.

cordially yours,
Bob Suden
BobS said,
January 19, 2011 at 12:03 am

10 Mr. Carpenter
I think for Meyers, anyone that asks for clarification is a dead porcine. As opposed to pearl jam.

But not toe jam. Swine have hooves and the expedition for the Hunting of the Snark captained by Lewis Carroll and Clark will be leaving St. Louis for the NW Presbytery Territory shortly. All hands on deck and smartly now.

But regardless of who Meyers starts with, you would think the MOP would start with his ACTIONS in the same 5 year period. Lemme see. Yep. The JFVS was in 2007.

And one J. Meyers – obviously no relation a’tall to the individual who makes this apology – signs the Joint FV Statement along with a bunch of other rabid FV advocates, apostles and parties of interest, such as James Jordan, Doug Wilson, Peter Leithart, Mark Horne and Steve Wilkins etc. with Meyers and the last three, all just happening to be ministerial members of various PCA presbyteries. Ahem. Maybe the JFVS really is a harmless statement, but then the whole idea of avoiding even the appearance of evil seems to have escaped all parties concerned. Dunno, but superiors are not supposed to be stumbling their inferiors.

And don’t quote me on this, but I might have to pseudo-piously examine my heart and NOT my actions. After all I myself did NOT personally sign the JFVS during the 5 year examination window and would therefore have to repent publicly, but only halfheartedly, of my gross sin of omission.

I don’t know about you, but the part that really, really like just seriously convicted me and probably, but I’m not sure, prevented me from signing the JFVS was the one on affirming creeds and confessions with a clean and clear conscience according to the plain meaning of the words and the original intent of the authors.

Of course, if we are talking about the original authors of the JFVS, that might mean something like dragging a dead fish across the trail in order to throw off any bloodhounds for orthodoxy. Like MOP? But again, did they even bother to look at it?

IOW sadly IMO MO Pres. doesn’t seem to understand the MO of the FV or of heretics and heresies.

No, this is not a whitewash/Tom Sawyer call your agent moment. (Wrong author/book.)

It is rather, all about straining gnats and swallowing camels Matt. 23:24, as well as suffering fools gladly 2 Cor. 11:19.

I’ve resisted pulling the trigger in the comments for the [Resurrection of the] Machen Warrior Children thread. Originally two of three remarks concerned the PCA genesis and roots in fundamentalism and the harmonization of the Standing Judicial Commission with classic jus divinum presbyterianism with pragmatism. One supposes a third could now be added: Certain tendencies to rank negligence/judicial hardening and blindness.

With all due apologies, genuflections to and reverent euphemisms in the direction of the Tone Police, if the PCA won’t discipline MO Presbytery for refusing to discipline Meyers, what else won’t they do? Does anybody really doubt that they won’t be pilloried in the laughingstock as beneath contempt in the square of public P&R scorn and disgust?

tank you

fare thee well

bubsudden
Prov. 14:13, Eccl. 7:3
bsuden said,
January 19, 2011 at 12:46 am

13
Dear Mr. Foucachon,
While we can’t all dare to be a Daniel, FWIW and whether you or anybody else agrees, what we are watching in our day and before our very eyes is yet another campaign in the ongoing war on the faith, worship and govt. of the reformed church, albeit conducted by those from within the camp of the saints.

As one of the select members of the happy-clappy Framen Warrior Children who aggressively champion the very compassionate standard of pacific latitudinarianism, J Meyers has assaulted the second mark of the church.

Indirectly he does this by denying the RPW, a tactic first initiated by J. Framen’s biblically enthusiastic Worship In Spite of the Truth which largely consists of the fallacy of many questions. But regardless of the barrage of question-begging questions by the FWC, the truth still stands: whatsoever sacrament that is not instituted by Christ is forbidden in the NT church.

Moreover, the FV take on the sacraments is a direct attack in subverting their application to the elect and at least taking a halfway house position between the elect and all recipients, if not that reprobates truly partake of the substance of the sacraments. Mr. Meyers has also conveniently ignored the third mark, the government and discipline of the church, by not taking his scruples and disagreements with the WS to the proper court, his session and then MOP.

All this, in order to then make an assault on the first mark of the church, the preaching of sound doctrine, much more JBFA: All those who are baptized are truly united with Christ and can truly fall away. The covenant is not with the elect, but with the visible church, which is the only real church and we will of course, be judged by our faith and works according to gospel of James, which is a far, far better thing than Luther’s gospel of Paul’s in Romans.

A Further Necessary Disclaimer
for Possibly Weaker/Skeptical Brethren.
If Mr. Meyers – again no relation to anybody that anybody might know – has not himself personally taught these doctrines, he has aided, abetted and fraternized promiscuously, if not conspiratorially with various bilious yahoos that have. Many times in public and on the internet, no less.

These include one JBJordan, as well as a certain avuncular Uncle Doug, who presides over the Presbyterian and Reformed Potempkin Village and WasteTreatment Plant of Little Moscow, in Idaho, hard by the banks of the mighty River Snake, who has told us as recently as Aug. 16, 2010 that this commotion over the FV has been his “big promotion”.

Indeed it has. As a hip ecclesiastically correct descendant of the French philosophes of the Enlightenment, Mr. Wilson has finally come into his own, as well as never seen a covenant he couldn’t photograph and it is high time Annie Liebowitz put him down in black and white. Because being a theological Rolling Stone is not half the reformed millstone some presbyterians might think it is.

Yes, I know. Mr. Wilson is very gifted – and very glib; he is quite fluent – and quite fraudulent. On the one hand if Doug can praise John Knox highly, on the other, he countenances, congratulates and collaborates effusively with Mr. Schlissel, another Framen Warrior Chillun in training bent on deconstructing the RPW, a fundamental doctrine for John Knox and the Scottish Reformation.

If Knox in his work on predestination, cannot laud the doctrine of election highly enough, Mr. Wilson sets it at naught and puts the vague and amorphous “covenant” in its place in Reformed Is Not Enough [p.175]. But liars should have good memories and Mr. Wilson should also realize that not everybody was born yesterday.

(And don’t bother with any of the usual pseudo- pious pap about respeck (sic). Mr. Wilson is a past master at and engages quite readily in raillery and tomfoolery, so neither he nor any of his have room to pretend to be offended by the obvious.)

Yet the emperor has no clothes, Rome has no gospel, the Federales have no Vision and Mr. Meyers has no credibility – but not that Mr. Meyers, the invisible one. Like the church.

Carthago delenda est.

cordially

Mark Horne said,
January 19, 2011 at 2:21 am

Hey, Lane, it’s up to you but I volunteer the opinion that I’m reading some pretty harsh claims about another man’s moral character in some comments (especially #XX).
I know you think I’ve crossed this line sometimes, and you may decide I’m wrong in this case, but I ask you to consider Bob’s value to your blog.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. I’m sorry to bother you.

PostScript/In Conclusion

Again, the FedVision is more and more beginning to resemble a theological gong show and it's high time to point it out regardless of who is offended when the obvious is stated. Even environmentally correct hobbits.

Though Mr. Meyers's record is very public and boorish to boot, the PCA has declared the FV off limits. The question then becomes why doesn't Mr. Meyers do the honest and honorable thing and depart quietly to the CREC, which is the designated safe haven for those with his theological peculiarities? Could it be, because he is an opportunist, never mind highly principled? It can't be because it's too far to walk from St. Louis, MO to the denominational headwaters in Moscow, Id. Steve Wilkins of Louisiana Presbytery has already made the trip and returned home to safely talk about it.

But yet while we are at it, one more question for the FV: Can those who are truly grafted into the Federal Vision theology - as Mr. Meyers and all the other True Believers that signed the JFVS so obviously are - ever fall away from the FV gospel and become reprobate? We don't know what Mr. Meyers's answer would be, but we might surmise it to be no. Yet we still think his salvation would become assured and his testimony more credible if his ministerial credentials were grafted into the CREC, regardless if the PCA fails to demonstrate enough backbone to discipline him for his past egregious opining and brazen theological speculation.

Plainly and Simply Crazy

2010-10-15T13:20:00.001-07:00

Further Remarks on Frank Schaeffer’s
Impatience with Fundamentalism and
Infatuation with Mysticism
Due to Studied Ignorance of the Protestant Reformation

While this is not a complete book review, just an examination of the Prologue which can be read for free on the internet, to Frank Schaeffer's latest book, some things are still a dead giveaway. Schaeffer still tells us what he thinks as bluntly as he used to in the old days when, as “Frankie”, an angry young evangelical, he wrote A Time for Anger, The Myth of Neutrality in 1982.

Yet for those who appreciated his father, the well known Christian pastor, theologian, philosopher and best selling author Francis Schaeffer, even as separate and apart from his political activism with Frank in getting the Religious Right started and Reagan elected in 1980, these have not been happy days since Francis died in 1984. Among other things, Frank ended up joining the Greek Orthodox Church in 1990.

Unfortunately that means when he is not voting for or playing the Byzantine sycophant to Barack Obama - see for example his Open Letters to the Republican "traitors" and the President - he’s been busy castigating both his parents and his past involvement with the Religious Right. Ergo his book Crazy for God : How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back (2007).

Patience with God
Now however, in his latest title of 2009, Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism), while Frank is beyond being crazy for God, he’s still crazy - as in irrational. (But that’s OK because it’s part of being both religious and experience oriented according to Frank.) His latest tells us of his irritation with and rejection of both evangelical and the secular “New Atheism” fundamentalism as opposed to his fascination with Kierkegaard’s philosophical existentialism, if not again Eastern Orthodoxy, which always hovers in the background.

In other words, his thesis is that these two mysticisms, philosophical and theological thoroughly refute the various contemporary fundamentalisms, religious or otherwise. Uncertainty, paradox and experience are the ultimate truths that rebut those who arrogantly claim to know different ultimate truths. While this makes for a bizarre and eclectic melange of a substitute for those same evangelical fundamentalist certainties, it comes at the expense of the genuine Reformation alternative. Hence the following.

Mr. Schaeffer is either genuinely ignorant of, if not that he deliberatively chooses to ignore, Biblical Christianity, at least as it was understood and confessed at the Protestant Reformation in the Reformed Faith by the Presbyterian and Reformed churches in concocting his rebuttal of fundamentalism. Of course, Mr. Schaeffer is entitled to his opinion on these matters; that is beyond question. That his arguments are new, of substance and persuasive is an entirely different matter. Consequently an examination and critique of both evangelical fundamentalism on the one hand and existentialism and Eastern Orthodoxy on the other is in order, as below and in contrast to Mr. Schaeffer's evasion of the orthodox and Biblical solution to the issues he raises.

I. The Protestant Reformation vs. Fundamentalism
Again, whatever the shortcomings of evangelical fundamentalism and regardless those of the secular variety, that Mr. Schaeffer makes no substantial mention of the previous answer at the time of the Protestant Reformation of a genuine Biblical Christianity which trumps the various errors of its anemic, if not anorexic, stepchild of fundamentalism, is damning. Those errors would include fundamentalism’s anti-intellectual/anti-doctrinal lowest common denominator repudiation of the whole counsel of God (contra Acts 20:27), its wooden and literal principle of biblical interpretation (but only perhaps on prophecy, Roman transubstantiation is still beyond the pale), much more its man centered arminian gospel (arguably contributing to the evangelical personality cults Mr. Schaeffer properly deplores), the politicization of the church and a premillenial dispensational view of the end times.

(A Politically Incorrect Aside)
Regarding the last, if Mr. Schaeffer seems unable to correctly define fundamentalism in other than largely sociological and political terms, it perhaps escapes him that the characteristic eschatology of evangelical fundamentalism seems to play right into a militaristic neo-conservative foreign policy in the Mid East, which he also abhors. The problem then is that it is also the same foreign policy which the recent recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize, George W. Obama so ably continues. Translation: “George Orwell, call your agent, please. The progressive Democrats have morphed into the Really New Religious Right and ala the liberal comedian Dave Chappell’s skit about a black Imperial Grand Dragon of the KKK, heads are exploding all across the political spectrum. Damage control is at emergency levels and your dialectical services and proven ability to spin are not only highly desired, but will be remunerated accordingly.” But we digress.

The Bare Minimum of Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism gets its name from the Fundamentals of the Faith, a twelve volume series of essays written to oppose Christian Modernism or Liberalism in 1910-1915. While presbyterian and reformed theologians and authors such as BB Warfield and J. Gresham Machen wrote for it, the movement largely became associated with separatist dispensational and premillenial Christians. As such, Fundamentalism boils down to the so called “Five Fundamentals” or the inerrancy of Scripture, the virgin birth of Christ, his miracles, substitutionary atonement and his bodily resurrection largely in part because these were the particular doctrines that the higher criticism and modernism/liberalism of the day were attacking.

While there is no question that these truths are taught in Scripture, the problem with these so called "Fundamentals" is that they do not contain enough of the fundamentals. Not only does the Scripture contain considerably more truths than just those five, important as they are regarding the doctrine of Scripture and the person of Christ, much more the apostle Paul told the elders of Ephesus that he was innocent of the blood of men, because his ministry had not shunned to teach the whole counsel of God (Act 20:27). For that matter, Christ himself instructed the apostles to teach the nations “all” that he had commanded them (Matt. 28:20). While the zeal of fundamentalism is to be commended, it has to be said that it falls short of being a genuinely thorough, never mind adequate theology. It is rather a reactionary and reductionist approach to God’s commandments and testimony, of which the Psalmist says, is exceedingly broad (Ps.119:96).

Only Five Points?
On the other hand and in opposition to fundamentalism, the so called Five Points of Calvinism concern the classic trinitarian reformed gospel in a nutshell: the total depravity of man, unconditional election by the Father, particular redemption by the Son, irresistible calling by the Holy Spirit resulting in the perseverance of the saints unto salvation. Even further, the battlecry of the Reformation was also summarized under five headings. Salvation was: by faith alone, in Christ alone, through (sovereign predestinating and electing) grace alone, to the glory of God alone, as revealed in the Scripture alone. Arguably the gospel of fundamentalism, only includes three of the last five: justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, as found in the Bible alone. Granted fundamentalism pays lip service to grace alone, but inasmuch as election and predestination are denied for all practical purposes and the power of man’s free will, albeit sinful, to make a decision for Christ, is affirmed, fundamentalism falls short of the Reformation gospel.

A Summary of the Whole Counsel of God
But again, we digress. If nowhere else again, the rebuttal of the doctrinal reductionism of evangelical fundamentalism in its five fundamentals of the faith, can be seen in the thirty three chapters of the Westminster Assembly’s Confession of Faith,. The same begins with the doctrine of Scripture, proceeds through the doctrines of God, man, Christ, salvation and the church and ends with the last judgement. It is this confession, along with the Larger and Shorter Catechism, as well as a Form of Presbyterial Church Government and a Directory for Public Worship, written by the largely Anglican divines meeting at Westminster Abbey 1643-48 in obedience to the call for religious uniformity in doctrine, worship and government in the British Isles in the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, that defines historic presbyterianism. In other words, genuine historical presbyterianism is a far cry from fundamentalism.

All this to point out that regardless if Frank mentions it - which he most emphatically does not - while Frank’s father Francis, might largely have been viewed as a fundamentalist by most Christians or the secular world, he actually was an ordained Presbyterian minister and remained so all his adult life. Although originally associated with the admittedly separatist and fundamentalist Bible Presbyterian Church, Francis later joined the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod which then merged with the much larger Presbyterian Church of America. In both later denominations, the separatist and fundamentalist tendencies were more muted, if not that Francis Schaeffer’s ministry and interest in the world and all its fullness, whether philosophy, politics, culture, art or beauty was and is hardly typical of fundamentalism.

One may consider Francis Schaeffer an anomaly or schizophrenic, but he is hardly the typical fundamentalist evangelical “addicted to mediocrity” as Frank puts it in his previous critique of the evangelical church’s approach to the arts. While Frank may deplore the shortcomings of fundamentalism, his father stood for much more than the standard shibboleths of that particular subset of Christianity and it is high time Frank admitted it, instead of continuing to allow it to stand in as a substitute in what amounts to an assault on historic Protestant Christianity.

A Pale Shadow of Reformation Christianity
Neither does the abuse of truth, abolish the concept of truth, never mind the same being reduced to Frank’s existential or theological mysticism. That is to say again, at the very least, if the Westminster Confession and Catechisms are not the historical subordinate doctrinal standards that define classic presbyterianism, much more that they provide a clue as to what the Protestant Reformation really was all about. That as over and against the Reader’s Digest condensed version of Biblical Christianity according to and promoted by evangelical fundamentalism. And again, Mr. Schaeffer ought to know it, as well as forthrightly admit it.

He unfortunately does nothing of the sort and as a consequence his competence to the question and the credibility of the answer he proposes to the genuine shortcomings of fundamentalism - Greek Orthodoxy in part - takes a serious hit, if it is not devastated by that omission. The stale McDonald’s Happy Meal sized portion of doctrine advocated as the be-all of orthodoxy by evangelical fundamentalism, is not the only version or type of Christianity available to an honest enquirer. If Mr. Schaeffer is not the latter, he certainly is still a very ignorant enquirer, whose opinion is not to be taken for the last and most definitive word on the question as he might suggest or presume in Patience With God.

II. The Despair of Ever Discovering Any Other Truth Than Despair
Or The Sacred Certainty of Uncertainty
In that generally, but not always, epigraphs give us the theme of what follows, a quote from Søren Kierkegaard’s Sickness Unto Death headlines the Prologue to Patience with God:

“So let others admire and extol him who claims to be able to comprehend Christianity. . . . I regard it then as a plain duty to admit that one neither can nor shall comprehend it” (emph. added).

Mr. Schaeffer later tells us close to the end of the same prologue that:

This book is a search for that “something” to hold on to. I don’t know if my up-and-down, hot-then-cold-then-hot-again faith in God persists because I was conditioned by my parents to see everything in spiritual terms or if faith is a choice. Either way, whatever I believe or feel, or think I feel or think I believe, it’s flawed at best. Like most people, I’ve changed my mind before about the so-called Big Questions and will again. Opinion is a snapshot in time.

Best we can tell according to plain english, all Frank is really telling us is to stay tuned (which might seem to be rather presumptuous. Are his opinions or life experiences really worth putting everything on hold?) Tomorrow, next week or whenever, he will have yet another new opinion on the Big Question, if not a New Big Question or Questions, never mind that he might even determine that there really are no Big Questions after all. If we didn’t know better, we might think that Frank is selling us hope and change we can believe in and count on as a proselyte, if not proselytizer for the “Church of Hopeful Uncertainty”. All this from a man who tells us that he would pray for his granddaughter “whether I believed there is a God or not”. Pray tell? Do tell? This inspires the reader to confidence in Frank’s religious pronunciamentos and schizophrenic agnostic bona fides?

Previously Schaeffer has told us:

I offer no proofs. There are none. When talking about the unknowable, pretending to have the facts is about as useful as winning a medal from the Wizard of Oz. In this game—the meaning game—it’s all about intuition, hope, and the experience of life, a letting go of all concepts, words, and theologies because they can only be metaphors and hinder our experience of the truth as it is—not as we desire, believe, or hope it might or should be, but as it is.

But if there are no proofs and we must let go “of all concepts, words, and theologies because they can only be metaphors” why has Mr. Schaeffer bothered to write a book full of words in it? Answer, because if he is not at least confused and deluded, he must use reason and reasonable means in order to undercut and deny reason. In other words, this is no more than a manifestation of the suppression of the truth in unrighteousness spoken of in Romans 1.

Granted there is more to life than we can ever express in words. but to say that all attempts to understand and articulate what we understand about life are no more than metaphors is to pretty much say it is hopeless to even think we can attempt it. It is nothing more than a full fledged appeal to mysticism. We can never know anything, at best all we can do is experience it, if not “grok” it (i.e. a hopelessly dated reference to Heinlein’s science fiction classic of 1961, Stranger in a Strange Land.) True, the Bible tells us that this world is not our final home. Likewise existentialism. The difference is that Christianity teaches not only original sin, but the total depravity of man and his inability apart from grace to reform his nature, though the manifestation of that nature may be restrained by himself or others. Existentialism denies the existence of sin and at best pleads ignorance of anything above or beyond this world, whether heaven or hell. In other words, all that matters is be here now in the moment and don't try to explain or think about it.

The Unreasonable Attack on Reason
As J. Gresham Machen, of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, who Francis Schaeffer studied under at Westminster Seminary, before switching to Faith Theological Seminary aligned with the Bible Presbyterian Church, said in his book What is Faith? (1925), the

anti-intellectual tendency in the modern world is no trifling thing; it has its roots deep in the entire philosophical development of modern times. Modern philosophy... has had as its dominant note, certainly as its present day result, a depreciation of the reason and a skeptical answer to Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” This attack upon the intellect has been conducted by men of marked intellectual power; but an attack it has been all the same. And at last theological results of it, even in the sphere of practice, are beginning to appear.

In short, the very capacity for and gift of rationality that Mr. Schaeffer uses to write his books and make his arguments, is exactly what his arguments implicitly attempt to overthrow. Not necessarily by marked intellectual power, but at least in volume and quantity of angry rhetoric and propaganda.

Again, that fundamentalists of whatever persuasion might abuse the idea of truth is one thing, but as Mr. Schaeffer ought to know, the abuse of the truth is not a reasonable argument that categorically pre-empts such a thing as the truth. Yet that is precisely what Mr. Schaeffer spends his time and effort denying: that there can be any reasonable argument made in the defense of any kind of truth - other than the supreme truth of experience. At best all that can be said of life is that it is haphazard. It just happens. We must go with the flow and our experience of whatever, be it truth or no, is all the truth that matters.

If There is No Truth, There is No Error - Or At Least We Can’t Be Sure
But if we can know nothing for certain, how can we know this? Which is just the point, skepticism is unreasonable/irrational/arbitrary and it is inconsistent to attempt to argue for it, if not merely assert it. Which is pretty much what Schaeffer is up to in Patience With God. Perhaps he would have been more honest to call it Patience With Amateur and Confused Existential Propaganda that Irrationalism is God/Truth.

We know for instance again, or at least can faintly surmise that Frank repudiates evangelical fundamentalism lock, stock and barrel. But by the same token we might ask, how can Mr. Schaeffer be so sure he is right and the fundamentalists are wrong? What is the ultimate standard of truth, anyway? Schaeffer’s answer is personal, subjective, experiential and irrational in contrast to the objective, reasonable and Scriptural standard of the Protestant Reformation, which he completely ignores in his ongoing love affair and infatuation with existentialism, not to mention the mysticism and sacramental liturgy and icons of the Orthodox Church.

But no matter, Frank’s on the road again. Which one and what way seems to be an open question for him, but maybe not to everybody else. More power to him, but don’t bother telling us it’s the one with yellow bricks and everything is sure to come out alright in the end. It’s not and he’s already categorically in the ditch, if not going the wrong way, whatever Mr. Schaeffer’s un-rational opinion might be to the contrary. As we have said before, “experience” is, after all, a concept and an idea and we have already been told there are no such things as correct ideas. That should be enough said, but strangely enough Mr. Schaeffer keeps trying to smuggle the notion back into his argument against ‘em. Hmmm. Evidently inconsistency, if not hypocrisy, is not restricted to fundamentalism.

Factless Facts and Their Use and Abuse in Miscellaneous Propaganda

In short, while Mr. Schaeffer might be upset with and deplore the junk ideology spewed out by “right-wing websites, evangelical/fundamentalist leaders, talk radio, and bizarre newsletters,” he cannot appeal to “facts” in order to rebut the Religious Right, which according to his Prologue, has “seduced millions of Americans with titillating hatred and lies”. Granted, maybe it has, but his answer is less than satisfactory. There are no such things as facts for Kierkegaard and existentialism, other than the fact of “experience” and our acknowledgment of it, much more our experience of it. We can only know by doing, being, experiencing, existing. And the only real truth is again doing, being, experiencing, existing.

(Which is a good thing. We might just as well forget about appealing to facts in order to rebut the secular/religious liberal progressive Left and their version of garbage ideology spewed out in the mainstream media and press, if not the heart of the natural unregenerate man, which for some unknown(?) reason Mr. Schaeffer makes no mention of at all. Somehow we are to implicitly understand that global warming is necessarily manmade, national healthcare is not socialism, capitol punishment is not commanded by God, much more that God loves sodomites and sinners per se even if they don’t repent of their sins. I suppose it is some small consolation that these politically correct commonplaces are not “paranoid fanatasies accepted by a whole substratum” of liberals, as opposed to “Christians”, much more that Mr. Schaeffer can tell us that he is “no longer proselytizing” - for the Religious Right - but as regards the liberal progressive Left, we might be forgiven if we still have our doubts.)

III. Orthodoxy's Less Than Amusing Iconolatry
Further, to again propose that the liturgical and sacramental worship of the Orthodox Church is one of the answers to evangelical fundamentalism is only to compound the problem, not resolve it. For instance, Mr. Schaeffer criticizes fundamentalism as a giant commercial enterprise made up of an army of personality cults. While this in part, might be a valid charge, at least regarding television personalities and "evangelists", it is still a superficial, if not profoundly mistaken read of Neal Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death(1985) to conclude that:

The late Neil Postman, author, New York University professor, and prophet, predicted how and why people such as today’s members of the evangelical/fundamentalist movement and other right wingers would be living in a dream world cut off from reality.

Rather this only adds injury to insult and deceitfully trivializes, traduces and subverts the real thesis and genius of Postman’s book. One, evangelical fundamentalism long precede the modern technological phenomenon of television, movies, videos and the internet. Two, regardless if modern media exacerbates the flaws in evangelical fundamentalism, in reality it is Mr. Schaeffer’s beloved Greek Orthodoxy in principle, that is the troubler of Israel. And this, even before evangelical fundamentalism was an existential wink, twinkle and nod in the eyes of Torrey, Chafer and Scofield.

The Real Thesis Ignored

While Postman does ask the question of which distopia will win out in the future if things continue going the way they are going; whether men will be ruled by pain and punishment ala Orwell’s 1984 or by sexual and narcotic pleasure in Huxley’s Brave New World? there is more to his book than that. He also notes the change and revolution in the modern era from essentially typography to television; from words, written or spoken to visual images. But this is to damn, without any praise at all, Schaeffer’s thesis, not only in Patience with God, but Dancing Alone; not only with existentialism, but also Eastern Orthodoxy.

While Postman does not mention it, the Protestant Reformation was the complete opposite to what Postman describes as taking place today in that it was a revolution from the visual images and idols of the Roman church to the word of God written, disseminated from both the pulpit and printing press. If Rome essentially considered images and idols to be books for the laity, Protestantism literally burned them on bonfires just as the firemen in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 torched libraries. One has to read no further than Eire’s War Against the Idols, The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (1986), to understand this. (The great axe that Eire, a member of the Roman Church, has to grind, is not iconoclasm per se, but that Calvinism is necessarily a violent political/revolutionary ideology.) The rise of the Protestant Reformation was accompanied by a great outburst of iconoclasm, however much that is either unknown or totally ignored these days. The churches, shrines, monasteries and cathedrals were all cleansed of their idols and images wherever the new faith took hold in Europe.

Further, the fall of Constantinople in 1453 brought the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament west, where between Erasmus’s translation, Luther’s exposition and Gutenburg’s invention, the Scriptures were preached and published through out Europe resulting in the re-organization and reform of Christ’s church, on the basis of Scripture alone, in doctrine, worship and government as over and against the deformed church headed by the Roman bishop. On the other hand, the closest Eastern Orthodoxy ever came to the Reformation was the protestant, if not Calvinist confession of Patriarch Cyril Lucaris who was assassinated by the Turks at the instigation of parties from both the Roman and Greek Orthodox churches. (See Hadjiantoniou's Protestant Patriarch, JKnox Press: Richmond, 1961.)

The Word of Christ
If Postman says ala McLuhan, that the medium is the message, for that matter and more to the point, saving faith comes not by pictures of Christ, but the preaching of Christ; by hearing and hearing by the Word of God and that preached (Rm. 10:14-17). By their very nature, pictures are opposed to rational exposition and explanation; much more they cannot sustain a religion, at least a religion such as Christianity, which has a written and propositional revelation for a foundation, let alone writing a book like Patience With God which necessarily involves something to do with propositional knowledge, even its abuse.

In short, Mr. Schaeffer is an author and he chose to write a book. As irrational as its theme may be, he at least did not descend to the point of merely giving us a bound colorplate picture book collection of icons to try to get his point across. Why not? Because nobody would have understood what he was trying to say, however mutely, with icons or pictures alone apart from a devout member of the Orthodox church previously indoctrinated into what said pictures or icons are all about.

Or the Confusion of Confucius?
Neither is it any real objection to the proposition to point out that the printed word is visually perceived. Apart from Chinese ideograms, the Western alphabet consists of symbols or signs that are representative of sounds. In combination they denote words, or again the sound of a particular word. And as Augustine told us in one of the great classics of the West, On Christian Doctrine, words are symbols or signs of things or actions, both material or immaterial. Again, neither the letters of the alphabet nor the words they spell out are miniature pictures or visual representations of the things they represent. If they were, we would be reduced to Chinese pictures or ideograms for spelling.

That, if not the Third Voyage in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels where he visits the Grand Academy of Lagado wherein one professor, the real precursor to Wittgenstein, advocates carrying a bag full of things on our back in which we pluck out the particular object we wish to talk about so that our “hearer” may see and understand our “discourse”. (While in the original un-bowlderized version of Swift or the Golden Illustrated Classic for children, Gulliver's trip to the Academy is illustrated, this particular professor's thesis goes unillustrated, never mind by the likes of Brueghel. Tis a pity. It would be conclusive according to some arguments.) Idiocy, if not Swift’s satire, in that case, knows no reasonable bounds. So too, icons, but we are getting ahead of the argument.

To repeat ourselves, in principle the sacramental and liturgical theology of Orthodoxy and its appeal to icons, if not mysticism, as representative of and in exposition of that theology is the real problem in the war on truth and meaning. As trivial and man-centered as fundamentalism is, there are other places to look closer to home for Mr. Schaeffer if he really wants to nip the situation in the bud. But perhaps, in light of Mr. Schaeffer’s previous track record along with his latest, he really doesn’t want to do that.

Images are Idolatrous, As Well As Inadequate
For our part, it is a small matter if one thinks the Roman church a bigger offender in this regard than the Orthodox, in that its lead can’t be by much. The material point, again, is that the theologies of both churches affirm, if not the primacy, at least the major place of visual images in the exposition of the sacred mysteries of the faith in Holy Mother Church, which is an inadequate method even before talking about its idolatrous nature. But one of the very things that the Protestant Reformation opposed tooth and nail with every ounce and fiber of its being and theology, in its preaching of that theology and its confessions of the same faith, was a visual gospel.

The Second Commandment
For Protestantism, the Second Commandment correctly understood, clarifies the nominal distinctions between idols, images and icons and their worship or veneration. As the Heidelberg Catechism has it in its exposition of the Second Commandment:

98. Q. But may not images be tolerated in the churches as books for the laity?

A. No; for we must not be wiser than God, who will not have his people taught by dumb images, but by the living preaching of his Word. (2 Tim. 3:16, 17; 2 Pet. 1:19; Jer. 10:8; Hab. 2:18-20).

The Reformers were diligent to “preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness" (1 Cor. 1:23). Contrary to this, the Orthodox and Roman church think Christ is still to be set forth and portrayed as crucified in Orthodox icons and Roman crucifixes, not primarily in the preaching of the word (cf. Gal. 3:1) to the exclusion of icons and images. (Neither again is the word written a contradiction to all this, in that the letters and words stand for and signify sounds or the spoken word, which itself then stands for or signifies things, either seen or unseen, sensual or beyond the senses.)

But if the Catechism on the Second Commandment denies that it is lawful ‘to make an image of God in any way or to worship Him in any other manner than He has commanded in His Word’ (Deut. 4:15-19; Is. 40:18-25; Acts 17:29; Rom. 1:23, Lev. 10:1-7; Deut. 12:30; I Sam. 15:22, 23; Matt. 15:9; John 4:23, 24), it also asks:

97. Q. May we then not make any image at all?
A. God cannot and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Creatures may be portrayed, but God forbids us to make or have any images of them in order to worship them or to serve God through them. (Ex. 34:13, 14, 17; Num. 33:52; II Kings 18:4, 5; Is. 40:25)

Consequently if images of God or the creature, as to either worship or serve God through them, are forbidden, how can flat two dimensional icon/images of Eastern Orthodox saints and Christ be lawful? Answer: They can’t.

The Verbal Orthodox Explanation/Evasion of the Obvious
Of course, there are any number of explanations of the Orthodox position available. They generally state that since Christ came in the flesh and was visible to the naked eye in his day, icons are therefore an affirmation of that fact. Further, while images of God were forbidden in the Old Testament and the Second Commandment, God himself has canceled that out with the incarnation of Christ. But this is a non sequitur and assumes what needs to be proved. The real question is not whether Christ actually came in the flesh, but whether it is lawful to make representations of him, seeing that he is the second person in the Godhead.

Other explanations say it was not images, but idolatry that is forbidden, much more that since God commanded images of cherubim, palm trees, flowers and bulls to be made for the tabernacle and temple, likewise images are lawful now. This, regardless that the ceremonial worship of the temple has been abolished, much more fulfilled in Christ, never mind the even greater error of presuming what is lawful for God is lawful for us; that God’s prerogatives are ours in his worship, if not otherwise. While God may decide what and how his worship is to be instituted, it is another thing entirely to assume that mere man, however religious or Orthodox, may do the same.

The Patron Saint of Images And His Modern Imitators

St. John of Damascus is the premier Orthodox theologian when it comes to the arguments justifying images. One would be that if Christ is the image of God, therefore images of God are not unlawful, much more since Christ became incarnate, therefore carnal images are not unlawful, however inconsistently he might resort to words - never mind non sequiturs for reasonable arguments - rather than pictures and icons, to expound the truth. Suffice it to be said, if Orthodoxy does not place a premium on the visual, the eye over the ear, it at least makes the eye equal to the ear and flat two dimensional pictures or icons even equal to the symbols or letters on a page that make up words, that further signify sounds, i.e the spoken word. (Of course, that the very modern and very verbose St. John (Frame) of Orlando, (Florida) home to both the Reformed Theological Seminary and Disneyland essentially advocates the same position as St. John of Damascus ought to be considered merely coincidental. Presbyterianism might be orthodox, but Greek Orthodoxy is not presbyterian. Or something like that.)

Yet as Postman, we note that this emphasis or preference fails when it comes to exposition and concepts. While a picture as in a building blueprint or electrical wiring diagram has its place (consider the instructions in Exodus and Ezekiel for the building of the tabernacle and Temple - even the Geneva Bible at these points inserted diagrams into the text) Scripture and Christianity is primarily concerned with Christ “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory (1 Pet. 1:8)”. Again, the choice - if not between Confucius and Christ - is at least between St John of Damascus and St. John the Evangelist, the latter of whom tells us in his Gospel, not with pictures, but in words that ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, much more that as Christ told Thomas, “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

Brueghel or the Bible?
If following Postman, we were then to essentially descend to Mr. Schaeffer’s real argument, however non verbal and irrational, we might well find that Brueghel’s famous painting of the Parable of the Blind leading the Blind found on the cover of Mr. Schaeffer’s Time for Anger, is just as suitable for the cover of Patience with God. We then might suppose that one could assume the six characters in the picture, represent in order of time from right to left, St. John of Damascus, Søren Kierkegaard, religious and secular fundamentalism and arguably Mr. Schaeffer himself (if not also St. John of Orlando?) We might suppose, but we can’t be sure unless Mr. Schaeffer were to explicitly tell us so by labeling the picture. Which again, is just the problem with pictures and icons. They can not even begin to replace the primacy of the Word of God in the exposition of that same Word and Christianity, nor can they replace Christ in his worship contra Greek Orthodoxy on both counts.

While there is no doubt that Orthodoxy has contributed for instance to the doctrine of the Trinity, as a whole, its theology fails. Again, the Orthodox Church never had a reformation like the West and the absence is telling. Mr. Schaeffer may essentially consider Orthodoxy a viable solution to the inconsistencies and contradictions of evangelical fundamentalism, but we consider the distinction between images, icons and idols, between worship and veneration, to be merely nominal and a distraction, however sincere, from the real issue. Which is why an appeal to theological mysticism, if not philosophical; to finding refuge in paradox and uncertainty is so appealing to Mr. Schaeffer. It gets rid of the real questions; the irrationality of using reason to attack reason and a studied ignorance of the whole counsel of God, which also includes the good and necessary inferences of Scripture, along with its explicit pronouncements that, in Christ and in Scripture, we can truly know some things, including God.

The Unknowable God
For instance, never mind Kierkegaard, Frank denies that Christianity or God is understandable in quoting the fourth century ascetic, Evagrius Ponticus, a “revered spiritual leader” according to Frank, “who led by example” (in this instance, obviously Mr. Schaeffer ), “Do not define the Deity: for it is only of things which are made or are composite that there can be definitions”. While we grant that God is simple and one, even though we technically contradict this when we delineate and define his attributes, much more no one can know God as he is in himself, if God does not define and reveal himself in Scripture and Christ, he does nothing however much he has to descend to our level of understanding do it.

Or was Paul mistaken, if not deluded, when he told the Athenians when he passed by and saw their altar to the unknown god, ‘Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you (cp. Acts 17:32)?’ We might as well throw the Bible away - which might be what Frank is getting around to eventually - and exalting icons in its place, which is pretty much what Orthodoxy does in principle. (Orthodoxy at the very least makes tradition part of the Word of God, as does Rome and denies the formal cause and fundamental doctrine of the Reformation, sola scriptura.) Scripture does say: “But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth (1 Jn. 2:20,21)”.

But Frank and Evagrius seem to think we can know nothing of God beyond a mystical acknowledgment that he exists, however much Mr. Schaeffer might pray even if God didn’t exist. As to what we are to make of Christ’s words when he says at the Last Supper in John 17:3 before he is betrayed, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” Mr. Schaeffer does not tell us. Will Mr. Schaeffer inconsistently say that the disciples might have known something, but we are not the disciples? So much for the word of Christ and ‘those which shall believe on him through the word of the disciples (cp. Jn. 17:20)’. Much more we need to choose between Evagrius or the words of Christ again:

“Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:31,32).”

One might reasonably conclude that Frank Schaeffer has not continued in Christ’s word, but among other things, has gone after icons of Christ, which is not quite the same thing, hence his existential bondage to icons and ignorance of the truth. For God will not be mocked. All those who worship and serve idols, will become like them according to the psalmist,

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them. Psalms 115:4-8

What else is one to make of the kind of reasoning and question begging that Schaeffer indulges in, if not St John of Damascus?

Christ is Seen in the Sacraments
Granted Protestantism acknowledges and observes the two sacraments commanded by Christ, baptism and the Lord’s Supper in the public worship of God. Both sacraments are seen and experienced, but only and always as accompanied with the exposition of Scripture. Without the word, they are nothing, in that the world washes, eats and drinks daily, unfortunately to its damnation. This as opposed to the sacramental and liturgical worship of the Vatican and Byzantium; not only the drama of the Roman mass which re-enacts, if not re-sacrifices Christ upon the cross, but also the candles, incense, images, icons and idols of both the Roman and Orthodox Church.

Postman and Protestantism
In short it does not take too much to overlay or apply Postman’s thesis on the conflict between visual images and the word, spoken or printed, to the Protestant Reformation’s emphasis upon the preaching and printing of Scripture and sound doctrine as over and against the Roman/Orthodox emphasis on the visual, whether two dimensional iconic paintings or three dimensional statues, the mass, Passion plays and the like. Orthodoxy’s fundamental appeal to the visual in the exposition of its theology, - for the icons are teaching tools for the holy life - necessarily leads to the dumbing down and general biblical illiteracy in such a church, just as we see a contemporary flight from and a dearth of rational discourse and reasonable exposition as a consequence of an emphasis on a visual medium like television for communication, information and entertainment in the larger secular culture.

The parallels are there for those who can look deeper than their inconsistent commitment to philosophical irrationalism and theological mysticism. For those for whom things just happen, ramble scramble what ever, if they can see it, they probably would deny it. For one, it’s not guaranteed to sell books and it might be inconvenient to have to repent of one’s addiction to mediocrity when it comes to invalid philosophical and theological arguments, much more repudiate their dual membership in the philosophical Church of Hopeful Uncertainty and theological Orthodoxy.

Conclusion
Mr. Schaeffer needs to connect the dots. Both Rome and Byzantium were on the medieval side of the divide at the Reformation and it is Protestantism that championed the pulpit over pictures of saints, Roman or Greek, two dimensional or three; the exposition of Scripture over the mythical and superstitious lives of the ascetics and faithful; the exposition of sound doctrine over the exaltation of the visual in images whether in liturgical icons, the sacraments or the theology of either the Roman church or that of Constantinople.

For that reason, we cannot wish either Mr. Schaeffer, his doctrine or his gospel godspeed. That would be to betray, not only the Protestant Reformation and rationality, but also, for those who remember him, his father, Francis Schaeffer and all he stood for regarding Christ, the Scriptures and historic Christianity as represented in the Protestant and Reformed faith. Yet however great that debt is which many owe to Francis Schaeffer and the charity they might be willing to extend to his son, Frank, sadly what Paul said of Demas, is still true (2Tim. 4:10). Frank has not only forsaken the testimony and witness of his father Francis, but also again - contra the icons of Greek Orthodoxy - the testimony of Christ who told Thomas, “blessed are they that have not seen me and yet have believed (Jn.20:29)”.

Further, Mr. Schaeffer may deplore fundamentalism, but he is only exchanging its errors for older ones, if not philosophical fallacies and theological heresy and idolatry. That of course, he will most likely deny, however inconsistently, but until he comes around and acknowledges it, his spiritual journey under the auspices of Kierkegaard and Orthodoxy will end as it has begun, in a dead end and a waste of time.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Politically Incorrect and Scandalous Afterword

In his prologue, Mr. Schaeffer correctly objects to one of his correspondents putting politics before faith, in that man is fundamentally religious. From this, all else flows, political and cultural. And while we grant that our previous response to Mr. Schaeffer as he was interviewed by John Whitehead in April 7, 2009 at Whitehead’s “oldSpeak” website, wasn’t perhaps as cordial or gracious as his father, Francis Schaeffer’s might have been, even to somebody he strongly disagreed with, the substance our objections to Frank Schaeffer’s confusion then still remain. Consequently there are also a few political dots that Mr. Schaeffer has yet to connect.

The Alternative to Fundamentalist Personality Cults
One, there is no escape from impatient partisan politics in Mr. Schaeffer’s experiential universe. Eight years of a Republican version of a Stalinist personality cult of the Great Leader Who Cannot Be Criticized, is not a legitimate excuse for Frank to apologize, genuflect or shill for the Democrat Version we have now, regardless of the residual guilt Frank might feel for his part in instigating the “Religious Right”. Likewise that “Racism” can be added now to the previous charge of “UnPatriotic” to any who questioned the presidential status quo then. Not unless we fall into the trap of believing the bipartisan smears like we are supposed to as knee jerk little peons and brow beaten citizens of the New World Order. That Paul repented of being a Pharisee, did not mean he became a Sadducee. Tyranny and absolutism on the right is not negated or appeased by excusing it on the left - unless Mr. Schaeffer is Addicted to Mediocrity, if not also moral and political non sequiturs.

Impatience Aside, The Real Political Unity, If Not Idolatry
In reality and all spiritual paradoxes aside, the two parties are Siamese twins joined at the hip. While one advocates warfare, the other promotes welfare, but regardless both advocate More Big Government. In other words, more and more contemporary politics resembles Hobbes’s view that the State is Leviathan, if not Hegel’s view that the State was the highest embodiment of the Divine Idea or God on earth. As such in either case, such a State cannot help but become totalitarian all the while simplistic fundamentalism, irrational existentialism or Orthodox mysticism are either oblivious to the fact of the secular deification of the state, if they do not actively promote it, not to mention simply acquiescing in it even as they hypocritically ignore it.

In other words, the establishment is playing for the jackpot these days. All poker faces and stonewalling aside, ace high or ace low, a royal flush or the steel wheel, somebody is planning on ruling or rolling the American populace. The Patriot Act was too big to read and was a tremendous boost to the surveillance state. Likewise TARP or the bailout of the "too big to fail" banks aka grand theft robbery of the taxpayers, who ultimately are the ones who will bankroll the buyout. And just like TARP and the Patriot Act, the healthcare bill was also rushed through Congress, another "too big to read, so let's not bother" affair. Next up is Cap and Trade, which is similar to the home mortgage derivative bubble and scheme, only this time involving tax credits for pollution. Last, but not least is Amnesty or legislation to Buy More Votes from those who are in America illegally. In short, American government usurps even more power and control unto its self.

The Religion of Power
This is to say, so much for the practical, political and theological implications of Lord Acton’s comment that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Both parties are Bad News for Modern Man in America., something Frank ought to know something about. That the Republicans tend toward the abuse of civil liberties, while the Democrats favor abuse of economic liberties, is small consolation. That we have had a fascist version of a socialist economic system ever since the New Deal of the 1930's, if not the imposition of the Federal Reserve in 1913 still evades the mental comprehension of both the right and the left. (For starters, the FR is neither federal nor a reserve, but a private cartel/monopoly that price fixes the interest rate and manipulates, if not expands the money supply, which necessarily leads to the hidden tax of inflation.)

Fascism is government control of the economy through bureacratic regulation and collusion with big business aka corporatism as opposed to communism, which is the outright ownership of the means of production by the state. According to Tom Rose, former professor of economics at Grove City College, the first is the "college level" socialism, the second, "high school level" socialism. Yet again, contrary to popular political rhetoric on both the right and the left, both are socialist, not just the latter and both are in favor of and necessitate central planning of all aspects of national life, if not the politicization of everything that lives, moves and has being on the face of the earth contra Act 17:28.

Socialist Abuse of the Eight Commandment
This is hardly commendable or suitable consolation whatever old "Myth of Neutrality" might think. Different flavors of socialism are still in essence, just that. Socialist. And maybe the jury still out on "Is Capitalism Christian" which Frank edited, but all socialism means is that it’s OK to steal from my neighbor, if you are the government. Neither the Right or the Left complains about that. Still, however the Greek Orthodox Church might misconstrue the Second Commandment on idols, images and icons, the Eighth Commandment still plainly says what it says. Thou shalt not steal. Whether thou art the government or the taxpayer. Whether indirectly as a fascist or directly as a communist. In other words, the Eight Commandment implies not only the existence of private property, but also its legitimacy, however fundamentally socialism denies the same (See also the Tenth Commandment).

Racial Idolatry and the Apologies For
Mr. Schaeffer’s residual white liberal guilt might also seem to prevent him from even seeing, much less explaining - never mind criticizing - the fact that the current rabidly pro-abortion POTUS sat for twenty years in a the black version of a KKK church. While Pastor Jeremiah Wright’s legitimate excoriation, though couched in inflammatory terms, of American imperialism in a sermon or two at his Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago was the only thing that even raised an eyebrow in the lamestream media, any reference to Wright’s adherence to James Cone’s black liberation theology which posits America’s original sin as white enslavement of blacks met silence, if not implicit agreement.

For the modern liberal and New Atheist materialist, the historic orthodox Christian gospel that Christ died to free men from their sins which stem from the sinful human nature common to all men as imputed from Adam and not just restricted to white folks, is just so much invisible and irrelevant pie in the sky. But the history of black slavery in America is still a good stick to beat white people into the politically correct lineup and further promote the social gospel of a secular kingdom of heaven right here on earth ( since the old orthodox one in heaven doesn’t exist and never did), where all men can live as affirmative action brethren under the blue helmeted gaze of the UN troops. Or something like that.

Reformed Presbyterianism and Slavery
Although it is somewhat of an aside, in regard to American slavery, it bears mentioning that a Scotch immigrant presbyterian minister, George Bourne and his book, The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable (1816), was the unacknowledged inspiration and precedent for William Lloyd Garrison and American abolitionism. For his vocal and published comparison of American slaveholders to the “menstealers” of 1 Tim. 1:10, one of the proof texts for the Larger Catechism’s exposition of the Eighth Commandment in Q&A 142 and arguing for immediate emancipation versus gradualism, Bourne was deposed in 1618 by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. While there were other Presbyterian opponents of slavery, along with the Quakers and Ben Franklin, Bourne was probably the most vocal and most ignored.

For that matter, the Reformed Presbyterian Church, on Biblical principle alone, if not the lesson from its own history when the Covenanters during the ‘Killing Times" in Scotland were exiled in slavery to the America, always opposed slavery and the original American Constitution which legitimized it, (much more the constitution’s failure to acknowledge the claims of Christ on the civil magistrate) as can be seen in Reformation Principles Exhibited by the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States (1807) and Roberts’ Reformed Presbyterian Catechism (1853). To this day, the RPCNA, which is a denomination that departed/descended from the RPC, has only two congregations in the South; one is largely black in Mississippi, the other in Florida largely consists of retired “snow birds” from the North.

Ecumenical Idolatry
Of course, the black liberation theology of Cone doesn’t stoop to the level of Black Islam, which considers white people to be the degenerate spawn from the original black human race due to the experiments of an African Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Yacub, but the Rev. Wright did find it within the ecumenical boundaries of good taste, to extend the right hand of fellowship to Louis Farrakhan, much more bestowing on him a lifetime achievement award named after Wright himself. Should we tell Wright, ‘well done thou good and faithful servant’? Does Wright think that there is more than one name given under heaven by which men might be saved? We know the prophet Mohammed inconsistently might think there is one other than the name of Jesus, despite the Koran’s nominal affirmation of the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospels. Granted, the drive- by media makes no profession of even what orthodox Christianity stands for, but the current occupant of the White House does and it might behoove people to do more than acquiesce in fawning press releases.

In other words, if Mr. Schaeffer would care to even begin to critize black liberation theology as he has criticized evangelical fundamentalism, we might be more inclined to receive his pronouncements, not only with less skepticism, but also less prejudice, regardless if he will try to duck the issue by only claiming to be able to talk about what he knows, because he has “existentially experienced” it, however that might sound like an “existential excuse” to some people. Granted black liberation theology is a minority viewpoint, primarily and numerically considered, apart from the racial aspect, but don’t look now. Brer Rabbit just jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire with the change in the political administration.

Original Sin and Its Political Implications
In other words, so much for either Geo. W. Bush or Geo. W. Obama and the respective religious baggage and clientele that either accompanies or votes for either of the two gentlemen. So much also for the historic Christian doctrine of original sin - which coincidentally again, both black liberation theology and Eastern Orthodoxy happen to deny - and the subsequent ramifications of it in secular, as well as ecclesiastical, political theory, better known as the separation of powers in American constitutional doctrine. All “Hail to the Chief” of whatever/either party. But what the ancients called a tyrant, when power was centralized in one man, nowadays we consider to be the Unitary Executive whether a neo-conservative Republican or a hip/cool progressive Democrat, even seen through the hazy filter of non judgemental existentialism and the smoke from Orthodox incense.

Further the Orthodox belief of salvation as deification of the individual has easily and historically been transferred in applying this to the deification of the state, if not caesaropapism/erastianism wherein the civil magistrate is the head of the church. In that Council of Chalcedon denied that the human and divine natures of Christ were confused or mixed together, as a consequence the individual sinner redeemed in Christ - much more the emperor or the pope, if not even the church or the nation as a collections of individuals - is never seen as partaking in Christ’s divine nature, thereby becoming either infallible or a mediator between Christ and his church or individual sinners. As above, Acton’s dictum was in regard to political and ecclesiastical tyranny. As he saw it, the divine right of kings and papal infallibility and supremacy went hand in hand. While the Orthodox might not acknowledge the authority of the pope, it does claim infallibility for the church.

War, What is It Good For?
Further, one might suppose genuine Christianity would oppose both the moral bankruptcy of pre-emptive war and torture - contra the long standing doctrine of a just war of defense going back to Augustine - and the medical war on the unborn as seen in the respective neo-conservative/progressive pro abortion party politics of the ‘08 election, whatever the Christian Right’s supposed responsibility for the former, rather than a Manichean dichotomy between one or the other. Both are examples of a war against innocents, albeit by different means and on different fronts. And both so far continue regardless of which party is in power.

In Conclusion
In other words, Mr. Schaeffer’s political opinions are as bankrupt and irrational as his philosophical and theological opinions. His affirmation of the progressive liberal Democratic program of global warming and a socialized medical system in the name of and under the guise of “reform” is but the ying to the neo-conservative Republican Religious Right yang of a war on “terror” and abolition of habeas corpus, just as his yen for existentialism and eastern orthodoxy can be seen as the alter ego to evangelical fundamentalism. Needless to say we are not impressed though, nor is the theological, philosophical and political impasse that Mr. Schaeffer finds himself in, resolved by any of his proposed answers, however vociferously they are proposed and however much he denies proselytizing. We might wish him all the best, but respectfully, he seems to be out of his league and over his head in all this, regardless that he plays the stout champion of his cause.

8/10/01 A Reply to Credenda Agenda

2010-01-11T17:42:00.001-08:00

Leithart, Schlissel, Wilson and Hal Lindsey versus the Westminster Assembly, Ursinus, O.T. Allis, R.L. Dabney and John Knox

[Something else grubbed up from the archives and formatted for the web, in light of Mr. Schlissel's latest confusion on the RPW.]

Letter to the Editor
Credenda Agenda
Mr. Doug Wilson
August 10, 2001

Dear Sir,

In order to forestall any incipient prelacy in the New World order, Moscow, Idaho style, the Credenda Agenda, if not its good Editor, need to stop hem-hawing around and clarify its position on worship. Specifically this means explicitly affirming the historic reformed exposition of the Second Commandment commonly known as the Regulative Principle of Worship (the RPW hereafter): "Whatsoever is not commanded in Scripture is forbidden in the worship of God."

Not only is this principle found in the historic confessions of the Reformation such as the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Confession – which according to its Statement of Faith, the CA is "in essential agreement with” – in light of the Editor's latest book For Kirk and Covenant: The Stalwart Courage of John Knox (Cumberland, 2000), the latest electronic edition of the Credenda Agenda, as well as past printed editions confuse things. In that a double minded magazine, if not its Editor, is unstable in all its ways, for the sake of the reformed credibility of the CA, consistency in upholding the RPW is a prerequisite.

Leithart's Liturgy
Mr. Leithart's article, "Synagogue or Temple?" in the most recent CA (Liturgia, 13:1), supposedly answers the question as to which of the two is the basis and pattern for Christian worship. Unfortunately, it only confirms the (willful?) ignorance common in many presbyterian and reformed circles in agreeing with Mr. Schlissel's critique of the RPW:

Schlissel is using the synagogue to attack the idea that "Whatever is not commanded in worship is forbidden." As he rightly points out, the very existence of the synagogue makes hash of this view, for synagogue worship went on century after century without being regulated by a single word from God (emph. added). Schlissel concludes, "But for us the synagogue presents no problem at all. We find that it is sacrificial worship only, from Deuteronomy 12 on, that is absolutely restricted in regard to place, performers and particulars. Such restrictions never governed common sacred assemblies.”. . . .

Yet he will not go so far as Mr. Schlissel to say that the synagogue is the pattern for New Testament worship.

Moreover if we take the synagogue as our model of Christian worship, then we have virtually no biblical resources for formulating the theology and practice of worship. Weekly synagogue-like assemblies were required by the law (Lev. 23:3), but there is no explicit biblical information about what they did (emph. added)....

Still, since again Credenda Agenda is "in essential agreement with the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1646," the Minutes of the Westminster Assembly (Mitchell & Struthers, ed. 1874, rpt. SWRB, 1991), shed more light on the regulation of synagogue worship upon which Mr. Schlissel's supposed argument against the RPW largely turns.

The Westminster Assembly on the Synagogue
During the debates running from May 5, through June 8, 1646 it was determined "That the jus divinum [divine law] and the will and appointment of Jesus Christ is set out several ways in Scripture," one of which obviously, is "in express words (p 227)." As for the second "The proofs that a necessary consequence is a sufficient argument of Christ's will" include Matt. 22:31,32, Acts 13:34 and Heb. 1:6 which respectively prove the resurrection of the dead, the resurrection of Christ and that Christ is the son of God "by consequence only (pp. 231, 232, emph. added)." Session 649, June 1, 1646, on Monday morning, continues further regarding the force, if not the good and necessary consequences, of examples in Scripture by saying:

Resolved upon the Q. `Some examples show a jus divinum and the will and appointment of God; as in the Old Testament the building of altars to the Lord and offering of sacrifices by the fathers from Adam to Abraham, which was done in faith and acceptance, for which there was no foregoing precept recorded in Scripture. . . .
Resolved upon the Q., `The like also we may say of Jews having of synagogues and worshipping God in them, and in particular if their reading Moses and the prophets there every Sabbath-day.'
Resolved upon the Q., `In the New Testament we have the like instances of the observation of the first day of the week for the Christian Sabbath. . . .
Resolved upon the Q., `In all which examples, as we have cause to believe that the fathers at the first had a command from God for those things whereof we now find only their example for the ground of their posterity's like practice for many generations, so likewise, though we believe that Christ, in the time that He conversed with His disciples before and after His resurrection, did instruct them in all things concerning the kingdom of God, yet nothing is left recorded to show his will and appointment of the things instanced in, but the example and the practice of the apostles and the churches in their time. . . (Minutes, pp.237,238, italics added)

This is to say, for the divines who wrote the Confession of Faith which includes both the RPW of Chapt. 21:1 and the "good and necessary consequence" of Chapt. 1:6, the very existence in Scripture of the synagogue, much less its worship, means that God did both institute and regulate it, not to mention the other approved examples of altars and sacrifices in the O.T. and the change to the first day of the week for the Christian Sabbath in the N.T. These all presuppose God's command and appointment. This regardless if we do not find any explicit commands or detailed instructions in Scripture, but rather only that the obedience is explicitly recorded. Consequently neither the synagogue nor its worship contradicts the RPW according to the Westminster Assembly, however much it is contrary to Mr. Schlissel's view and Mr. Leithart’s approval of it.

Mr. Schlissel's Baptist Inconsistencies
Yet Mr. Schlissel, in his series of articles, "All I Really Need To Know About Worship . . . I Don't Learn From the Regulative Principle (hereafter AIRNTK)," does acknowledge that "good and necessary consequence" trumps the Baptist position that "the absence of a clear N.T. command to baptize babies, joined to many examples of adult baptisms following profession, leads to their conclusion that babies, covenant or otherwise, may not be lawfully baptized." He also at least allows "Apostolic example as well as Christ's own resurrection and appearances to justify a change of day (AIRNTK II:1, 8, emph. added)," from the seventh to the first of the week for the Christian Sabbath. That he can't see the force of the patriarchal examples for worship in the O.T., is not only inconsistent with the view of the Westminster divines, but also the precedent implicit his own previous statement.

Mr. Schlissel can either affirm good and necessary consequence all across the board by affirming the RPW and its application to the synagogue along with infant baptism and the change of the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first. Or he can consistently deny them all by becoming a good old Hard Shell Seventh Day Baptist that worships on Saturday with hymns, musical instruments, solos, choirs, altar calls and feastdays for starters. This is the horns of the dilemma Mr. Schlissel is tossed upon all the while our dude rancher and wannabe cowboy from Brooklyn insists the RPW is a bum steer, not withstanding that his arguments and antics more resemble the rodeo clown. At the very least, he ought to stand down off his superficial soapbox and shut up, if he will not repent of his flippant question begging contra the RPW, or go on to follow his illogic into the theological dead end where it leads. Instead he hypocritically straddles the fence and picks and chooses when he will apply good and necessary consequence to the question at hand.

The Real Regulative Principle of Worship
In other words, as per the counter remarks and criticisms respectively of Messrs. Schwertley, Grossman and Williamson of Mr. Schlissel's AIRNTK series and which Mr. Schlissel petulantly refuses to respond to in substance even as he posts them on his website, the RPW is the good and necessary consequences of the Second Commandment as clearly confessed in the Three Forms of Unity and the Westminster Confession – if not the Westminster Standards – of the Protestant Reformation, all of which the CA claims to be "in essential agreement with," Whatsoever is not – explicitly or by good and necessary consequences – commanded in the worship of God is forbidden. Chapter 21:1 of the Westminster Confession entitled "Of Religious Worship, and the Sabbath-day," spells out specifically the grand overall presupposition and principle that qualifies all lawful reformed worship, (much less the basis for the Assembly's Directory of Publick Worship) by saying:

(T)he acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestion of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture (Deut.12:32, Matt.15:9, Acts 17:25, Matt. 4:9,10, Deut. 4:15-20, Ex. 20:4-6, Col.2:23, emph. added).

But it is not enough that the Second Commandment is contained in the proof texts of the Confession at this point. The same doctrine is expressly mentioned in the Assembly's Larger and Shorter Catechisms, Q&A 109 and 51 respectively. As John Owen, a Puritan contemporary of the Westminster Assembly, put it, "It was a witty and true sense that one gave of the second commandment: "Non imago, non simulachrum prohibetur, sed non facies tibi;" - it is a making to ourselves, an inventing, a finding out ways of worship, or means of honouring God, not by him appointed, that is so severely forbidden (Works, Banner of Truth, 1997, II:154, emph. added)." Any worship, instituted by or added unto the worship of God by man and which is not of God alone, is forbidden by the Second Commandment. Not only is this the classic understanding of the Reformation, it is precisely what Mr. Schlissel explicitly disagrees with.

The best he can do with all this is to ignore, if not deny, that the Second Commandment is the locus classicus of the RPW and substitute Deut. 12 in its place claiming that v.32 "What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it," only applies to the sacrificial worship in the preceding chapter. Obviously he then can claim that the RPW is only a part of the ceremonial law which has been done away with in the New Testament by Christ. Those who defend the RPW then become Judaizers and Pharisees seeking to lay the burden of the works of the law upon the back of the Christian church (AIRNTK I:5,6, IV:3). Yet the chapter speaks to more than just sacrificial worship as well that taken in context of the entire Scripture on the question of worship, it applies to the purity of all worship, both ceremonial/sacramental and moral/didactic as Grossman mentions.

Mr. Schlissel Literally Can't Find It
When he can no longer avoid the place of the Second Commandment in the doctrine, he refuses to recognize the RPW's basis in the same because the commandment does not explicitly and literally spell out the RPW. Under the heading "Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse (AIRNTK V:5)," after quoting the Second Commandment, he goes on to make a number of comments.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments (Ex.20:4-6, Deut. 5:8-10).

Where is the RPW here? I do not see it. The commandment forbids making images (emph. added) It seems to me that discovering the RPW here is at best a little ticklish. First, the RPW claims to govern corporate worship. Would the regulativist suggest that this command's scope is limited to corporate worship, that it is okay to make idols for use outside of corporate worship? Of course not.

He then quotes Q&A 96 of the Heidelberg only to further incriminate himself.

Q 96 What does God require in the Second Commandment?
A 96 That we in no way make any image of God, nor worship Him in any other way than He has commanded us in His Word.

So far, so good. The question then becomes, "Just how has God commanded in His Word that He be worshipped?" I answer, "He has forbidden certain things, as this commandment, among other texts, proves. He has also commanded that He be approached only through His own provided atonement. He has also given us many principles which serve as borders within which we may freely employ faithful, covenantal sense, taking into consideration always the general rules of the Word." That is how He has commanded that He be worshipped.

Then he continues with the same old diatribe as he has previously:

The regulativist, however, answers by saying, "God's will is that if He has not commanded a thing, it is forbidden." But where does he find that in the Second Commandment? He does not. He has obviously first assumed it and then imposed it.
In fact, what the Second Command does - and this might be a shock to some - is to forbid idolatry and the use of images as representations of God or as objects of worship. Most humble readers of the Bible would conclude this without help (AIRNTK V:5, emph. added).

Yet if the brother could bother himself to make a visit to the New York Public Library, he might be in for a little surprise. The original intent of the primary source gives lie to his position, no matter how popular it is these days. Which is all to say, if the brother would do a little more reading than talking on the question, we all might benefit.

Ursinus's Authoritative Exposition
The translator's preface to the first American edition in 1851 of Ursinus's Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, says ". . . as Ursinus was the chief compiler of this symbol, he must always be regarded as the most authoritative expounder of the doctrines which it contains (Geo. Williard, trans., The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, 1645, rpt. Eerdmans, 1954, p.v, emph. added)." The same Ursinus says in part in his exposition of the Thirty-Fifth Lord's Day, Q&A. 96 regarding the Second Commandment:

. . . To worship God truly, is to worship him in the manner which he himself has prescribed in his word.

This commandment forbids, on the other hand, every form of will-worship. . . any other kind of worship which he himself has not prescribed. For when God condemns the principal, the grossest and most palpable form of false worship, which is that of worshipping him at or by images, it is plainly manifest that he also condemns at the same time all other forms of false worship, inasmuch as they all grow out of this. He forbids the most shocking kind of idolatry, not that he would overlook or exclude other forms of worship opposed to that which he has prescribed; but because this is the root, the foundation of all the rest. Hence all kinds of worship not instituted by God, but by men, as well as those which contain the same reason why they should be prohibited, are forbidden in this precept of the Decalogue.

All those things, therefore, which are opposed to the true worship of God are contrary to this second commandment; such as

1. Idolatry, which consist in a false or superstitious worship of God. There are, as we have already remarked, two principal kinds of idolatry. . . The other species of idolatry is more subtle and refined, as when the true God is supposed to be worshipped, whilst the kind of worship which is paid him is false, which is the case when anyone imagines that he is worshipping God by the performance of any work not prescribed by the divine law. This species of idolatry is more properly condemned in the second commandment, and is termed superstitious, because it adds to the commandments of God the inventions of men. Those are called superstitious who corrupt the worship of God by their own inventions. This will-worship or superstition is condemned in every part of the word of God (Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, pp. 517, 518, it. added).

For the record and for those who are really stubborn about it, Ursinus here categorically affirms the RPW. Not only does the Second Commandment condemn gross idolatry, it also condemns the other kinds of false worship that grow out of idolatry, which are termed superstitious and consists of any worship not prescribed by, but added to, the divine law. Ursinus cannot be any more perspicuous about it while Mr. Schlissel is too clever by half in – only restricting the application of the commandment to gross idol worship.

Nothing New Under the Sun
Of course there were objections to this doctrine in those days too. One was that:

(C)ertain of the saints have worshipped God with acceptance without any express commandment of his; so Samuel offered sacrifices in Ramah, Elijah in Mount Carmel, Manoah in Zorah,&c. (1 Sam.7:17, 1 Kings 18:19, Judges 13:19.) Therefore there are certain works which constitute the worship of God, though not expressly commanded by him (Ursinus, Commentary, p. 523, emph. added).

The last is exactly Mr. Schlissel's position based on his mistaken conclusion that the RPW does not apply to the synagogue and its worship; that the approved examples of worship do not presuppose God's command as per the Westminster Assembly's position. The Editor as well has previously asked whether Samuel's sacrifices were not contrary to the RPW in that Samuel was not a Levite (CA 12:3, p. 22). Ursinus replies to this Objection which was old in his day, thus:

Ans. These examples establish nothing conclusively in reference to will worship; for in the first place, as it respects these sacrifices, they were the worship of God, because they were works commanded by him. And then as it regards the place appointed for offering sacrifices, the saints of old were free before the erection of the temple. Samuel fixed upon the place where he lived as the one in which he would offer sacrifices, this being the most convenient. And the prophets very well knew that the worship of God did not consist in the circumstances of place, in respect to which the godly were left free, while as yet the ark of the covenant had no fixed place. And finally, as it respects the persons themselves who offered these sacrifices, they had extraordinary power conferred upon them, being prophets, as Samuel and Elijah were. And as it respects Manoah, the father of Sampson, he either did not sacrifice himself, but delivered the sacrifice over to the angel whom he supposed to be a prophet, to be offered up; or else he offered it, being commanded by the angel, so that nothing was done contrary to the law.

So we may easily return an answer to the other examples which are adduced by our opponents. Abel and Noah, say they, offered sacrifices; (Gen.4&8) but they did not do it without a command from God; for they offered their sacrifices in faith as Paul affirms in Heb. 11. Faith now cannot be without the word of God (Ursinus, Commentary, pp. 523-4, italics. added).

Neither can the worship of God be without the Word of God nowadays if it is to be done in faith, "for whatsoever is not of faith is sin (Rom. 14:23)."

Mr. Schlissel's UnInformed Principle of Worship
We quote Ursinus at such length to the end at least that if the unInformed do not become Informed on the question, even the unInformed will not be able to Ignore who is responsible for their Incompetent Ignorance, all excuses and Mr. Schlissel's Informed Principle of Worship notwithstanding. The Heidelberg Catechism plainly and explicitly understands the Second Commandment to teach 'Whatsoever is not commanded in the worship of God is forbidden.' If the author of the Catechism in his Commentary on the Catechism in regard to the Second Commandment is incompetent to what the Catechism says about the Second Commandment it is no matter, Mr. Schlissel himself is previously and categorically incompetent, in aces and spades. But we already know that. There is nothing new under the sun, much less that quite a lot came to light at the time of the Reformation, whether many presbyterian and reformed churches these days know it or not. And until they repent of that ignorance, which many times is nothing but arrogant, they will never surpass the church of the Reformation, much less come up to her attainments.

Hal Lindsey's Literal Principle of Worship
Of course, as should be obvious by now, the main reason our Bible student from Brooklyn denies the classic RPW besides simply ignoring the classic arguments for it' based on the Second Commandment, is because however he might criticize Mr. Lindsey's dispensational errors below in his Hal Lindsey & the Restoration of the Jews (SWRB, 1990), he will himself insist on mischaracterizing the RPW in a dispensational/fundamentalist manner: Only whatsoever is not explicitly commanded in the worship of God is forbidden. In its place he will propose his beloved Informed Principle of Worship: "What is not forbidden might be permitted. It depends (AIRNTK III:3-6)." Indeed it does. On dispensational principles.

Mr. Schlissel tells us that:

The basic hermeneutical principle of the Dispensationalist (from which is derived their dogma that "Church" always and only means church, and "Israel" always and only means Israel) is, "If the plain sense makes common sense, seek no other sense." This has gotten them into no little trouble since they understand that to mean, "If there is any possible way that you can interpret something as being capable of a literal fulfillment, go for it (p.181, emph. added)."

For those perhaps not so well read or of short memory in the back woods of Idaho or downtown Brooklyn, Hal Lindsey is the dispensational author of the best seller of the 1970's, The Late Great Planet Earth.

O.T. Allis on Dispensationalism
For those who by this point, might not be inclined to take Mr. Schlissel's opinion as the last word on dispensationalism, Oswald T. Allis, the well known Professor of Old Testament at Princeton and Westminster Seminaries, said essentially the same thing forty five years previous to Mr. Schlissel's comments.

One of the most marked features of Premillenialism in all its forms is the emphasis it places on the literal interpretation of Scripture. It is the insistent claim of its advocates that only when interpreted literally is the Bible interpreted truly; and they denounce as "spiritualizers" or "allegorizers" those who do not interpret the Bible with the same degree of literalness as they do. None have made this charge more pointedly than the Dispensationalists. . . .
This Dispensational system of interpreting Scripture is very popular today. The reasons are not far to seek. Literal interpretation seems to make Bible study easy. It also seems reverent. It argues on this wise: "God must have said just what He means and must mean just what He has said; and what He has said is to be taken just as He said it, i.e., literally." But the New Testament makes it plain that literal interpretation was a stumbling block to the Jews. It concealed from them the most precious truths of Scripture (Prophecy and the Church, Pres. & Reformed, 1945, pp. 16-17, 258, emph. added).

Likewise Mr. Schlissel's principle of literal interpretation applied to the Second Commandment conceals from him and his adherents, the precious truths of the Scripture brought to light and expounded at the time of the Reformation regarding the worship of God. In other words, Mr. Schlissel's criticism of Mr. Lindsey's principle of literal interpretation of biblical prophecy retorts with vengeance upon his own principle of literal interpretation which finds fault with, if not totally ignores, the Regulative Principle of Worship as the historic Reformed exposition of the Second Commandment. What we have here is Steve Schlissel's Restoration of the Dispensational Principle of Worship, as in again, the Strictly Literal. He insists on omitting the implicit consequences of Scripture and restricts the RPW exclusively to the express and explicit negatives of God's Word, or what is only half of the genuine whole RPW. In other words again, Mr. Schlissel is a dispensationalist, if not a fundamentalist, albeit no doubt a very humble one, but no less than. Rather, if his Bible doesn't explicitly and literally say so, it ain't so, at least on the question of the Second Commandment and the Regulative Principle of Worship.

Literal Dogmatism
And as per the Dispensational Premillenialists who insist on literally interpreting the Scripture, Allis says, "The dogmatism with which many writers on unfulfilled. prophecy express themselves regarding things to come is deplorable. The facility with which they ignore the views of all who differ from them is inexcusable (Prophecy and the Church, p. 53)." Need we say more? The dogmatism of the brother from Brooklyn regarding the doctrine of worship is deplorable. The facility in which he ignores, if not contradicts, the views of the Westminster Assembly on the nature of synagogue worship and the author of the Heidelberg on the Second Commandment – which views greatly differ with his – is inexcusable. The, real question then becomes, if Mr. Schlissel refuses to recognize the RPW as properly found in the Westminster Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism in the first place, why - apart from ignorance - would anybody listen to him propose a substitute in its place and then build an argument upon it as Mr. Leithart has done?

Of course, on his mistaken basis, Mr. Schlissel's thesis that the synagogue is an uncommanded, unregulated, human tradition in worship that is approved by God carries the day. We only wish it could carry the weight of examination by other than theological novices and naive sophomores. Furthermore, that it is not indicative of the caliber of pious poop and pretentious humbug that just might earn Mr. Schlissel the honorary doctorate from New St. Andrews, now that his "All I Really Need to Know About Worship . . ." series has earned him the prerequisite B.S. degree. Not only does Mr. Schlissel prove himself the proverbial fool, who - however glib - is really only interested in hearing his own mistaken opinion - which doesn't say much for those who buy into his shtick - it is extremely irritating that although Mr. Schlissel would seem to be fully capable of understanding the truth on the matter, he has demonstrated no real desire or love for it.

Perversions, Spiritual and Otherwise
Still, in his attempt to leave his controversy with the RPW behind, Mr. Schlissel has the gall in a number of his recent fund raising newsletters with all the customary pictures of the lovely family, to major on the growing acceptance of pedophilia in the ongoing disintegration of American culture and society, not to mention those who would like to redefine marriage to include all the adult sodomites who want to shack up and play house just like Mummy and Daddy. Yet as the unattributed quote on the title page to James Begg's 1875, but still relevant title, Anarchy in Worship (Lyon & Gemmell, 1875) reads, "When nations are to perish in their sins, Tis in the Church the leprosy begins." And begun it surely has. Now, if the brother would only cover his lip, cry "unclean" and go without the reformed camp when speaking to the question of worship, we would be satisfied. But not until.

While the pedophiles of the world are busy conspiring to further trash the Seventh Commandment, Mr. Schlissel and all who agree with his version of the presbyterian and reformed theology of worship, are only bashing the Second. Somehow, we don't think it's even close to being an even-Steven kind of deal. Rather to whom much is given, much is required. The rest of Begg's title only too pointedly reads, Recent Innovations contrasted with the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church and the Vows of Her Office Bearers. Or as the psalmist says, "He hath broken his covenant," and this however much Mr. Schlissel may care to tout the supposed superior covenantal character of the Continental Reformed approach to worship – including we suppose, among many other things – confessional covenants and creedal subscription to the RPW, as opposed to poormouthing the Presbyterian creeds and worship (AIRNTK V:9).

Spiritual Fornication
Again, to whom much is given, much is required. It is not for nothing that repeatedly in the Scriptures, idolatry is referred to as whoring after false gods – it is nothing more than spiritual fornication and adultery. Whether he realizes it or not, even one of Mr. Schlissel's very own fathers in the faith – and Mr. Schlissel is a congregationalist, his views in various ‘97 newsletters on Acts 15 make that clear – William Ames, the theologian and patriarch of American Puritan congregationalism, considered the Second Commandment as "forbidding all spiritual fornication," even as the Seventh "doeth that which is carnal (Fresh Suite Against Human Ceremonies, SWRB, nd. II:369,370)." The battle over the reformed doctrine of worship is a battle for no small thing in our day and Mr. Schlissel unfortunately gives every indication that he wants to know nothing at all about the Second Commandment.

Consequently as a know-nothing-at-all, it would behoove him to stop playing the ingratiating part of a know it all, all the while whining about the state of the nation vis a vis the Seventh Commandment. If nothing else, for the love of God and His truth, he needs to stand down and shut up, if he won't confess the truth about worship. Those who know and do not, shall be beaten with many stripes. It is Mr. Schlissel as a nominally reformed teaching and preaching elder, who has not only brought up the question in the first place, but in his AIRNTK series has butchered the Second Commandment after the fashion of the Levite his concubine and shamelessly distributed the pieces to the wider presbyterian and reformed church in order to stir up their ignorant wrath and resentment against the historic reformed doctrine of worship. If the Lord's people are to "perish for lack of knowledge," let it not be also said that "they loved to have it so (cf. Hos. 4:6, Jer. 5:31)."

Liturgical Judaizing
Mr. Leithart errs further by saying that "(E)ven if Christian worship grew from the synagogue, therefore, the ultimate roots of that worship are from the temple (emph. added)" His conclusion is that:

Worst of all, if we take the synagogue as our model of worship, we are almost completely dependent upon Jewish tradition for our liturgical theology and practice. Far from being a step toward Romanism, taking the temple as our model for worship is the only possible way to arrive at a biblical view of worship. There simply is no other model (emph. added),

Mr. Leithart might as well say the Book of Hebrews is not found in the New Testament. At least he shows no sign of understanding it. To insist on the temple as the pattern for Christian worship is to totally confound the distinction between type and antitype, ceremonial and moral, and ultimately the differences between the Old and New Testament This is nothing more than Judaizing with a vengeance.

Dabney on Girardeau on the Synagogue
Robert Lewis Dabney's comments are to the point. They are in the context of his review of a title, Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church (New Covenant Publ. Society, 1983) by his contemporary John Girardeau regarding the lawfulness of musical instruments in the public worship of the New Testament church, recently reprinted in his Discussions, Vol. V. Miscellaneous Writings, (Sprinkle, 1999) [This book retailed for $30 at the time, if it was not available from Mr. Schlissel's Dabney inspired "Bob-A-Lew Festival" for a donation of only $1250]. He says,

God set up in the Hebrew Church two distinct forms of worship; the one moral, didactic, spiritual and universal, and therefore perpetual in all places and ages, that of the synagogues; the other peculiar, local, typical, foreshadowing in outward forms the more spiritual dispensation, and therefore destined to be utterly abrogated by Christ's coming. Now we find instrumental music, like human priests and their vestments, show-bread, incense, and bloody sacrifice, absolutely limited to this local and temporary worship. But the Christian churches were modeled upon the synagogues and inherited their form of government and worship because it was permanently didactic, moral and spiritual and included nothing typical. This reply is impregnably fortified by the word of God himself: that when the Antitype has come the types must be abolished. For as the temple-priests and animal sacrifices typified Christ and his sacrifice on Calvary, so the musical instruments of David in the temple-service only typified the joy of the Holy Ghost in his pentecostal effusions (p.324, emph. added).

He continues,

Doubtless the objection in every opponent's mind is this: that, after all, Dr. Girardeau is making a conscientious point on too trivial and non-essential a matter. I am not surprised to meet this impression in the popular mind, aware as I am that this age of universal education is really a very ignorant one. But it is a matter of grief to find ministers so oblivious to the first lessons of their church history. They seem totally blind to the historical fact that it was just thus every damnable corruption which has cursed the church took its beginning: in the addition to the modes of worship , ordained by Christ for the new dispensation, of human devices, which seemed ever so pretty and appropriate, made by the best of men and women and ministers with the very best of motives, and borrowed mostly from the temple culture of the Jews. Thus came vestments, pictures in churches, incense, the observance of martyr's anniversary days – in a word, the whole apparatus of will-worship and superstition which bloomed to Popery and idolatry. . .
. . . . Prelatists undertake every step of the argument which these Presbyterians use for their organ, and advance them in a parallel manner to defend the re-introduction of the Passover or Easter, of Whitsuntide, of human priests and priestly vestments, and of chrism, into the gospel church. "God's appointment of them in the old dispensation proves them to be innocent. Christians have a right to add to the cultus ordained for the New Testament whatever they think appropriate, provided it is innocent; and especially are such additions lawful if borrowed from the old dispensation." I should like to see the Presbyterian who has refuted Dr. Girardeau in argument meet a Prelatist, who justifies these other additions by that Presbyterian's own logic. Would not his consistency be something like that pictured by the old proverb of 'Satan reproving sin?" Again, if the New Testament church has priests, these priests must have sacrifice. Thus, consistency will finally lead that Presbyterian to the real corporeal presence and the Mass (pp. 326, 327, emph. added). . .

It is likewise a matter of grief to find reformed ministers so ignorant of their first lessons of reformed theology, if not also reformed worship. We should like to think better of Mr. Leithart's competence to the question. While we can appreciate his previous efforts to expound Shakespeare and Sophocles (see Brightest Heaven of Invention, Canon Press, 1996 and Heroes of the City of Man, Canon Press, 1999), we are inclined, at this point, to urge him to stick with his expertise. If incipient Romanism can make the grade in the pages of the CA, among other things, the liturgical schlock of James Jordan's Eastern Orthodoxy can't be far behind. (It is beyond the scope here to demonstrate the further egregious errors of Mr. Jordan, yet Kevin Reed's The Canterbury Tales (Presbyterian Heritage Publ. 1984) is a good place to start.)

Mr. Schlissel's Roman Principle of Worship
As for Mr. Schlissel's competence to the question, we unfortunately are already aware of it. As well his opinion of Dabney as "the greatest prophet among the Southern theologians ("How the West was Lost," Messiah's Mandate 1999, p. 7)," all the while Dabney's essay is only too conspicuous by its inexcusable absence from Mr. Schlissel's discussion of the RPW (although only recently reprinted, it has been readily available for the last couple of years in P&R circles) which leads to his denial of it, not to mention his further bizarre comment that the RPW is similar in principle to the errors of Rome.

Rome and her stepchildren want holy places and holy orders. Those who subscribe to the so-called Regulative Principle of Worship unwittingly commit a similar "error of motif' when they insist upon holy details. Who would have thought that the very principle designed to distance us from Rome would actually link us! But all extreme positions kiss, you know (AIRNTK I:1).

But Dr. Dabney again makes no further bones about it, in direct opposition to Mr. Schlissel's opinionated, if not inebriated, nonsense. We either agree with the RPW or we agree with Rome.

Mr. Girardeau has defended the old usage of our church with moral courage, loyalty to the truth, clearness of reasoning and wealth of learning which should make every true Presbyterian proud of him, whether he adopts his conclusions or not. The framework of his argument is this: it begins with the vital truth which no Presbyterian can discard without a square desertion of our principles. The man who contests this first premise had better set out at once for Rome: God is to be worshipped only in the ways appointed in his word (Review, p.323).

In other words, Mr. Schlissel's suppression of the truth has grown into the expression of error, as well as the deception of his disciples like Mr. Leithart and others. The question is not whether Christian worship follows the synagogue or the temple – even Dabney's erstwhile disciple agrees, however confused, that it follows the synagogue – but whether or not we believe that "God is to be worshipped only in the ways appointed in his word" – explicitly or implicitly, the nefarious RPW again. If we believe otherwise, we are headed for Rome. Which is exactly where Mr. Schlissel and Mr. Leithart are headed. According to "the greatest prophet among the Southern theologians." And we would suppose, the Credenda Agenda. Have a nice trip. Don't bother with the card when you get there.

John Knox on Worship
This leads to the next question. What are we to make of the good Editor's newest book, For Kirk and Covenant: The Stalwart Courage of John Knox (Cumberland, 2000)? Despite its many excellencies, the author begs the question at hand. Rather we just might learn among other things, "how a man may be greatly honored in name while studiously ignored in substance (p.12)." For all present purposes and applications the subject and "practice of worship remains largely untouched (p.37)." Nowhere does this come to a head more clearly than the chapter on "Zeal" which contains the lengthiest mention of the issue of worship in Knox's theology. We read that:

John Knox understood well that the Word of God need temper and restrain the zeal of men... This sense of restraint is what lay behind his emphasis on what has come to be called "the regulative principle of worship (emph. added)." His purpose in advocating this regulative principle was not to smother true zeal and piety, but rather to channel the zeal. . .

Of those, we presume, who in their rash ignorance presume to improve on the worship of God?

The Editor continues,

Knox shared with the Catholics an evident zeal, but he was distinguished from them in one notable respect - wisdom. He knew that all religious zeal had to be restrained by something outside of man, and that restraint had to be the plain word of God, as it is written to us. In one of his earlier controversies, Knox had said it this way; "all worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God, without His own express commandment, is idolatry." The depth of his insight is really quite profound. Many modern Protestants see the doctrine of transubstantiation as idolatry because man worships a created thing (the host) as God - and some Protestants have trouble seeing even this. However, Knox did not identify this as the problem. This was certainly idolatrous fruit, but it was because it had grown from idolatrous seed - an invention of man in worship. Something that began in idolatry could not hope to end in true and pure worship. In this sense, Knox was a radical. The word radical comes form the Latin word radix, meaning root. Knox was concerned with the root of the matter, the root of all idolatries.
The Catholics were not the only ones who were attracted to their own inventions in worship. Knox was faithful in testifying against this error, even when committed by his own friends and co-laborers in the recovery of the gospel. His zeal was for the pure worship of God, and God was the only One with the authority to determine what that pure worship should look like.
This was how John Knox saw his zeal, and the zeal of all others, should be constrained. Anything done in the worship of God, in the name of Christ, should have His good authority for it (p.163, italics. added).

Houston, we have a problem.

Credenda Agenda Confusion
How can the good Editor laud Knox and his theology of worship -- the Regulative Principle of Worship -- out of the same side of the same mouth he sings the fame of John Frame and Steve Schlissel, if not publishes Mr. Leithart's latest? We still remember the Editor's review in ‘97 of "Sic et Non" John Frame's worthless Worship In Spirit and Truth (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1996), in which same title Frame repudiates the RPW in his peculiar forked tongue pidgin presbyterian creole and in which same review, the Editor approves of Mr. Schlissel's superficial and smart-aleck shenanigans on the topic, as well as redefined the RPW in his own personal fashion, as opposed to presbyterian.

Frame's Flippant Dismissal of the RPW
While Frame does voice an affirmation of the regulative principle and his enthusiastic subscription to the Westminster Confession and Catechisms in his preface (pp. xiii, xiv), in his chapter on "The Rules for Worship," the only mention of the second commandment is his statement that: "The second forbids the worship of any god (even the true God) by means of idols." (Mr. Schlissel obviously agrees here.) He then quotes Chapter 21:1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith as a representative statement of the regulative principle without mentioning at all the corresponding foundation for it in the Second Commandment which is explicitly confessed in the Larger and Shorter Catechisms according to the exegesis and theology of the Westminster divines (pp. 37-39). The endnote (p. 47) damns the RPW with faint praise (and give Mr. Schlissel bad ideas) by claiming the Scriptures he has cited in the section on the RPW:

. . . .do not prove "the precise point that "whatsoever is not commanded is forbidden." The practices condemned in those passages are not merely not commanded; they are explicitly forbidden. For example what Nadab and Abihu did in Lev. 10:1 was not only "unauthorized," the text informs us, but also contrary to [God's] command." The fire should have been taken from God's altar (Num. 16:46), not from a private source (compare Ex. 35:3).

This is pathetic. In his pristine example of biblical theology run amuck, Prof. Frame will not see the forest for the trees. While he repeatedly voices his nominal agreement with the regulative principle of worship, he never gives an adequate' exposition of it, all the while he snipes at it and insinuates that is not as biblical as his alternative. He will go on to further beg the question and muddy the water as regards the circumstances "common to human actions and societies" and the substantive elements of worship of WCF 1:6, 21:3,5, insisting that his term "application," which seems to combine - as in confuse - aspects of both, is the more precise substitute (pp. 40-43). The concept or doctrine of good and necessary consequence in the same section of the WCF 1:6, is a total no show. He even says that "Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to prove that anything is divinely required specifically for official services (p.44)." Really? So much again for good and necessary consequences, Christian prudence and the general rules of the Word as per WCF 1:6 which Prof. Frame in a superficial stupor conveniently ignores or denies.

Wilson Affirms Schlissel's Errors
Mr. Schlissel for his part, has only pointed out and highlighted his own ignorance of the true regulative principle of worship, and following in the footsteps of his mentor, Prof. Frame again, has substituted for it an anemic invention of his own imagination, which he calls the Informed Principle of Worship. But he has yet to informs us of the real Regulative Principle of Worship. The Editor then, like Mr. Leithart now, speaks highly of the merits of Mr. Schlissel's supposed case against the RPW.

As Steve Schlissel has pointed out, the strict regulative principle in scripture is applied to the worship of the Temple (and even that principle is applied less rigorously than some of our regulativist brethren would desire). With the fulfillment of the sacrificial system and Christ's ascension to heaven, the restrictions are taken with it. The synagogue, meanwhile, which was the-prototype-of the-Christian church, was required by God, but not highly regulated. What is still tightly regulated is the Temple service and the work of our High Priest. We are not to add to, or subtract from, the gospel.

The Editor then continues to define the RPW in his own novel way.

The regulative principle, biblically understood, is a Person. The Lord Jesus is the Head of the Church; He is our regulative Principal. This is no appeal to mysticism – this Person has revealed His gospel propositionally in His Word. When we are faithful to that, we will be faithful in worship (CA 8:5, p.35).

Yet the reply and/or proposition is only too obvious, even to a New St. Andrews schoolman, scholastic gnatstrangler or no. Jesus said, "If you love me, obey my commandments (Jn.14:15)." Yea, even the Second.

The Real Credenda Agenda on Worship: Repentance and Restitution
While we would rejoice to hear that the good Editor's beliefs have changed in favor of Knox and the Regulative Principle of Worship over and against Prof. Frame and Mr. Schlissel and their blatant, if not wilful misunderstandings, we are still awaiting in the pages of the Credenda Agenda, the explicit repudiation of his past explicit views and commendations of both Messrs. Frame and Schlissel in those very same pages, for credibility sake, if not Christ's. Make no mistake about it. That is the credenda agenda for the Credenda Agenda on the question. No more, no less.

Moreover, although it is true, it is entirely beside the point that "A pastor has to know his own infirmities, and confess them in humility. If he does not, then he will be severe with the lambs and sheep of Christ's fold and this, as Knox well knew, was a pastoral monstrosity (p.116)." The real burning question is what of a pastor's silence when it comes to rebuking and admonishing shepherds of the flock like Leithart, Schlissel and Frame who are "attracted to their own inventions in worship" in an obvious contradiction of Knox, who " was faithful in testifying against this error, even when committed by his own friends and co-laborers in the recovery of the gospel?"

Willful Collegiality and Compromise
For that matter, while we would not necessarily single out Mr. Schlissel, our vocal, highly mistaken and distinctly non-reformed Bible student from Brooklyn was invited to minister at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho just a couple of months ago in April. Maybe the good Editor could address Mr. Schlissel's wilful ignorance on the reformed doctrine of worship even before the next time he sits down with Stephen for coffee, dessert and the obligatory photo session with the children in the front living room? What does the fact that Knox was "more zealousness for righteousness than for a general collegiality (p.124)," say about the Editor's compromise in this regard? It is not enough that the good Editor can list Kevin Reed's forthcoming John Knox; The Forgotten Reformer (PHP CD rom) in his bibliography. Rather he ought to pay more attention to the "Biblical Law of Worship," the "Role of the Faithful Pastor" and the "Use of Plain Speech" in Knox's ministry, which are also chapter headings in Mr. Reed's book.

Mr. Schlissel (as well as Prof. Frame) has conducted himself in this controversy over worship principles like the adulterous woman who wipes her mouth and says she has done nothing wrong. Consequently, anytime the good Editor wants to get around to rebuking a certain unrepentant whore he has invited to dinner, it would be at the least a very good thing. On the other hand, if the silence of the good Editor continues, we might be forgiven for concluding that his prayer, to his shame, is not really that of the dying Reformer -`that the Lord would grant us more faithful and true pastors' - like Knox and of his mind on worship and willing to speak plainly and directly to others who were not (cf. pp. 223-226). If this is not so, "faith requires works as a testimony (p. 73)." In the pages of the Credenda Agenda no less. Explicitly and soon. Very soon.

Happy Inconsistencies in Idaho
Of course, we are happy to note that the practice of ChristKirk is better than its principles or lack thereof, of at least the real RPW. Not only does ChristKirk sing a lot more psalms than one might gather from past reading of the Credenda Agenda, one is encouraged from reading Mr. Shuler's positive "History of the Genevan Psalter" in Musica (CA 13:1), however confused the thrust of Mr. Leithart's Liturgia might be or the juxtaposition of past reviews of the Editor with his current title approving Knox and his regulative principle of worship. Perhaps we can look forward to the CA getting past its prejudices and finally reviewing The Songs of Zion (Crown & Covenant, 1980), Michael Bushell's unanswered and unanswerable contemporary classic on the RPW and psalmody which has largely been blackballed in the presbyterian and reformed churchworld. Sooner or later we have to run out of academic and irrelevant third rate histories to review like Mr. Westin's Presbyterian Pluralism (13:1) and get serious about reformed literature.

Augustine and Calvin on Psalmody
Since Mr. Shuler seems more than willing to acknowledge the priority of psalmsinging in Calvin's theology, we might also look forward to reading Calvin's Preface to the Psalter (see The Blue Banner, 2:4-5, 1993) in the next CA, wherein among other things, he says:

Moreover, that which St. Augustine has said is true, that no one is able to sing things worthy of God except that which he has received from him. Therefore, when we have looked thoroughly, and searched here and there, we shall not find better songs nor more fitting for the purpose, than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit spoke and made through him. And moreover, when we sing them, we are certain that God puts in our mouths these, as if he himself were singing in us to exalt his glory (p.8, emph. added).

B.B. Warfield's comments regarding Calvin and psalmody, were also noted previously in a letter to the Editor:

We say nothing, again, of his reorganization of the worship of the Reformed' Churches and particularly of his gift to them of the service of song; for the Reformed Churches did not sing until Calvin taught them to do it. There are many who think he did few things greater or more far-reaching in their influence than the making of the Psalter - that Psalter of which twenty-five editions were published in the first year of its existence, and sixty-two more in the next four years; which was translated or transfused into nearly every language of Europe; and which wrought itself into the very flesh and bone of the struggling saints throughout all the "killing times" of Protestant history (Calvin and Augustine, Pres. and Reformed, 1971, p. 20).

Let not Christ's Kirk be found sitting by the rivers of Babylon, neither singing the songs of Zion nor weeping for the kirk's ignorance of the same. Nor for that matter, responsible on her part for that same last ignorance. If the Credenda Agenda (5:3) can review Eire's War against Idols (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), which is far more scholarly and honest, much less worthy of review, than the puerile PCA variety presbyterianism of John Frame's Worship In Spite of the Truth, surely among other things, Bushell's Songs of Zion can qualify for review in the CA.

Soon. Very soon. Among a few other things.

Thank you very much,

6/25/01 A Reply to Messiah's Update on the Four R's:

2010-01-11T17:42:00.000-08:00

Romanism, Reconstructionism, the RPW and Rom. 3

1/11/10
As was alluded to in the previous on Mr. Schlissel's latest, been there, done that is the short hand response. Of course, shortly after the old letter below was mailed, our active and congenial acquaintance with the mailing list for Messiah's Community Church Update ceased and desisted.

Along with worship issues, the influence of N.T. Wright's covenantal nomism can also be seen developing in Mr. Schlissel's gloss of Rom. 3 as not applying to the Jews, at least not as totally depraved according to the classic view of reformed theology and the confessions. The gospel is all about the covenant or ethics or ecclesiology; not justification, how a man might be right with God. Now of course the Federal Vision is in full blossom; Schlissel, Wilson, Jordan, Lusk, Barach and Wilkins all came out of the closet at the Auburn Avenue Pastors' Conferences beginning in 2002.

June 25, 2001
Messiah’s Update
2662 East 24th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11235

Dear Mr. Schlissel

A few comments regarding past Updates that the generosity of Messiah’s has deposited in our mailbox.

If we are going to insist that Romanists are in the covenant but unfaithful to its terms, informing them of those terms includes informing them that Rome has apostatized from the covenant. Funny how that got left out of the April 2001 letter. And if we’re going to quote Calvin in the first place, go on to include his concluding remarks in the same chapter. “But, on the other hand, because those marks, which we ought chiefly to regard in this controversy, are obliterated, I affirm, that the form of the legitimate Church is not to be found either in any one of their congregations, or in the body at large (Inst. IV:2:12).” The differences between Rome and Protestantism were worth dying for at the Reformation. And still are.

But maybe it is the reconstructionism in the blood. We still remember asking Rousas John Rushdoony whether we are justified by faith in Christ alone or justified by reconstruction alone. His reply was to let the dead bury the dead, both Protestantism and Catholicism needed reconstruction. To a further request to affirm or reaffirm the Westminster Confession, if not the Confession’s teaching regarding the Pope as AntiChrist, we were dropped from the mailing list. Oh well.

Others have pointed out that Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law ignores the gross idolatry of the Roman church contra the Second Commandment, much less the reformed exposition of the doctrine of worship known as the Regulative Principle of Worship. The ignorance of the RPW we can understand in that our new and acute theologians insist on reading the Second Commandment through their literal fundamentalist dispensational glasses, but Rome’s worship of the sacrament? Moses didn’t preach love for the brethren when it came to the golden calf just so he could be sure the Israelites could field a full team against the Canaanites on game day. But hey, not to worry. Today is the day of grace. The Ten Commandments are just old fashioned legalism. Let’s not get lost in the details and fine print of all that reformed theology stuff. We need more unity in Christ. As if he himself did not say “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.”

And while we are not claiming anybody for the heir apparent, Messiah’s minister did take Rushdoony’s funeral. Maybe it is no wonder some of these eccentricities continue to be voiced. They certainly have not been repudiated as they were at the Reformation, even by and at the expense of the death of the Protestant martyrs. Nor has Rome changed since then. Guess who that leaves holding the bag today and taking up the collection of sympathy for their Roman brethren and kindred spirits? Any votes for our modern day pseudo presbyterians by chance or happenstance? We truly wonder if our Lord will say unto them, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant,” as opposed to “I never knew you, depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Something to reconsider as we go merrily about the reconstruction of the reformed faith, if not merely reformed worship.

Which is to note even further on the current culture war, that we fail the significant detail. Yes, the barbarians are at the gate, the sodomites at the door, but as one who has invited the wolf, if not the world, over the threshold, Messiah’s Update can hardly complain. As Schaeffer pointed out in Death in the City, as per Jeremiah and Romans, idolatry or spiritual fornication and adultery precedes the sexual. And sexual promiscuity precedes sexual perversion. Furthermore, while Lot was willing to sacrifice his daughters, he was prevented from doing so, (though God was not mocked. Lot through incest later became the father of the Moabites and the Ammonites.) For those who are not only willing to, but have already sacrificed the Second Commandment (irregardless of the curse on their covenant seed), their credibility and crocodile tears regarding those who pervert the Seventh almost remind one of Joshua’s lament before Ai, yet his ignorance was at least honest as opposed to wilful. Maybe when the ways of the Lord’s people please the Lord, He will in turn be pleased to make even their enemies to dwell at peace with them.

But not until. Particularly when someone that touts Mr. Dabney and his prophetic analysis of the events of his day no end, can overlook Dabney’s comments regarding the Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW). This, in his review of a book by Girardeau, "Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church," which first ran in The Presbyterian Quarterly, July 1889. Although it was reprinted in Dabney’s Discussions, Vol.V. Misc. Writings (Sprinkle, 1999) [available from Messiah's Ministries for $1250 in 2000], after the “All I Don’t Know About the RPW” series had come out from hiding, the article has been kicking around in presbyterian and reformed circles for quite awhile and has been readily available on the internet for at least the last couple of years. The arrogant hurry to substitute an Illiterate Principle in the RPW’s place and ignore Dabney, is inexcusable.

Included among Dr. Dabney’s comments would be the following categorical statement:

Dr. Girardeau has defended the old usage of our church with moral courage, loyalty to the truth, clearness of reasoning and wealth of learning which should make every true Presbyterian proud of him, whether he adopts his conclusions or not. The framework of his argument is this: it begins with the vital truth which no Presbyterian can discard without a square desertion of our principles. The man who contests this first premise had better set out at once for Rome: God is to be worshipped only in the ways appointed in his word (p. 323, emph. added).

No, Dr. Girardeau didn’t subscribe to the Inferior Principle of Worship as our contemporary revisionists would have it. Neither did his reviewer.

Yet Robert Lewis continues,

Doubtless the objection in every opponent's mind is this: that, after all, Dr. Girardeau is making a conscientious point on too trivial and non-essential a matter. I am not surprised to meet this impression in the popular mind, aware as I am that this age of universal education is really a very ignorant one. But it is a matter of grief to find ministers so oblivious to the first lessons of their church history (p.326, emph. added).

Likewise their first lessons in reformed theology. We should like to think better of our modern day amateur enthusiasts and self professed admirers of Dabney, but sadly we cannot and they know exactly who they are.

In short and in sum, just like at the ballgame, “three strikes and you’re outta here.” That goes for even the kids playing stickball in the street, never mind again, the amateurs trying to pass themselves off as pros. For those interested in being reinstated in the game, a repudiation and a removal of the whole flippant IPW nonsense from the website is in order and the sooner the better.

All this is to say nothing of the attempt in last year’s June Update to exegete Rom 3:9-19 as only proving that a Jew could be wicked - instead of the total depravity of both Jews and Gentiles as has been generally accepted in reformed circles. Somehow the lust for notoriety is supposed to cancel out the fact that a text out of context is a pretext - even in Brooklyn. Again, somehow Paul’s categorical introductory statement in 3:9 gets left out of the picture - but what else is new? It says, “. . . for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin.” Then follow various OT texts that Paul under apostolic inspiration applies to all men.

Not only is this a major blunder from someone who is supposed to be a pastor feeding the flock with sound doctrine and the bread of life, it was pretty tacky, if not downright embarrassing, to stoop so low as to have Squealer from a cheap off Broadway production of Orwell’s Animal Farm “rebut” Mr. Williamson’s criticisms of the IPW vis a vis the reformed confessions on Messiah’s website. One would think that a true blue friend of Messiah’s deserves better, much less the substance of his argument. The line that finished off Joe McCarthy, is the first that comes to mind to describe this kind of hog slop and swill: “Have you left no sense of decency?” Have you no shame?” Apparently not.

The bottom line is simply this. There is sin in the Brooklyn camp and Israel cannot stand before her enemies, religious or irreligious. Rome refused her day of salvation at the time of the Reformation and God passed her over as he called out the remnant. Protestants who want to ignore this and make common cause with nominally theistic Rome against the aggressive atheism of the world, also refuse the truth. Consequently they have no gospel for either Rome or the world. Neither do they have a worship worthy of the gospel. God gives over to strong delusion those who receive not a love for the truth, but believe a lie and the Updates merely verify this. They do not speak to the real question or go to the root of the matter, much more repent of it, which is to further compound the error and sin. And while it is sorry [enough] to see, that is not enough in itself to cause us to suppress or deny it.

Thank you very much.

In A Theological Daze And Confusion About Days of Thanksgiving:

2009-12-25T13:49:00.000-08:00

Or More Befuddlements, Old and New on Reformed Worship from the Rev. S. Schlissel
[updated 1/31/10]

There are any number of things that can be said about Steven Schlissel’s two and a half page pastoral letter “Thanksgiving Reflections” posted Dec. 1, ‘09 at his Just Another Blog in the Wheel site as anybody might have guessed that is familiar with his point of view. Schlissel's latest not only opposes the historic doctrine of reformed worship, otherwise known as the Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW), but is also in favor of celebrating the annual national Day of Thanksgiving in America as it is now observed.

Worse than his disagreement with the RPW though, is that he still cannot - or will not - define it properly. He continues to restrict the RPW to only what is explicitly commanded in Scripture and denies that there are any commands implied as good and necessary consequences of the approved examples of worship in the Bible.

Schlissel's Misrepresentation Develops into Judaizing
But that is not enough nor is Mr. Schlissel content to rest on his laurels in only repeating himself. His suppression of the truth about the RPW, only leads to his further expression of error in arguing for Thanksgiving on the basis of the Old Testament ceremonial feastdays. But this is to turn the whole idea of an example of approved worship in Scripture inside out and on its head. Unfortunately Mr. Schlissel appears to be entirely clueless that these OT holydays are completely abolished in the NT as categorically fulfilled in Christ. Neither the days themselves or any post NT Christian imitations are permissable.

In other words, it also appears to have completely eluded Mr. Schlissel in his cheery overconfidence, that historically speaking, the reformed churches would consider this nothing more than a blatant example of judaizing. At least he makes no mention of this damning objection, at the very minimum to refute it and establish his view against what he has to know, if he pretends to any kind of theological competence, is the majority opinion of the reformed churches.

Extraordinary vs. Ordinary Anniversary Days
Building on all this well meant and chipper mish-mash of confusion and non sequiturs, Mr. Schlissel fails to further distinguish between the occasional and extraordinary days of thanksgiving as providence might dictate with their complete opposite: annual or by rote anniversary days of thanksgiving that automatically come year in and year out whatever the providential circumstances and signs of the times.

Indeed, Mr. Schlissel should be hard put to ignore the circumstances which he himself has repeatedly and pointedly called to our attention in the past - at least on previous mailing lists - regarding any number of national and civil violations of the moral law. But in turning a blithe and blind eye to them in his superficial comments, he also fails to see that if anything, they call for a day of prayer and fasting instead of a day of thanksgiving. Instead of this though, he continues to advocate a compromised and hybrid version of an anniversary/thanksgiving day in his contribution to a very simple civil religion.

Miscellaneous Other Errors
For some strange reason, he also thinks the so called War on Christmas sufficient to expose the inconsistencies of the RPW and its adherents, whatever the outcome of the national campaign against the Lord’s Day, the last of which we might think even Mr. Schlissel finds expressly, if not explicitly, commanded in Scripture, however he forbears mention of it at all. For that matter, as far as the popish holyday of Christmas goes, its fate in principle hangs in the balance with Thanksgiving. If either can be defended as biblical, the other can be as well. Sundry other errors include ignoring Rom. 14:4,5 to assert that Christian maturity allows one to observe days like Thanksgiving, if not mistaking the nature of the sacred and holy to be primarily and arbitrarily emotional and subjective.

Yet if emotional subjectivity is not the chief characteristic of his argument for Thanksgiving, that Mr. Schlissel may be a lively writer and possess a more than vivid imagination, is not enough in itself to reach the bottom of the question presented to us in his letter. Rather, the goal is to present Scriptural truth and sound doctrine clearly and apply it to Christian living, instead of ignoring or glossing over it in confusion as he has so ably done.

Great Extemporaneous Sameness
We are also inclined to wonder if the habit of refusing to demonstrate due diligence in researching the genuine character of what he’s trying to debunk and replace with his very own genuine substitute, - be it whatever, the historic view of Rom. 3 and total depravity, if not justification as per the Federal Vision, never mind the RPW – doesn’t end up spilling over into his pulpit work. While Mr. Schlissel is more than capable enough to turn up the verbal volume in order to adequately ramble through his little homiletic ode to Thanksgiving as J.W.

Alexander says on self-repetition in his Thoughts on Preaching (1864, rpt. BoT, 1988),

It has been observed, that preachers who rely on their extemporaneous powers are very apt to fall into great sameness. They repeat the same thoughts and the same trains of thought, and at length almost the same sermons: and this they do without being conscious of it. The same thing occurs to them which happens to some story-tellers: who remember the anecdote perfectly, but forget that they have told it before (p.11).

Alexander goes on to say that while mere writing is not a preventative of this, “it has an excellent tendency to prevent it.” Unfortunately that excellent tendency seems to have escaped our brother. If it is the one thing that impressed us reading Mr. Schlissel’s latest, it would be the great sameness that Alexander deplores.

All I Don't Really Want to Know About the RPW
We repeat ourselves to again say our theologian in Brooklyn pretty much just dishes out more of the same old same old that he has already inflicted upon his reading audience in his notorious “All I Really Need To Know About Worship . . . . I Don’t Learn From the Regulative Principle”, a five part series of essays which ran from 1999 through 2000. The very same series in which Mr. Schlissel so adroitly sidestepped the issues and mischaracterized the debate that the essays should have been called “All I Really Need To Know About the RPW . . . . I Have Yet To Learn” if the Ninth commandment was to be honored in anything other than its breach.

While under duress, he finally did admit in the fifth article of the “All I Don't Really Want to Know” series, the genuine sense of the RPW – “if it is not commanded, explicitly or by good and necessary consequence, it is forbidden in worship” – not a paragraph later he was begging the question by quoting from a Canadian Reformed minister about items in the typical modern reformed worship service that, if they were not questionable to begin with, would certainly fall into the implicitly commanded, if not circumstantial category. But when you don't start out with solid definitions that's to be expected and the “All I Don't Really Want to Know" series did not fail to exceed our expectations of obfuscation, however clever.

A Literal Halftruth
Yet if the RPW is no more or less than the good and necessary consequences of the Second Commandment as set forth in the reformed confessions and catechisms (Westminster Confession of Faith 1:6, 21:1 and Q&A 51, 109 and 96 respectively of the Shorter, Larger and Heidelberg Catechisms.) then the RPW could be summarized by the statement: 'Whatsoever is not explicitly – or implicitly – commanded in the worship of God, is forbidden'. As we shall see below, Mr. Schlissel's default rendering, gloss and mischaracterization of the RPW then and now, essentially amounts to: 'Whatsoever is not explicitly commanded is forbidden in the worship of God'. But a half truth is not a the whole truth and, it pretty much destroys Mr. Schlissel's agenda whether you want to pick up the argument by the head, the tail or the middle

In other words, Mr. Schlissel's principle of interpretation is pretty much the same as his old nemesis, Hal Lindsey and dispensational fundamentalism. As in strictly literal and explicit. If God does not command something literally and explicitly, then God does not command it. Mr. Schlissel's subsequent mischaracterizations then might almost be seen as partaking of Mr. Lindsey's fantastic speculations, endtime or otherwise.

The Old Misrepresentation
To be sure, Mr. Schlissel varies the pogrom a bit at this late date. Originally in the “All I Don't Want to Know” articles, we were told that the RPW only applies to the Old Testament temple worship, but not the synagogue. And since Christ obviously approved of the synagogue worship since he attended on it and the synagogue worship is largely that of the NT, ergo the worship of the NT is unregulated by the RPW. After a fashion, this line of reasoning is a rhetorical stroke of genius in that anyone who then brings up the application of the RPW to NT worship automatically qualifies as a judaizer, i.e. somebody who brings the NT church, which is free in Christ, back into bondage to the OT types and shadows. Or something like that

The New Misrepresentation
In his latest missive by way of contrast, he shifts gears a bit, if not grinds them. Again, he largely thinks that days of thanksgiving are justified due to the Old Testament festivals and holidays. Mr. Schlissel is bold to tell us that:

The neatest trick, though, had to be how the Regulativists dispensed with the entire Old Testament calendar of feasts. It was like, “God forbid that someone might think we have our faith from the Jews.” O, perish the thought! No matter what Romans and Acts and John might teach.

The obvious problem with this though, is that according to his previous paradigm, the OT feastdays should come under the purview of the RPW which only applies to the OT temple worship and ceremonial law. Hmmm. Whoever said heterodoxy had to be reasonable or consistent with itself, never mind Scripture or the reformed confessions? Nobody, least of all Mr. Schlissel. Yet the Scripture does say something about a doubleminded man (Jm. 1:8). As in beware. Likewise false prophets

Negative Babel
While it is true that at one point Mr. Schlissel actually does say “When it behaves itself, the RPW is indeed helpful, especially if the subject under discussion happens to be: What elements may be justly included in Divine worship?” But that is the first and the last we shall hear of anything close to the real question - What is a Day of Thanksgiving and how is it to be conducted in public worship? - never mind anything good about the RPW. Rather, negative comments and begging the question are the rule.

We are told that the "so-called" RPW is “an invention of men”. The RPW is “like the traditions from which it first sought to save us”. The RPW savors of the “scholastic spirit” which was "obsessed with such earth-shattering issues as supra- vs. infralapsarianism" (i.e. the respective order of God’s decrees of creation, election and reprobation). The RPW is something that is “really suitable only for the transition from Roman excess” at the time of the Reformation, if not that “since the Regulative Principle of Worship functions on a negative basis, it was just the gimmick to do the job” of wiping the whole Romish calendar clean of all its holidays. Yet, whatever it might be in Brooklyn, "invention", "tradition", or "gimmick" is hardly something that can be said of a self respecting principle in any other venue, regardless if Mr. Schlissel 'takes himself and his cutting satire much too seriously', though, no doubt he personally thinks he channels Desiderius Erasmus quite well.

Mr. Schlissel even links the RPW twice to what he calls “The Babel Syndrome” apparently this because "the RPW like any self-respecting federal agency, began claiming jurisdiction wherever it could get away with it". But we think this last is only an example of Mr. Schlissel’s overactive imagination running both immaterial and amuck. Besides the RPW is already guilty of enough according to Mr. Schlissel's opinion without any further burden of ridiculous bombast, if not that trading one his audience's ignorance, he pretty much tells us whatever he thinks he can get a way with.

The Evil Again of Fluent Repetition
Neither in all this, does Mr. Schlissel seem to be able to distinguish between the RPW and misapplications of it, even his own mischaracterizations, but we only repeat ourselves. Again Alexander on the self repetition of a preacher, says:

The evil is so disastrous, that there should be a constant effort to avoid it. Without this struggle, the preacher, on arriving at certain topics, which are familiar, will, by the simple influence of association, hitch into the old rut, and treat them exactly as he has treated them before. We observe this in extemporaneous prayers, which with some good men become as stereotyped as if they had been committed to memory: as indeed, though unconciously they have been. . . . This accounts for the familiar fact, that some very fluent extemporaneous preachers are quite popular abroad, while at home, among their own flocks, thay have lost all power, and seem to the people to be preaching the same discourse over and over (pp.12,13, emph. added).

"The only remedy for this" Alexander says, is to continue developing and meditating on "new trains of thought" . Further "This habit is greatly aided by judicious reading on theological topics. A man will be as his books". Mark the last: "A man will be as his books". While Alexander goes on to recommend the Scriptures above all as worthy of "perpetual study", we cannot help notice his exhortation to auxiliary reading.

A Remedial Reading List

In other words, after the manner of another brash New Yorker who received a reading list in light of his comments in the 2008 presidential campaign - and thereupon appropriately and abruptly disappeared from the public eye and vacated the national stage - we might respectfully suggest the same for our preacher in Brooklyn, who at one time was quite The Reformed Celebrity Preacher based upon his infamous “All I Don't Really Want to Know” series (pretty much consisting of 'noun, verb, the RPW is wrong'). This, even before he started promoting the Federal Vision, which, if the NAPARC churches have yet to charge, prosecute and convict its covenantal moralism in practice, they at least condemn it in principle.

1. The Premier Uninspired Documents

After Scripture, the first on the list would have to be, as might have been surmised, the confessions and catechisms of the Reformed churches, which Wm. Cunningham in his Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation (1862, rpt. 1989) tells us "are the most important body of uninspired documents in existence (p.49)". These include both those of the continental Reformed churches of Europe and the Presbyterian churches of Great Britain. The most well known of the first would be the Three Forms of Unity, which for our purposes include the Heidelberg Cat echism of 1563. The British symbols were written by the Westminster Assembly of 1643-48. While the Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms are chief, the Standards also include the Directory for Public Worship which specifically speaks to the proper observing of days of public thanksgiving in Presbyterian and Reformed churches. (The practice is not something that the Pilgrims alone observed in New England in 1621 or was first proclaimed by Lincoln in 1864, even as a civil holiday).

It also needs to be said in an irrational, if not anti-dogmatic age, that creeds and confessions are inescapable (creed coming from the Latin, credo, or I believe.) Everybody believes something about the Bible whether it is the pope, the guy down at the corner bar, who thinks it is bunk, or even our brother in Brooklyn who only has a very mild prejudice against the RPW. Regardless, the Bible explicitly tells us to preach and teach sound doctrine, if not that a teaching elder is particularly exhorted to master the things that are to be believed (Tit.1:9, 2:1).

The confessions are no more than that, but collections of sound doctrine; in so many words, summaries of what the 66 books of the Bible teach. They are collections of sound doctrine that have been debated, compared and collated and put down in black and white on paper by the church so that everybody is on the same page; that there might be a genuine unity in the faith. (Hence again, the Three Forms of Unity, the doctrinal summaries of the continental reformed churches.) If we refuse to enter into the doctrinal labors of those who have sowed before us (Jn.4:38) out of pride, it is at our own ignorance and peril. For that reason, Mr. Schlissel's studied ignorance, if not omission and suppression of these doctrinal statements is inexcusable as a teacher and preacher in what we assume to be is a reformed church, albeit of the "community" variety or no.

2. Genuine and Critical Scholasticism
After the reformed confessions and catechisms, the nod would perhaps go to the second edition of Richard Muller's Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics (Baker, 4 Vol. 2003). Therein with copious appeal to the primary sources in actually quoting the same, Muller demonstrates the general and overall continuity in theological substance - granting some development and refinement - between the first generation Reformers and those that came after, as well that scholasticism is a method and not a theology per se. Both the Reformed and the Roman church used it however much the method's fortunes have fallen on hard times these days. To his credit, Mr. Schlissel does not repeat the standard old hoary chestnut of Calvin vs. - fill in the blank with one of the following, please - Beza/Turretin/the Calvinists/the Epigones/the Scholastics/the Puritans/ the Westminster Assembly. The transition rather was from "the Magisterial Reformers to the bureaucratizers". Still, the historical record only shows that Mr. Schlissel is bamboozling us in his misrepresentations of scholasticism.

In its emphasis on definitions and distinctions, scholasticism lent itself to teaching in a systematic way the theological discoveries and attainments of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin et al when the Reformation had managed to consolidate itself as a movement and become the official and accepted theology in the national churches and schools. But it is perhaps precisely because Schlissel’s free and breezy opinions will not stand a logical and systematic analysis and criticism, that we find him so opposed to scholasticism. Perhaps.

3. Previously Disputed
The next title would be Geo. Gillespie's classic of historical theology Dispute Against English Popish Ceremonies, (1637, rpt. Naphtali, 1993). This book by the then unknown Gillespie, who went on to further fame as one of the Scotch divines who attended the Westminster Assembly, carried the day in the dispute against the necessity, expediency, lawfulness and indifference of the Anglican church ceremonies which King James VI had unlawfully intruded into the Scottish Church, otherwise known as the Five Articles of the 1618 Perth Assembly. When the Scotch General Assembly finally met twenty years later and signed the National Covenant of 1638, the Articles and the Perth Assembly were put away for good. The Second Article specifically enjoined the Observance of the holy days of Easter, Pentecost and Christmas. In reply, beginning with the seventh through ninth chapters in the Dispute's first section argue against the necessity of the English-Popish holidays and touch on as well, the whole idea of days of public fasting and thanksgiving, occasional and extraordinary as opposed to annual and anniversary event that Mr. Schlissel advocates.

In other words, there is nothing new under the sun and Mr. Gillespie has already clarified and dealt with the same arguments we essentially hear today from Mr. Schlissel for a set/annual/once a year day of Thanksgiving in that rote annual thanksgiving days infringe on Christ's prerogative to institute days of worship, as well as the weekly Lord's Day already established which inevitably these days encroach on and supplant. In other words, it would be expedient, if not necessary and lawful, and far from indifferent that Mr. Schlissel apprise himself and his ignorance of the concepts Gillespie touches upon in his book. And maybe then, he could be so kind to apprise his reading and listening audience as to the real state of the question.

4. Honorable Mention
Last on the list, would be David Calderwood's Perth Assembly (1619, rpt. Puritan, 2006). Although reprinted only recently in paperback, this book originally preceded Gillespie's, which wholeheartedly agreed with Calderwood's book in upholding the consensus of the Scotch presbyterian Church on holidays. After it was first published, Calderwood fled to Holland and only returned to Scotland in 1625 after the death of King James VI, the perpetrator of the Perth Articles. Calderwood went on to be come the historian of the Scotch church writing The True History of the Church of Scotland (1678) as well as numerous other titles, including The Pastor and The Prelate (1628) and the Altar of Damascus (1623). Again, Calderwood, like Gillespie, is more than capable of adequately presenting the standard presbyterian understanding of feastdays, occasional and extraordinary as opposed to anniversary, in distinct contrast to Mr. Schlissel, who will do no such thing, which only further reflects on and is highly derogatory of his necessary credibility and competence to the question.

I. The Reformed Standards and the Second Commandment
Barring Mr. Schlissel's immediate reform, again Mr. Schlissel only fails to do what he has already failed to do in his previous assault on the reformed doctrine of worship: to distinctly and clearly, inform us that the RPW is no more or less than the good and necessary consequences of the Second Commandment as set forth in the reformed confessions and catechisms. Explicitly these would be the Westminster Confession of Faith Chapts. 1:6, 21:1 and Q&A 51, 109 and 96 respectively of the Shorter, Larger and Heidelberg Catechisms. They essentially, if not explicitly teach that: Whatsoever is not explicitly – or implicitly – commanded is forbidden in the worship of God. But of all this, we will hear not a whisper in Mr. Schlissel’s excursus lauding Thanksgiving and dissing the RPW. That might come as no surprise, but neither is it commendable.

The relevant sections of these reformed standards of sound doctrine follow with all emphasis added.

Good and Necessary Consequences
The WCF 1:6 begins by saying:

VI. The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men (2 Tim.3:15-17)

The Regulative Principle
The WCF 21:1 in conclusion reads:

. . . . .But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture (Deut. 12:32; Matt. 15:9; Acts 17:25; Matt. 4:9, 10; Deut. 4:15 to 20; Exod.20:4, 5, 6; Col. 2:23)

The Second Commandment
The Shorter Catechism reads:

Q. 51. What is forbidden in the second commandment?
A. The second commandment forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images (Deut. 4:15-19; Exod. 32:5,8), or any other way not appointed in his word (Deut. 12:31,32).

The Larger Catechism in part reads:

Q. 109. What are the sins forbidden in the second commandment?

A. The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counselling, commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself ( Num.15:39, Deut.13:6-8, Hosea 5:11; Micah 6:16, 1 Kings 11:33; 1 Kings 12:33, Deut.12:30-32); . . . . all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretence whatsoever (Acts 17:22, Col.2:21-23, Mal.1:7,8,14, Deut.4:2, Ps.106:39, Matt.15:9, 1 Pet.1:18, Jer.44:17, Isa.65:3-5; Gal.1:13,14, 1 Sam.13:11,12, 1 Sam 15:21); . . . . all neglect, contempt hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed (Exod.4:24-26, Matt.22:5, Mal.1:7,13, Matt.23:13, Acts 13:44,45, 1 Thess. 2:15,16).

The Heidelberg Catechism reads:

Question 96. What does God require in the second commandment?

Answer: That we in no wise represent God by images ( Deut.4:15, Is. 40:18, Rom.1:23, Act 17:29), or worship him in any other way than he has commanded in his word (1 Sam15:23, Deut.12:30).

In other words, when the WCF 21:1 or the respective catechisms tell us that God may not be worshiped in any way that is not "prescribed", "appointed", "instituted" or "commanded" by him, in light of the good and necessary consequences of WCF 1:6, that means, any way not explicitly or implicitly prescribed, appointed, instituted or commanded.

Again, something may be prescribed in Scripture either explicitly or implicitly by good and necessary consequence. Whatsoever that is not prescribed, appointed, instituted or commanded, in either of these two ways, is forbidden in the worship of God. That is to say, if we are forbidden to either conceal the truth or prejudice it, but rather to promote the whole truth and nothing but, Mr. Schlissel breaks the Ninth on the Second in his discussion of the RPW. His is a perjured witness. Further, Mr. Schlissel is obligated to come to terms with the reformed exposition of the Second Commandment, much more demonstrate its error, if he wishes at least the respect of posterity rather than refuse to even mention the historic position and rest his case in the general vague assertion of its error, even as a gimmick, invention or tradition.

Commanded Worship
Neither is it that hard to determine what is commanded in the worship of God. Besides prayer in paragraphs 3 & 4, WCF 21:5 tells us that:

The reading of the Scriptures with godly fear (Acts 15:21; Rev. 1:3), the sound preaching (II Tim. 4:2) and conscionable hearing of the Word, in obedience unto God, with understanding, faith and reverence (Jam. 1:22; Acts 10:33; Matt. 13:19; Heb. 4:2; Isa. 66:2), singing of psalms with grace in the heart; (Col. 3:16; Eph. 5:19; James 5:13), as also, the due administration and worthy receiving of the sacraments instituted by Christ, are all parts of the ordinary religious worship of God (Matt. 28:19; I Cor. 11:23 to 29; Acts 2:42):

Besides these elements of ordinary worship are:

religious oaths ( Deut. 6:13 with Neh. 10:29), vows (Isa. 19:21 with Eccles. 5:4, 5), solemn fastings (Joel 2:12; Esther 4:16; Matt. 9:15; I Cor. 7:5), and thanksgivings upon special occasions (Ps. 107 throughout; Esther 9:22), which are, in their several times and seasons, to be used in an holy and religious manner (Heb. 12:28).

Note the last: “thanksgivings upon special occasions”. Not a yearly regular, anniversary, but upon special occasions, a point we shall return to later.

Common But Uncommanded Circumstances
For that matter, WCF 1:6 concludes by also saying,

. . . that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and 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.(1 Cor. 11:13,14; 14:26,40)

In other words, there are some things that either necessarily accompany the commanded elements of worship or human actions and societies which are ordered not by explicit or implicit command, but by the light of nature (common sense) and Christian prudence (Christian common sense) according to the general rules of Scripture. The circumstances of time and place, buildings and chairs all either necessarily accompany a worship service or are common to the action of public gathering or meeting of a society. It is important to note this, because the indifferent and common aspects and circumstances of worship also lend themselves to distortion and mischaracterization, just as the nature of how something is commanded in worship.

This is not so much a problem with Schlissel's latest, but it has been in the past, at least with his “All I Don't Really Want to Know” series and a number of his other comrades in arms, Jordan, Horne, Meyer, Wilson, Leithart and Gore. For that matter, Schlissel's predecessor and inspiration, Prof. John Frame, in the contemporary in-house assault on the RPW, mischaracterizes both the circumstances and the commanded parts of worship. Further, as we have noted before, this whole ploy of mischaracterization and substitution in undermining and replacing the RPW, is the same modus operandi of the Federal Vision, which again includes Mr. Schlissel and many of his fellow combatants late from the RPW theater in the contemporary War on the Reformed Faith.

II. Explicit Omission of Implicit Commands
Consequently, as mentioned above, Mr. Schlissel is either profoundly confused or simply deceitful when he tells us one, that “the Regulative Principle of Worship functions on a negative basis”. But not only is there nothing wrong with that - unless we care to quarrel with the Ten Commandments which are also cast in the negative - Mr. Schlissel goes on to instruct us:

Understand: The “negative basis” is like the way a Compact Disc Club works. Unless you tell them explicitly that you do not want their CD that month, you will get it. So the RPW said, “Unless God tells us there’s a holiday, there can’t be one (emph. added)”.

Did we catch that? What so lightly trips off of Mr. Schlissel's tongue is a strictly literal understanding of the RPW. Unless it explicitly tells us something, it is not commanded according to his take on the question. Schlissel's gloss essentially reads: "Unless God explicitly tells us there's a holiday, there can't be one"'. In other words, so much for good and necessary consequences; so much for the implicit commands of Scripture; so much for WCF 1:6. Again.

But as should be apparent from consulting the primary sources, the reformed confessional statements above, Mr. Schlissel's definition of the RPW is a caricature and typical of a fundamentalist dispensational hermeneutic. If God doesn’t literally and explicitly command something in Scripture, according to Schlissel's revised version of the RPW, God does not command it.

Deja Vu
Contrary to Schlissel, Gillespie in his Dispute Against English-Popish Ceremonies, says,

(T)he word of God shows unto us the lawfulness or unlawfulness, goodness or badness of things, not only by precepts and prohibitions, but sometimes also, and more plainly, by examples. So that, not only from the precepts and prohibitions of the word, but likewise from the examples recorded in the same, we may find out that goodness or badness of human actions which takes away the indifferency of them (italics added).

Plainly Mr. Gillespie understands the Scripture to teach us by example whether something is lawful or unlawful, however Mr. Schlissel may disagree. In other words, Gillespie tells us explicitly that Scripture tells us something by its examples.

Gillespie asks further, regarding baptism of children, taking water for an element of baptism, public reading of Scripture in worship, synodical assemblies and the publishing of their decrees, "and sundry other things which the word has commended to us by example, should all be things indifferent, because there is not in the Word of God either particular precepts for them, or particular prohibitions against them (Dispute, p.427)?" Gillespie says no. The lack of an explicit command or prohibition does not leave us high and dry as to whether something is lawful.

Baptists in Brooklyn
But Mr. Schlissel for his part, essentially says yes. At least as it applies to the RPW, though inconsistently he will chide Baptists about refusing to baptize infants all the while they serve communion to women and worship on the first day of the week. But when it comes to observing Thanksgiving, he contradicts himself and however erroneously appeals to the example of the ceremonial OT calendar instituted by God as a sufficient post NT argument for a day of thanksgiving instituted by uninspired men. Go figure. In other words, what Mr. Schlissel essentially does in ignoring the good and necessary consequences of approved examples in Scripture is to give us half of the RPW for the whole and then criticize the one for not being the other. Like Nahash, he would poke out the right eyes of all the men of Jabesh, if he could get away with it and then berate them for it (1 Sam. 11:1,2).

Unfortunately the reformed confessions and catechisms - if anyone bothers to examine them, as well as reformed theologians like Gillespie - make it clear that this is less than a 20/20 affair. What Schlissel takes away from the real definition of the RPW, he then misuses in advocating a annual feastday which he incorrectly calls a thanksgiving day. Further, on the basis of this half principle, Schlissel is bold to conclude: “Except for Lord’s Days, of course, the calendar was left pretty bone-picked clean”. Yet we wonder, after his careless negligence of the confessions in all this, can he say that his conscience is likewise as clean?

III. Genuine Thanksgiving Days Are Not Annual Occasions
All of which brings us again to Geo. Gillespie’s classic Dispute Against English Popish Ceremonies, which in disputing against the ceremonies, also necessarily disputed in part against yearly and annual holidays or anniversary festival days. In the context that the annual feastdays were supposed to be opportunities for the church to give thanks for Christ's birth, circumcision, life, passion etc., Gillespie clarifies what a genuine thanksgiving day according to the Scripture really is and the necessary accompaniment of a preceding day of fasting and prayer.

He says, "There are two reasons for which the church may and should appoint fasts or festivities upon occasional motives, and neither of them agrees with ordinary festivities.

1. Extraordinary fasts, either for obtaining some great blessing, or averting some great judgement, are necessary to be used in such cases; likewise, extraordinary festivities are necessary testifications of our thankfulness for the benefits which we have impentrate [procured] by our extraordinary fasts;

Extraordinary does not mean a regular once a year occasion, but a special occasion. Even more that fast days and feast days are linked with the one following the other, not going before or without it, a distinction which is entirely missing from Mr. Schlissel's exposition of the question.

Inconsistent Agreement
Gillespie goes on to say,

(B)ut ordinary festivites, for constant and eternal blessings, have no necessary use. The celebration of set anniversary days is no necessary mean for conserving the commemoration of the benefits of redemption, because we have occasion, not only every Sabbath day, but every other day, to call to mind these benefits, either in hearing, reading , or meditating upon God's word. . . ."

But lo and behold, Schlissel agrees with Gillespie's last on ordinary thankfulness, without admitting his first distinction between fast days and feast days. Schlissel closes his letter saying,

. . . it is good to thank the Lord. It is good to enjoy Thanksgiving for no other reason than that we get to nationally, and family by family, give thanks to the God Who created us, Who sustains us, and Who is faithful to save. . . . How wonderfully normal this is! What do you think about forming a committee to make every day Thanksgiving Day (emph. added)?

This despite that Mr. Schlissel has previously told us, "making every day a saint day or holy day has the same effect as underlining everything - that is, it’s identical in value to underlining nothing". We realize that we are to be all things to all people that God might save some (1 Cor. 9:22), but somehow we don't think that means talking out of both sides of one's mouth. Which is it? Every day or just one day?

While Gillespie, much more Rom. 1, acknowledges that thanksgiving is a fundamental and we might assume daily component of Christian life, that does not imply there is a necessity or commandment to set aside a special day every year to be thankful, which even Mr. Schlissel admits 50% of the time. One, yearly thanksgiving days in so much they give thanks for aspects of Christ's life or the gospel are unnecessary because the Lord's Day is already sufficient to that end and it presumes on Christ's authority to set aside special days to institute some of our own yearly anniversary days. Much more, two, as Gillespie points out, genuine extraordinary thanksgiving days follow upon the fast days that preceded them. They are not to be separated or divorced from each other as our national Thanksgiving Day is.

An Approved Example
This is, for example, what we see in the Book of Esther. The Jews first fasted in light of the danger of Haman's decree (Esth. 3:8-4:3). Then after the right of self defense was granted to the Jews, and even further after the same was successful against their enemies, the Jews celebrated with feasting (Esth. 8:11-9:3, 17-19). Neither is it an argument in favor of Mr. Schlissel that Mordecai decreed that these days were to be observed annually (Esth. 9:2o-32). If they were anything more than civil and entered into the religious celebration of the Jews, as they did, Mordecai received divine direction to that end as a prophet and the human author of the Book of Esther. The days of Purim were not simply established by human authority and whim, whether civil or ecclesiastical. Neither is the question whether the civil magistrate can set aside an annual day such as the American Fourth of July. He can and does, but Mr. Schlissel is not a civil magistrate nor is our Thanksgiving Day merely secular. That is the difference.

The Real Difference Again
Gillespie continues, in distinguishing between providential and circumstantial dangers and their deliverances, from the annual anniversary days.

2. God has given his church a general precept for extraordinary fasts (Joel 1:14, 2:15), as likewise for extraordinary festivities to praise God, and to give him thanks in the public assembly of his people upon the occasional motive of some great benefit which, by means of fasting and praying, we have obtained (Zech. 8:19 with 7:3) [Dispute 1:7, pp.34,5].

In so many words, the distinction is between extraordinary and ordinary feastdays. Christ did not give either the power or authority to his church or its overseers to institute or establish annual rote anniversary days of thanksgiving (or prayer with fasting) along side of – never mind a substitute for – the one day in seven, the Christian sabbath or Lord’s Day, in which we are ordinarily to give thanks to God for all his blessings, temporal and spiritual in Christ. but that is exactly what our three or four modern holidays generally amount to.

(This, of course, includes meditation on his birth, life, death and resurrection. For that matter, Christ's resurrection is the reason for observing a Fourth commandment day of rest on the first of the week in the NT, rather than the last week day as in the OT. In other words, P&R churches essentially observe “Easter” - the Resurrection of Christ - once a week - not once a year. As is so often the case, the reformed faith properly understood pre-empts many of the objections to it, along with the innovations foisted upon it.)

But that’s not all. Alongside the weekly sabbaths, extraordinary and occasional days of prayer with fasting and days of public thanksgiving ought to be and are lawfully observed as providence warrants. Providence - not the rote annual and mechanical observance of an anniversary date on a calendar - for instance, that come what may for good or ill, we will have our annual national Day of Thanksgiving to we know not whom, for we know not what, as even Mr. Schlissel himself admits.

A Second Witness
Calderwood says the same. Under the first reason against Festival days in the Perth Assembly, he says the people of God,

had a general warrant from God, Joel 2:15 to proclaim a general fast, according to the occurrence of their calamities and other affaires of the Kirk. The light and law of nature leadeth a man to this observation of an occasional fast: nature teacheth him presently to withdraw his hand and heart from worldly affaires, and to lift them up to God to deprecate his wrath when his judgement is over our heads. The like may be said, by analogy, of thanksgiving, that we ought to praise God in the mean time when we receive the benefit.

Calderwood concludes though that "to make of the occasional days of fasting, or feasting, anniversary and set festival and fasting days is without warrant (emph. added, p.94)". But this is exactly what the American Thanksgiving Day advocated by Schlissel has become, an annual set day year in and year out upon which it is observed, and as below, in the face of the judgements of God over our head, at least as a nation.

Gillespie and Calderwood's view not only rules out the Roman holydays of Christmas, Easter etc., but also the Roman observance of days and seasons of fasting or only eating fish, such as Ash Wednesday, Holy Thursday or Friday, in or out of the Lenten season. Likewise annual days of thanksgiving, which would include what we call Thanksgiving Day (or Christmas again, which is justified as necessary so that the church may have a day upon which to give thanks for the birth of Christ). But this again is precisely what Schlissel's Thanksgiving Day is: an annual occasion and anniversary feastday, when only Christ has authority to set such a day.

The Westminster Assembly's Directory
As for the Westminster Assembly’s Directory for Public Worship, it is in complete agreement with Gillespie and Calderwood exposition over and against Schlissel's mischaracterization of a calendar picked bone clean by the RPW. The Appendix, Touching Days and Places for Public Worship says specifically that,

THERE is no day commanded in scripture to be kept holy under the gospel but the Lord's day, which is the Christian Sabbath.
Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.

Yet after declaring any holy days besides the Lord's Day as unlawful, it goes on to state that:

Nevertheless, it is lawful and necessary, upon special emergent occasions, to separate a day or days for publick fasting or thanksgiving, as the several eminent and extraordinary dispensations of God's providence shall administer cause and opportunity to his people (emph. added).

Likewise the respective rubrics on Public Solemn Fasting which shall be observed as 'divine providence shall administer special occasion' and Observation of Days of Public Thanksgiving, on account of 'deliverances obtained or mercies received', both a couple of chapters after Sanctification of the Lord’s Day.

Further, Concerning Public Solemn Fasting starts out by saying:

WHEN some great and notable judgments are either inflicted upon a people, or apparently imminent, or by some extraordinary provocations notoriously deserved; as also when some special blessing is to be sought and obtained, public solemn fasting (which is to continue the whole day) is a duty that God expecteth from that nation or people.

As should be clear by now, to the naked eye, Mr. Schlissel's characterization of a reformed calendar is not quite accurate. Annual holy days besides the one day in seven Lord's Day are not allowed. Special days of prayer or thanksgiving in light of the providential circumstances of those days and times are allowed, if not required.

Times Have Changed Since Then
To be sure, modern Americans, much more modern P&R churches have long since separated not only church and state, but religion and state and the public square is considered the realm not even of theism, but atheism. Perhaps, that is why what passed for an American National Day of Prayer and Remembrance on Sept. 14, 2001, three days after the terrorist attacks on the NYC World Trade Center and Pentagon in Washington DC was such an ecumenical exercise in polytheism, however much those attacks were an "eminent and extraordinary dispensation[s] of God's providence" or a "great and notable judgement".

After all, the Westminster Standards, including the Directory for Public Worship was written in a day and age in which something like the Solemn League and Covenant, a solemn oath and vow (WCF 22) was signed to uphold the true Protestant reformed religion in church and state in the three kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland. In part, this entailed uniformity in a "Confession of Faith, Form of Church Government, Directory for Worship and Catechising" which is why the Westminster Standards were written in the first place. No SL&C, no Westminster Standards, including the Directory of Public Worship and its statement on a national day of prayer and fasting.

Yet if the modern P&R church has rejected the establishment of Christianity politically, Israel's example being typological rather than prescriptive for the modern church, the Book of Jonah gives us an example other than that of Esther. The pagan city of Nineveh humbled itself in light of the judgements of God declared, however unwillingly or begrudgingly, by Jonah (3:10). Neither was Nineveh anything but a heathen people, being no part of Israel or Judah and without the Word of God. Still, they heeded the preaching of the prophet and turned for a time from their wickedness, covenant or no, uniformity in the true protestant religion or not.

IV. National Bankruptcy: Spiritual, Moral and Economic

In other words, even if the modern age, as well as the modern P&R church believes in the separation of religion and state, it still seems to be hard to justify a national so called Turkey Day, if not that it is just that -- a theological turkey. It cannot be justified as an annual rote anniversary day by the RPW as historically understood; even more as even an occasional day of thanksgiving right now, because of the national circumstances we providentially find ourselves in. These are both temporal and spiritual, however much Mr. Schlissel may try to ignore the obvious and “extraordinary provocations” which he himself has been so diligent to inform us about in the past.

Political and Economic
For instance, as a consequence of the so called "War on Terror" in reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001 not only has habeas corpus gone AWOL/appeared on the missing persons list, torture and pre-emptive - as opposed to a just - war are part of the official national policy, both violations of the Sixth Commandment, (while a denial of habeas corpus is arguably a violation of both the Sixth and the Eighth). This, as we approached and passed the Christmas Eve deadline for the US Senate vote on the further socialization/centralization of the bureaucracy of American health care under the politically correct euphemism of “reform”. That this is a notable and imminent judgement, however notoriously deserved as per the Westminster DPW Concerning Public Solemn Fasting, is that socialism, in one way or the other, is a gross denial of the Eighth Commandment by the civil magistrate.

While it is true that one must distinguish between the various kinds of socialism, they still all amount to one thing: Stealing. Government control, if not out right ownership of private property. Again in other words, theft. While most people think robbing banks is wrong, things have come to the enlightened pass in these modern days that when the government steals property - when it robs Peter to pay Paul - most people consider it charitably as 'wealth redistribution' or some other politically correct blanket that covers all term. As for the official apologists for the practice, they think it unthinkable that the Holy Federal Government could ever do such a thing as steal.

Elementary Distinctions
Tom Rose, retired professor of economics at Grove City College, further distinguishes between "college level" and "high school" level socialism in his '97 essay for the Christian Statesman entitled "Fascism: America's Fourth Branch of Government". The "college level" or fascist variety consists of indirect govt. control by bureaucratic rules and regulations, of private property, if not govt. collusion with business, usually big corporations in controlling the market. "High school" level socialism is the more commonly known socialism/communism of direct control or ownership of the means of production/private property.

Further, in that Mr. Schlissel himself deplores and reprobates centralized bureaucracies, it must be mentioned that socialism is nothing more than a centralized bureacracy, if not also a totalitarian one. It has to be to micromanage every transaction in the marketplace and crush the more efficient and inevitable black market that springs up in that the market, the buying and selling of goods and services, is fundamental to survival. But not only is the state outside its sphere of competence and authority of criminal justice and national defense, necessarily the economic crimes of the black market are treasonous because they are a threat to, if not that they deny, the state's authority, albeit illegitimate and usurped. In reaction to the black market, only more of the same results which caused the resistance in the first place and totalitarianism results as the state cracks down in attempting the impossible: a centralized micromanagement of the economy. Not to worry though. Dollars to doughnuts Leviathan will celebrate Thanksgiving in order to keep up the facade of civility and benevolence to keep the serfs content and remain in the good graces of the compromised such as Mr. Schlissel and those of his persuasion.

More of the Same Old Socialism
Still the shift under the new Dem. administration - which is really only doubling down on the previous Repub. administration's policies - from the New Deal fascism of government control in the 1930's to the nationalization/ownership of significant sectors of the financial and automotive markets, along with healthcare if they can get away with it, would not normally be considered a temporal blessing to give thanks for in the normal or economically sane world. In Brooklyn, perhaps, but maybe pigs can fly and they do things differently there.

Monetary Meltdown
Further, the circumstances of this past year also include, as Mr. Schlissel himself seems to allude to below however incoherently, the ramifications of the nation’s long term Keynsian (socialist) economic policy, which again violates Eighth commandment since it is based upon spending the nation out of debt and bankruptcy and that by printing out of thin air, even more of the fractional reserve fiat currency. We speak of the following blurb of gobbledegook in Mr. Schlissel’s meta-narrative/tall tale:

When you blend Americanity with Keynsian economic policy (which depends entirely on consumer spending, with no debt or deficit high enough to be called “enough”), and throw in the sappy, effeminate yearnings of a population routed and ruled by egalitarianism, you’ve a formidable foe ready for a real showdown with any principle that preached self-denial in any form.

Yea Stephen, and thou art the man, if it comes down to denying one's self Thanksgiving with all the trimmings. In other words, what Mr. Schlissel might seem to be bloviating about is his own bland compromised version of Christianity that approves of the American civil religious holiday of Thanksgiving.

This, again while the ongoing meltdown of the nation's Keynsian monetary policy/system could, among other things ala Weimar Germany, Argentina or Zimbawe, provoke hyperinflation. The same situation of hyperinflation, myopic and remedial students of history might be interested to know, which also preceded the three great atheist, if not totalitarian revolutions in the modern West: France in 1789, Russia in 1917 and Germany in 1933. Evidently to the question that if the economic foundations be destroyed and mischief is framed by law, what shall the righteous do? (Ps.11:3, 94:20), Mr. Schlissel's superficial and banally inadequate answer to any silly goose, simple enough to ask, seems to be, "Why that's easy. Celebrate Turkey day." Would that such naive zeal and enthusiasm were enough to answer all such questions. When in doubt, celebrate Thanksgiving (as well as Advent as his pastoral letter advocates both in closing. But if Advent, is the season, then necessarily Christmas is the reason. If Mr. Schlissel hasn't already given us a pastoral letter justifying the day, we may reasonably expect him too and chastise him if he doesn't.)

Moral Meltdown
Granted the spiritual and moral rot and degeneration of the nation, much more its churches preceded and provoked, as well as exacerbates, the financial crisis, but as Mr. Schlissel himself has decried the same profligacy before - as well as become part of it in part by promoting the Federal Vision perversion of the distinction between justification and sanctification - he cannot be oblivious to it. Unless perhaps, the turkey is stuffed with something more than the typical parsley and sage. Whether we are talking about the national violation of the Seventh Commandment in winking at, if not legalizing sexual perversion and pedophilia or the Sixth commandment and the legalization of abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, Mr. Schlissel himself has made a strong case for the nation's previous moral, spiritual and religious bankruptcy, even before touching on the first table of the law. Indeed, after wrapping up his assault on reformed worship, in the "All I Don't Really Want to Know" series, he spent a number of newsletters in 2000 warning of the cultural groundswell in favor of promoting and legalizing child molesting and pedophilia. Which is all well and good.

Yet the crying question for Mr. Schlissel to answer is what excuse does he have not to know that Press Secretary of the White House released an announcement by the President of the United States of America on June 1, in the year of our Lord 2009, which proclaimed that June was "LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PRIDE MONTH"? You know. The very same individual who proclaimed five months later that:

. . . . by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 26, 2009, as a National Day of Thanksgiving.

Without which proclamation by said individual, we do not observe a national day of Thanksgiving. (Never mind the late breaking scandal on the President's appointment of a homosexual activist to the Education Department.) Not only is this gross hypocrisy and compromise on Mr. Schlissel's part, it is inexcusable. All Mr. Schlissel is doing is further qualifying himself as a false prophet who declares the deceit of his own heart (cp. Jer.14:14) in arguing for the church's observation of the national day of thanksgiving under these kinds of circumstances.

Still as K. Reed pointed out years ago, reconstructionism is antinomian when it comes to the first table of the law. Hence perhaps in part, our quarrel in all this with Mr. Schlissel beginning with the Second Commandment and the RPW. In that he officiated at the funeral of Rousas John Rushdoony, the founding father of reconstructionism, perhaps Mr. Schlissel can be taken as a reconstructionist and therefore think about reconstructing his excuse and apology for Thanksgiving Day these days.

Natural vs. Moral Law
And while modern P&R churches, for their part, think the magistrate has no business at all with the first table of the law and of late natural law has been touted as a basis to establish morality, Schlissel himself deplores this in his pastoral letter. Trouble is, Mr. Schlissel hasn't done so well himself with the revealed moral law to start with in the Second or Ninth commandments. Consequently it wouldn't surprise us that some might think there is no use for the revealed law and would be inclined to look to the natural law instead for guidance.

But regardless, the inconsistencies abound. Something more than a superstitious and canned version of a presumptuous, hypocritical and fraudulent day of Public Thanksgiving - to whom, we know not, likewise for what, we know not (which situation obtains, as even Mr. Schlissel himself acknowledges) - is called for, unless we are as intent as Mr. Schlissel seems to be, of fulfilling the conditions ecclesiastical, never mind civil, of Jer. 8:11: "For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace".

A Confessional vs. A Contemporary Thanksgiving
In other words, the national Day of Thanksgiving and Mr. Schlissel's jubilant support of it, is not what Gillespie and Calderwood were talking about, nor the Westminster Directory for Public Worship in either the section Concerning Public Solemn Fasting or that of the Observation of Days of Public Thanksgiving. It is not what the Appendix or even the WCF21:5 speaks of in "thanksgivings upon occasions". The critical distinction between extraordinary and occasional or the "special emergent occasions" vs. yearly, rote and annual anniversary days, entirely and willfully(?) escapes Mr. Schlissel and his 'calendar picked bone clean' of the RPW, while it gives pride of place to national Days of Thanksgiving on drone autopilot. That itself, would seem to be a sign of the kind of complacent and presumptuous religious bankruptcy which would necessarily preclude the observance of a genuine Day of Thanksgiving. Rather a day of prayer and fasting is called for (as for example in 1781 by the Reformed Presbytery of Scotland), though - it's not hard to guess - you will not hear Mr. Schlissel admit it.

V. Judaizing Revisited
But not to bother. Mr. Schlissel is off and running in order to plead for judaizing. Yet the problem is Mr. Schlissel's Revised Principle of Worship in his notorious All I Don't Really Want to Know series, was only and exclusively concerned with what God explicitly and literally commanded and that only in the ceremonial worship of the OT temple, which also included the OT calendar of feasts. My, how things change in ten years.

He now tells us, that:

The neatest trick, though, had to be how the Regulativists dispensed with the entire Old Testament calendar of feasts. It was like, “God forbid that someone might think we have our faith from the Jews.” O, perish the thought! No matter what Romans and Acts and John might teach.

The law and the testimony (Is. 8:20) to the contrary. Paul in the New Testament makes it only too clear that the “weak and beggarly elements (Gal.4:9)” of the OT holydays that Mr. Schlissel desires to be in “bondage” to, are done away with in Christ, being nailed to the cross (Col. 2:14) – as distinctly opposed to Mr. Schlissel’s conceited libel that the Regulativists” dispensed with the OT calendar.

Granted, faith in the OT is the same as faith in the NT, faith in Christ, to come or already revealed, but that is not to say that the OT types and ordinances foresignifying Christ are to be repeated or imitated in or after the NT in that they have been fulfilled in Christ and are obsolete. To return to them or something like them is to accept an inferior, if not an idol, in the place of Christ. It is in principle, judaizing which Paul so strenuously objected to and condemned in Galatians. It is to add something to the gospel, which the gospel replaced. It is a contradiction in terms, no matter how sincerely, ignorantly or even enthusiastically proposed.

The relevant NT verses include:

Galatians 4:3 Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:
4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
5 To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
7 Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
8 Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.
9 But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?
10 Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.

Colossians 2:14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. . . .
16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:
17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
18 Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,
19 And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.
20 Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,
21 (Touch not; taste not; handle not;
22 Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men?
23 Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.

An Invented Yoke
Gillespie says Paul finds fault with the Galatians for observing days, and gives them two reasons against them;

the one (v.3), They were a yoke of bondage which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear; another (v.9), They were weak and beggarly rudiments, not beseeming the Christian church, which is liberated from the pedagogical instruction of the ceremonial law. . . The yoke of bondage of Christians in respect of feasts, is heavier than the yoke of the Jews, not only for multitude of them, but because the feast days of the Christians, were established by men only, but those of the Jews by God, says Hospinian. Have not we then reason to exclaim against our holidays, as a yoke of bondage, heavier than that of the Jews, for that our holidays are men's inventions, and so were not theirs? (Dispute, pp.37, 40, emph. added)

But to listen to Mr. Schlissel, it is the RPW that is the invention and tradition of men, not the post NT Christian feastdays. Funny, that. The OT calendar touted by Mr. Schlissel was an unbearable yoke and a weak and beggarly instruction in the school of the OT that Christianity has graduated from. Gillespie asks why submit or return to it in distinct contrast to the recommendations of our NYC scholar, who urges it as mark of piety and Christian maturity. Who are we to believe and why?

Shadow or Substance?
Of Colossians 2, Gillespie says,

Two other reasons the Apostle gives in this place against festival days; one (v.17), What should we do with the shadow, when we have the body? Another (v.20), Why should we be subject to human ordinances, since through Christ we are dead to them, and have nothing ado with them? Now, by the same reasons are all holidays to be condemned, as taking away Christian liberty; and so, that which the Apostle says does militate as well against them as against any other holidays (Dispute, p.37).

Gillespie says the issue is shadow versus substance and human ordinances versus Christ's. The choice should be clear. If Mr. Schlissel is going to insist on a day of thanksgiving, he will have to find something other than the OT calendar of feastdays to base it upon. Of course, part of his problem is again, that he confuses an occasional extraordinary thanksgiving or fast with a once a year annual/automatic feastday.

Christian Liberty
All this, not to mention, in the imposition of such feastdays is also an imposition on Christian liberty. In other words, the exact same which Mr. Schlissel has asserted; that the RPW is an imposition on Christian liberty in its capacity as an ecclesiastical Bureau of Weights and Standards. We think rather that the principle of Potiphar's wife (Gen. 39:7-18) applies: "Always accuse your opponent of what you yourself are really guilty of doing". At least it worked for her and it still seems to work for Mr. Schlissel.

Back to Elementary School
Calderwood says in Perth Assembly,

Converted Jews may not lawfully observe the Jewish festivities, even as remembrances of bygone benefits. In every respect all their anniversary days are abolished, and they had none other, but such as were abolished. Therefore in every respect they belonged to the ceremonial Law. The observation therefore of anniversary days even in respect of remembrance was to the Jews pedagogical, rudimentary and elementary, and consequently ceremonial (pp.99, 100, emph. added).

He concludes by asking: "If the Jews had no anniversary solemnities to endure after Christ's coming, when they should be converted to Christianism, how can the observation of anniversary days by taken up by Christians (p.100)?" Indeed. If the days were fulfilled in Christ "in whom is all treasure of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3)", they do not need to be replaced, much more what can replace them better than Christ?

The answer, according to Mr. Schlissel, is the observation of weak and beggarly days such as an annual Day of Thanksgiving, which only means the "pedagogical, rudimentary and elementary" lessons of the OT feastdays have gone unlearned. While there are some these days who think the nation's chief executive needs to produce his birth certificate, we might count ourselves satisfied with a glimpse of Mr. Schlissel's GED, never mind a certificate of graduation from any correspondence Bible school he has attended, barring any in Brooklyn which largely major in chutzpah, brass and hot air.

Again, while the same covenant of grace was administered in the Old as in the New, neither are the dispensations identical nor is the ceremonial worship and law fulfilled in Christ, carried over and repeated in the Christian church (WCF 7:5,6). Unless thou art a Judaizer, which is exactly what the problem is. Mr. Schlissel is not content to let bygones be bygones and that which is nailed to the cross, to remain there in his zeal to justify the American national holiday of Thanksgiving. He must indulge in judaizing in order to preserve his argument for more turkey and pumpkin pie, which in some community churches in Brooklyn seems to be considered quite the holy meal.

VI. The Lord's Day or Christmas Day?
If all this were not enough and having by and large left any reasonable or historically recognizable reformed version of a doctrine of worship and occasional and extraordinary days of prayer and thanksgiving long behind, Mr. Schlissel confuses things even more. After setting up annual days apart from the divinely mandated Christian sabbath, the next temptation is that of essentially considering them more important that the Lords Day. He tells us:

All these factors and forces have brought us to the present day, where the most interesting outcome has to be this picture: the offspring of earnest RPW-ites now finding themselves in the embarrassing (but instructive) position of having to argue in favor of the explicit celebration of Christmas.

We don’t know what or who he is really talking about, but we suppose there are some of little faith among those who adhere to the RPW of historic reformed theology, who might have been stampeded into a last ditch attempt to justify Christmas in order to save it from being throttled by the secular humanist minions of the ACLU, intent as they are on cleansing the nation and its calendar of any whiff of Christianity.

Note well though what Mr. Schlissel silently assumes and deceitfully forbears to mention. The battle for the Lord’s Day, if it is that, has already been conceded. Or would Mr. Schlissel spend as much time and effort defending the Lord’s Day, in or out of the church as he does Christmas and Thanksgiving? That is the real issue, if not that the Scripture says far more about observing the Lord's Day than about Christmas, which is not so much as even named in Scripture nor do we see any approved example thereof. In other words, we have the NT example of Christ and the apostles in regard to observing the Fourth commandment on the first day of the week or the arguable post NT judaizing appeal to ceremonial law for Thanksgiving. Choose you this day, which day is more biblical or apostolic?

The Really Special Secular Days
Still if nobody else will say so, we live in a day and age that grubs money, leisure and pleasure and not necessarily in that order 48 hours a day, 7 days a week. The only time things might get shut down for a rest is on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and maybe New Years, so that “Our Employees may Spend The Holiday at Home With Their Families” as the sign for the store hours usually and so sanctimoniously tells us. How considerate. That is, after all, one of the reasons for the one day in seven sabbath given in the Old Testament. So that the help, the servants or what we now call employees, could get a day off.

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou (Deut. 5:14).

Or does Mr. Schlissel call the trade off between one day a week and three or four days a year an even Stephen deal, sort of like giving the LGBT Brigade an Equal Opportunity to bash the Seventh Commandment just as he bashes the Second? We think not.

Again, basically the way things work in the national American counterfeit religion, albeit civil, if you can show up on one or all of these three holydays of Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving – at any church, temple or synagogue – like a parking ticket, your sanctimonious and civil religious credentials will be validated as good for another year. Sad to say more than a few Christian churches go along with this charade and confirm it in word and practice, even P&R churches.

In other words to paraphrase Mr. Schlissel, the real situation that obtains in America is ‘Except for these three high Holy days, the calendar is left pretty bone-picked clean of Lord’s Days”. Indeed it is, however much Mr. Schlissel heroically ignores it. And that despite the fact that in contrast to much of evangelicalism, P&R churches observe these days along side the Lord’s Day, not as a substitute for them. Yet as per Gillespie, they are neither necessary, expedient, lawful or indifferent; much more they inevitably tend to displace the Lord's Day, if not overwhelm it in attention and focus.

VII. Reformed or Deformed Maturity?
Mr. Schlissel also picks up the theme of maturity:

"All of this was to say, since we found that God is pleased to treat us as mature children of His, allowing us to exercise discretion and measured judgment in selecting which holidays we’ll celebrate and, within abiding parameters, just how we’ll celebrate them. . . .

Again, there are those who glory in their shame and those who glory in what they mistake for their glory, their maturity in Christ. Mr. Schlissel is in the latter camp. That Christian maturity, might consist in refusing to add to the one day in seven that Christ has given his church in order to worship, praise and thank him and a mechanically observed Thanksgiving Day at that, in which – as even Mr. Schlissel acknowledges - many are hard pressed to know who they are thanking for what, entirely escapes Mr. Schlissel. Yet if ignorance is the mother of devotion in the Roman church, does Mr. Schlissel intend to argue for joining and receiving with the same? One might wonder.

The locus classicus for Christian liberty is Roman 14. In part it reads:

Romans 14:1 Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations.
2 For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs.
3 Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him.
4 Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.
5 One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.
6 He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.

Only For A Limited Time

Gillespie says:

For whereas it might be thought that the Apostle does not condemn all holidays, because he both permits others to observe days (Rom.14:5), and he himself also did observe one of the Jewish feasts (Act 18:21), it is easily answered, that our holidays have no warrant from these places . . . that which the Apostle either said or did here[about], is to be expounded and understood of bearing with weak Jews, whom he permitted to esteem one day above another, and for whose cause he did, in his own practice, thus far apply himself to their infirmity at that time when they could not possibly be as yet fully and thoroughly instructed concerning Christian liberty, and the abrogation of the ceremonial law, because the gospel was not yet propagated; and when the Mosaical rites were like a dead man not yet buried, as Augustine's simile runs. So that all this can make nothing more for holidays after the full promulgation of the gospel, and after that the Jewish ceremonies are not only dead, but also buried, and so deadly to be used by us. Hence it is that the Apostle will not bear with the observation of days in Christian churches who have known God, as he speaks (pp. 37,8, emph. added).

If appeal is made to Rom. 14, Gillespie says it was only for a time and only for weak Jews and not an example for Christians after the transition from the old economy was complete and 'the Jewish ceremonies dead and buried'. when the gospel had fully come. Mark that. Rom. 14 is not an argument for mature believers to do as they please, if not in other words, what Mr. Schlissel mistakes as maturity is rather weakness and simpleness on his part to insist on liberty to choose which day he will observe: Either a day fulfilled in Christ and so contradict Christ, or a day of thanksgiving which ignores the manifest signs of the times and the judgement of God over our heads that calls instead for a solemn day of prayer.

Further, while we are free of the law for justification, we are not free to disregard the law for sanctification in exercising our maturity to observe the ceremonial law or what we substitute in its place after it has been fulfilled in Christ. Again, Mr. Schlissel mistakes a judaizing and weak believer for the mature. 1 Timothy 1:6,7 tells us that "some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm". Sadly the same could still be said of Mr. Schlissel. He has turned aside from the orthodox reformed understanding of the ceremonial law in the NT and thinks it the height of maturity to engage in judaizing, which is far from an occasion to give thanks as one can get.

VIII. Holy or Hypocritical?

Last, but not least Mr. Schlissel informs us that:

Thanksgiving is also unique because . . . it seems to . . . create a true feeling of specialness, which is, after all, the essential component of the sacred. To have a sense of sacredness penetrate into this pseudo-secular culture of fraud is a positive triumph of God in Christ.

True feeling of specialness? Pseudo secular? But no mention of pseudo-spiritual? Because that is essentially what Mr. Schlissel advocates, a pseudo-spiritual "will worship and a voluntary humility (cp. Col.2:18, 23)" according to his own standards, if not an outmoded and judaizing OT calendar. Rather it is God who determines and sets aside something as holy.

Sacred Or Superstitious Inventions?
Gillespie quoting Knox says, "It is not enough that man invent a ceremony, and then give it a signification according to his pleasure; for so might the ceremonies of the Gentiles, and this day the ceremonies of Mahomet be maintained. But if that anything proceed from faith it must have the word of God for the assurance etc. (Dispute, p.250)." If "faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Rom. 10:17)", moreover "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin (Rom. 14:23)", what does that say about Schlissel's "true feeling of specialness" other than it is arbitrary, emotional and subjective, as well as contrary to Scripture and as a consequence, sin.

Calderwood says in Perth Assembly, "It remaineth therefore that it is the Lord's sovereignty to make or ordain a thing to be holy" and quotes Musculus to say,

If any man shall attempt to make holy at his pleasure the things God has not Sanctified, is not only Superstitious, but challengeth unto himself, that which belongs only to God. When God blesseth and sanctfieth a day, then may man look for a blessing in sanctifying it . . .to esteem one day holier than another, not so discerned by the Lord's commandment must be also Judaical. . . . Not Christ's action on a day, but his institution maketh a day holy. . . Christ's institution maketh a day holy (pp.94,9, 109,10).

A fraudulent, if not hypocritical and Judaical Superstitious observation of a Day of Thanksgiving, like what is observed in America doesn’t quite fit the bill for holiness no matter how much Mr. Schlissel might try to establish or assert it a “positive triumph in Christ”. How can it be when he doesn't even mention, much more demonstrate the error of the historic confessional position of the reformed church in the past on special days of prayer and thanksgiving, if not even more so the national signs of the times all around us that declare the complete opposite: imminent judgements notoriously deserved, as he himself previously has noticed? What does this demonstrate, but Mr. Schlissel's vicious, as in corrupted, incompetence to the question, whether genuinely naive or duplicitiously malicious?

Conclusion
Again it is not that Mr. Schlissel is less than capable writer or lacks a colorful imagination; it is not that he hasn’t demonstrated some competence and intelligence, even a modicum of astute rhetorical cleverness. Rather the problem is that he continues to demonstrate an inexcusable lack of due diligence in researching the true character of something, even before he tries to debunk it and replace with his very own genuine substitute; in the question at hand, as it concerns the historic confessional RPW and the annual American Day of Thanksgiving.

But those who would be teachers, are held to a higher accountability (Jm. 3:1), even more lest they be counted false teachers, if not false prophets. Mr. Schlissel would be very wise to continue to stuff himself with turkey and refrain from pontificating in the pulpit or print, if he cannot sufficiently sacrifice his pride to publicly retract his public errors; to stop talking with his mouth so full of patent mischaracterizations and lapses in Scripture, history and reason if he doesn’t care to do justice to the topic, much more desist from perjuring himself.

The truth of the whole matter, explicit and implicit about the RPW and the further distinction between occasional extraordinary days of Solemn Fasting and Public Thanksgiving and our national rote nominal copy of the same is too important to leave to those who would abuse the truth and their office, much more their readers and listeners, as well as again, Scripture, history and reason in order to justify their compromised and confused opinions on the question.

In other words: "A fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding". Even in Brooklyn. Likewise: "A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself (cf. Prov. 17:28, 18:2)". Even in Brooklyn. Unfortunately Mr. Schlissel's bona fides regarding the latter are in first class condition.

Mr. Schlissel's opinions when weighed in the balance of Scripture are only found wanting. He is nothing more than one of those prophets who prophesy falsely, while the people love to have it so. In the day that the Lord GOD of hosts calls at least his church, to weeping, mourning, and sackcloth, the best Mr. Schlissel can do is plump for joy and gladness, the slaying of oxen, and killing of sheep, along with the eating of turkey and pumpkin pie while sloshing down the rum eggnog (cp. Jer. 8:11, Is. 22:12, 13), with or without "feelings of true specialness".

Mr. Schlissel's comments betray him to be a light and treacherous person, who has seen vain and foolish things that prevent him from discovering the iniquities of church and state. Consequently if the church chooses to follow Mr. Schlissel, as the American church largely does, at least by default, if not willfully, the Lord hath a controversy with Judah and will punish Jacob according to his ways (cp. Zeph. 3:4, Lam. 2:14 and Hos. 121:2).

Very possibly such a church deceived by and engaged in this kind of compromise will have to go into captivity; perhaps at the hands of the Holy Federal Government or even Mohammed, the eastern antichrist, if not both, in order to wake up and repent of her backsliding. God willing one way or another, the American church will soon forswear Mr. Schlissel's erroneous opinions and its counterfeit Thanksgiving.

Addendum on the Free Offer

2009-01-11T23:26:00.000-08:00

[revised 2/22/09]
As per the previous post, what is at issue in the disagreement over the free offer of the gospel, is whether God "desires" the salvation of the reprobate in any other than a preceptive sense. In other words, if God really desired all men to repent and believe in Christ, it would be a done deal. What God desires must come to pass, for God has no unfulfilled desires or intentions. But such is not the case. So what is the explanation? While it pleases God that men repent and believe the gospel, his secret will or decree is not that the salvation of all men comes to pass. Nevertheless the gospel is to be preached -offered- to all men and salvation promised to all who believe on Christ.

Nevertheless, there are some, pre-eminently John Murray and those who follow the OPC Majority Report, who would insist that the free offer of the gospel is indicative of God's desire for the salvation of the reprobate that is neither preceptive or decretive. It belongs neither to God's precept/command or decree. Supposedly, as per R. S. Clark's new preface to the Report authored by Murray, Stonehouse and Kuschke, what is at issue is the distinction between archetypal and ectypal theology. That is, in that the infinite God cannot really be known by finite man, God's knowledge of himself is not the same thing as what man knows of God through Scripture. There necessarily must be some difference between God's archetypal knowledge of himself and man's ectypal knowledge of God. Hence to deny the free offer is to deny an unfulfilled and archetypal desire - or even "paradox" - regarding the salvation of the reprobate. From there, it is only a small jump to denying the archetypal/ectypal distinction in general which is fundamental to classic reformed theology, and which has only recently been discovered again in our day. Ergo, the argument and justification for Murray's Free Offer.

Opponents of the Murray version or read of the free offer, find this confusing, if unscriptural and contradictory as per Young in the previous post or the OPC Minority Report (scroll down). One, if something is archetypal, by definition it is unknowable. Two, the reformed faith has always affirmed that God is serious in his promise or offer of salvation to all who believe in Christ, but it does not necessarily follow that because God freely promises salvation to all who believe on Christ, that God loves or desires the salvation of the reprobate in other than a preceptive sense. To insist otherwise might be considered irrational (contra the charge of rationalism of those who disagree with Murray) as per the appeal to "paradox" in that the Scripture is consistent and the parts of it are in consent with the whole of revelation. While there are things hard to be understood in it, that is not to say it is impossible to understand Scripture, if not that many of the reformed orthodox that held to the archetypal/ectypal distinction such Calvin, Turretin or Owen, arguably do not agree with Murray's version of the free offer and its exegesis and exposition of Scripture.

Further the disagreement has its roots in a controversy involving Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til in the 1940's, with Murray advocating Van Til's point of view. As such the issue is somewhat perennial in its appearance, with its latest mention perhaps being R.S. Clark's again, in his Recovering the Reformed Confession (RRC). Clark diagnoses the afflictions of the contemporary presbyterian and reformed churches to be two: the Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty (QIRC) and the the Quest for Illegitimate Religious Experience (QUIRE). Denial of the Murray/OPC version of the free offer of the gospel, along with a mischaracterization of the controversy surrounding advocacy of the Authorized/King James Bible (conveniently without any mention of the Textus Receptus or WCF 1:8 on providential preservation) are both seen as examples of QIRC and damned in passing (pp.41,39) before he moves on to criticizing 24 hour creation days, theonomy/reconstructionism and covenant moralism, better known as federal vision theology, in Chapt. 2 of RRC. (Go here for the table of contents and chapter one.) He continues in Chapt. 4 (pp.119-151) to emphasize the recovery of the archetypal/ectypal distinction as fundamental to recovering the historic and confessional theology, piety and practice of the reformed churches. Yet while the archetypal/ectypal distinction is important in its own right, Clark's application of it to Murray's version of the free offer of the gospel does not necessarily follow. Of that, more to come DV.

The Free Offer of the Gospel - Dr. William Young

2009-01-04T19:46:00.000-08:00

[While the OPC Minority Report on Songs in Worship (1946) written by John Murray and Wm. Young advocating psalmody is well known in P&R circles, what might not be so well known is that Wm. Young also wrote the OPC Minority Report on the Free Offer of the Gospel (1948) to Murray and Stonehouse's OPC Majority Report, both found here. What follows below is a further analysis and critique of the free offer theology by William Young according to the OPC Majority Report (updated 1/11/09).]

The Free Offer of the Gospel

In some Calvinistic circles there is an identification of the free offer of the gospel with an alleged desire that all who are called externally should be saved. Those who fail to find Scripture warrant for such a claim are sometimes regarded as denying the gospel offer and even the gospel itself. It should be pointed out that there are ambiguities in the claim itself.
Some who are well-instructed Calvinists may use the word "desire" to mean nothing other than the revealed will of God in the commands, promises and invitations of the gospel. Others appear literally to suppose a frustrated desire as an emotion in God in tension with the decree to save the elect. This article seeks to show that the second of these understandings is unwarranted in the teaching of Scripture and contrary to the understanding of the revealed Word in the Westminster Confession.

We may first summarize the Scripture and Confessional doctrine as to the free offer. It may be observed that the word "offer" is not used in Scripture in connection with the gospel call, while it does so appear in the Westminster Standards (Westminster Confession of Faith 7:3; Larger Catechism 32, 67f.; Shorter Catechism 31, 86). The term, when used by those who subscribe to these standards, must be used in the Scriptural sense intended by the Westminster divines and not as implying ability in unrenewed free-will to comply with the offer. In view of the widespread prevalence of Arminian and Amyraldian views of universal grace and redemption, some Calvinists may prefer not to use the term, while heartily holding to its sense as it has been used by sound Presbyterian and Puritan divines. Such ought not to be scornfully called Hyper-Calvinists, although the term "offer" may be profitably used in its proper sense.

What then may be said to be the Biblical teaching that the subordinate standards designate as the free offer? Passages setting forth the gracious invitations of the gospel as Isaiah 55:1ff. and Matthew 11:28 at once come to mind. Reflection on these texts gives rise to the questions: Is it meant that those that thirst, that are weary and heavy laden, represent all sinners, indiscriminately, or are they such as have been brought to some awareness of their need? The Westminster Standards do not pronounce on this matter of exegesis, and admit of a difference of judgment on it. That the gospel offer is universal is clearly taught in other texts, in which the commandment to repent and believe is issued (Acts 17:30; 1John 3:23) and the promise of eternal salvation is made to those who obey the commandment (John 3:16; 6:37b; Acts 16:31). The command to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is followed by the promise of salvation. This sufficiently explains the sincerity of the gospel offer without adding the supposition of a divine desire in back of the command and promise. Indeed, even on the level of human procedures, there may be offers made with good reason without the desire of their reception being the ground of the offer. Much more are the procedures of infinite wisdom to be accepted without prying into reasons that have not been revealed, and least of all, inventing such as are contrary to revelation.

The Westminster standards use very general expressions in referring to the gospel offer in an incidental manner. In the covenant of grace God "freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ" (WCF 7:3). The following words "requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved" are naturally read as in apposition, explaining the nature of the offer. The promise to give the Holy Spirit to the elect is a promise to the Redeemer - not an element of the offer, but what provides the faith required in it. Larger Catechism (L.C.) 32 makes the same points. L.C.67 speaks of those effectually called as invited and drawn, and concludes with the words "to accept and embrace the grace offered and conveyed" in the call. L.C.68 definitely speaks of grace offered to non-elect persons, while in L.C.67 the invitation seems to be restricted to those who are drawn in God's accepted time. The offer rejected by some to their final ruin can hardly be said to be made in "God's accepted time" in the Catechism's evident sense of the time of love in effectual calling. It may be argued that L.C.67 is simply not dealing with the non-elect, the case of whom is the subject of L.C.68. A fair conclusion is that the universality of the invitation may be held consistently with the Larger Catechism but is not required by it or elsewhere in the standards. The very brief expressions in Shorter Catechism 31 and 86 add nothing to the above. What does add to the authentic Confessional doctrine is the 1903 addition of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in its Chapter 35, Of the Love of God and Missions: "In the Gospel God declares His love for the world and His desire that all men should be saved..." The purpose of the 1903 additions to the Confession of the P.C.U.S.A., as was the case with the similar Declaratory Act of the Free Church of Scotland in 1892, was to facilitate union with an Arminianising denomination, which had abandoned explicitly in the former instance and implicitly in the latter, the Calvinistic doctrines of the eternal decree and of particular redemption.

Why should objections be raised against the insisting on holding the desire on God's part that the reprobate should be saved? Before a number of reasons are mentioned it should be pointed out that no criticism is intended to be directed against those who mean by such a desire nothing other than the revealed will of God in the gospel offer itself. Objection is raised against the confusions noted below that have repeatedly led to the compromising and denial of the sovereign grace of God.

1. The above remark suggests that the ascription of such a desire to God is often not simply a way of expressing the will of command, but is supposed to be something behind the command, a will in-between the command and the decree, a weak though ardent wish that can be frustrated and is frustrated in the case of many. Surely, no Calvinist can desire to ascribe such a desire to the Most High, although the devotees of free will have invented an antecedent will in God distinct from the consequent will of the final decree. If one cares, like John Howe, to speak of a complacential will, and means only that God is pleased whenever His precepts are obeyed, no objection need be raised as long as there is not confusion with the supposed antecedent will under the cover of the word "desire".

2. A second source of confusion is the failure to recognize the use of anthropopathic language in Scripture passages that represent God's actions as if they expressed passions like our own. No Christian holding the Bible to be free of contradiction can suppose that the Lord literally repents or regrets his own work of creation (Genesis 6:6,7). The same way of speaking after the manner of men applies to God's desire as expressed in Psalm 81:14. It is a gross abuse of language when, not as homiletical hyperbole, but as a dogmatic formulation, human passions, often called emotions, are ascribed to God. Such a view is in conflict with the Confession of Faith, which declares God to be "a most pure Spirit, ... without body, parts, or passions," based on Acts 14:11,15. The error is intensified when a questionable threefold faculty psychology is misapplied further, by representing God in the image of man, with emotions as well as intellect and will, and then arguing as if an emotional desire caused the will which is revealed in the free offer. Such prying into the secret things along with the obscuring of what has been revealed ought to be eschewed by all who reverently tremble at the Word of God.

3. That the desire is not simply meant as an anthropomorphic mode of emphasizing the revealed will becomes evident when the assertion is made that it is an instance of a deep paradox or antinomy not resolvable by logic. In the fact that God has decreed to save only some, but has commanded the gospel to be proclaimed indiscriminately to all, there is no contradiction, but simply the difference between God's decree and his preceptive will. Why such a command is given may well be beyond our powers to fathom at least in this life, but there need not be an apparent, much less a real contradiction to those who are well instructed by the Word and Spirit of God. But to search behind the revealed will in the gospel offer for a divine inclination to save those who have been foreordained to everlasting wrath, can only appear to be ascribing a real contradiction in the will of God. The common evasion that this is only an apparent contradiction to us but not a real contradiction to God is nothing other than Kierkegaard's own thesis as to the absolute paradox. It is not the historic position of Reformed theology.

It has been claimed that the alleged desire is actually revealed in Scripture. Those who fail to find it there have been accused of having their minds made up and ignoring the analogy of Scripture. May it not be retorted that a person with universalistic prejudices comes to the Bible determined to prove that God wants all to be saved and either ignores the passages that teach divine sovereignty in salvation, or explains them away or seeks refuge in Irrationalism? Certainly the whole teaching of the Word is to be listened to, and listening means first the use of reason in understanding what God has said, while the limits of that understanding are recognized. The real question here is whether Scripture actually teaches the universalistic view in texts such as 2 Peter 3:9, Ezekiel 33:11 and Matthew 23:37.

That the Lord is not willing that any should perish, if understood of all men can only be taken of the will of command, and teaches nothing as to a desire or wish. The verb often, as the related noun, signifies, however, the determinate counsel of God. The context also, strongly supports a restriction of "any" and "all" to the elect. The long-suffering of God is to us-ward or to you-ward, i.e., those addressed as beloved in a judgment of charity. Longsuffering is not only toward the reprobate in Romans 9:22 (cf. 2:4), curiously cited to support a love toward salvation directed to such as have been indicated to have been hated (verse 15). That these verses may not legitimately be cited as providing a parallel to 2 Peter 3:9, is clear from the explicit reference to the elect as objects of the divine longsuffering in Luke 18:7. The broader context of 2 Peter 3 confirms the particularist view of the passage. Why does the second coming of Christ seem to be delayed? Because in the longsuffering of God the elect, who sometimes long resist the gospel overtures, must all be made willing in the day of God's power before they stand before the throne on the great day.

In Ezekiel 33:11 as in 18:23,32, while the Hebrew verb may be translated by "desire," the rendering "have no pleasure" gives the proper sense, i.e. the Lord is pleased when the wicked repents, and is not pleased when he does not. The text does not assert that the Lord is pleased that the wicked should repent even when he does not. If the latter is given the sense that repentance as such is always approved by God, this truth could imply that God is pleased that the devil should repent. But surely no sober Christian would want to say that God desires the salvation of Satan. The general remark that the non-literal anthropomorphic ascription of desire is unobjectionable in itself applies also to these passages. But the widespread representation of this desire as an intention aiming at the salvation of all renders the expression undesirable, especially when the desire is viewed as an irrational urge. These passages powerfully present the sinner's duty, while they do not treat of his ability to obey or of the Lord's secret counsels. Nor is there a valid reason for supposing a contradiction implied between the will of decree and what is pleasing to God.

It is worthy of note that Matthew 23:37 is commonly misquoted as if it read, "how often would I have gathered you ... and ye would not." The text does not make a contrast between the Lord's will and the wills of those whom he would gather, but between his compassion for Jerusalem's children and the opposition of their leaders who have been denounced in the preceding passage. The sympathy of the Saviour is the expression of his humanity which he assumed in order that he might become a High Priest that could be touched with a feeling of our infirmities. To draw inferences as to what his divine nature might be in back of this distinctive feature of his sacred humanity is surely unwarrantable speculation into what has not been revealed.

To combine these passages and to add texts like Matthew 5:45 which do not refer to the way of salvation, but common mercies like rain and sunshine, is hardly to present cumulative evidence for a thesis nowhere plainly taught in Scripture, and contrary to Scripture when intended to conflict with the immutability of God's counsel. The accumulation of a series of zeros, however elaborated, is, after all, only zero.

The desire to avoid extremes in declaring the truth is no doubt commendable, but yielding to the tempting claims of the opposite extreme even in minor matters has proved repeatedly in the history of the Church to be a step in the downward path to apostasy. The rampant evils of Arminianism among Evangelicals and Amyraldianism among Calvinists are only encouraged by adopting and even stressing the pet slogans with which they attack or obscure the doctrines of grace. Strangely, one favorite text of those who have throughout the history of Christianity insisted that God wants all men to be saved is not appealed to at present by Calvinists who use such expressions. Can it be that they realize that to take 1 Timothy 2:4 in a universalistic sense requires understanding verses 5 and 6 to teach a universal atonement, even if the will in 2:4 were taken as simply the will of command? Exegetically, as well as systematically, the thesis of Amyraldian universal grace issues in the assertion of universal redemption.

The "War Against Christmas" on Thursday, December 25, 1551 in Geneva

2009-01-04T19:39:00.000-08:00

In a day when both the West and Christianity are under attack in various ways and under various guises, such as multi-culturalism or political correctness, it might be well to remember, that all that glitters is not gold. In other words, not all that passes for Christianity is exactly that. We think this applies to what some call "The War Against Christmas" in certain conservative, nominally Christian or even evangelical circles. To that end, an excerpt from a sermon preached on Micah 5:7-14 by the great Reformer of Geneva, John Calvin on December 25th, 1551.

. . . Now I see here today more people than I am accustomed to having at the sermon. Why is that? It is Christmas day. And who told you this? You poor beasts. That is a fitting euphemism for all of you who have come here today to honor Noel. Did you think you would be honoring God? Consider what sort of obedience to God your coming displays. In your mind, you are celebrating a holiday for God, or turning today into one. But so much for that. In truth, as you have often been admonished, it is good to set aside one day out of the year in which we are reminded of all the good that has occurred because of Christ's birth in the world, and in which we hear the story of his birth retold, which will be done Sunday. But if you think that Jesus Christ was born today, you are as crazed as wild beasts. For when you elevate one day alone for the purpose of worshiping God, you have just turned it into an idol. True, you insist that you have done so for the honor of God, but is more for the honor of the Devil.
Let us consider what our Lord has to say on the matter. Was it not Saul's intention to worship God when he spared Agag, the king of the Amalekites, along with the best of the spoils and cattle? He says as much: "I want to worship God." Saul's tongue was full of devotion and good intention. But what was the response he received? "You soothsayer! You heretic! You apostate! You claim to be honoring God, but God rejects you and disavows all that you have done" [see 1 Sam. 15:8-9]. Consequently, the same is true of our actions. For no day is superior to another. It matters not whether we recall our Lord's nativity on a Wednesday, Thursday, or some other day. But when we insist on establishing a service based on our whim, we blaspheme God, and create an idol; though we have done it all in the name of God. And when you worship God in the idleness of a holiday spirit, that is a heavy sin to bear, and one which attracts others about it, until we reach the height of iniquity. Therefore, let us pay attention to what Micah is saying here, that God must not only strip away things that are bad in themselves, but must also eliminate anything that might foster superstition. Once we have understood that, we will no longer find it strange that Noel is not being observed today, but that on Sunday we will celebrate the Lord's Supper and recite the story of the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ. But all those who barely know Jesus Christ, or that we must be subject to him, and that God removes all those impediments that prevent us from coming to him, these folk, I say, will at best grit their teeth. They came here in anticipation of celebrating a wrong intention, but will leave with it wholly unfulfilled.
In light of this holy doctrine, let us prostrate ourselves before the face of our gracious God, in acknowledgment of our faults. . . . (Sermons on the Book of Micah, trans. Farley, P&R, 2003, pp.303,4).

It is true the pendulum swung back and forth in Geneva. The ecclesiastical holidays were abolished at the first reformation of Geneva in 1536 by the civil magistrate, but were brought back in when Calvin, Farel and Corauld were exiled in 1538. Upon Calvin's return in 1541 there was some modification, again by the civil government, but it was not until 1550 that the days were outlawed again, though the birth of Christ was the subject of the sermon on the Lord's Day following the 25th of December. (The reader may consult Geo. Gillespie's Dispute Against English-Popish Ceremonies (1637, rpt. 1993, Naphtali, I:9) to see his handling of Calvin's position on the day itself versus the ruling of the civil government due to the arguable ambiguities contained in Calvin's correspondence.)

Still, for presbyterians, the answer to the question is quite clear in “AN APPENDIX, Touching Days and Places for Publick Worship” to the Westminster Assembly's Directory for the Publick Worship:

There is no day commanded in scripture to be kept holy under the gospel but the Lord's day, which is the Christian Sabbath.
Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.

In other words, the Scripture saith, Remember the Sabbath, not Santa Claus; Christ's resurrection, not Christmas.

The WCF Into the 21st Century:

2008-10-26T21:32:00.000-07:00

But Not Without Confusion on the Regulative Principle of Worship, Psalmody and Musical Accompaniment.
(From a Dec. 2005 review revised, corrected and updated through 2/1/09)

A Long Overdue Review in Part
of:
The Westminster Confession of Faith in the 21st Century, Essays in Remembrance of the 350th Anniversary of the Westminster Assembly,
Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, (Vol. 1, 2003, 443 pages), Vol. 2, 2004, 540 pages.

This symposium on the Westminster Confession of Faith flows from the 350th anniversary of the 1643 Assembly at Westminster Abbey. While the actual lectures given at that commemoration in 1994 are perhaps better known (See To Enjoy and Glorify God, BoT, 1994), the introduction to the WCF in the 21st Century (WCF21) tells us that the purpose of the essays enclosed is to inform, challenge, evaluate and commend the Assembly and its theology to today’s church (p.x), a most (note) worthy goal. While not outstanding, on the whole the two volumes are worthwhile. Particularly in the second volume, the focus of this review, Ryken on the pastoral ministry of Oliver Bowles, the oldest member of the Assembly and J.L. Duncan, the series editor, on the consensus between Calvin and the Westminster Assembly regarding the Lord’s Supper are good efforts. (Unfortunately the proposed translation of Bowles’ Puritan classic on the pastoral ministry, A Treatise on the Evangelical Pastor is on hold.)

Drs. Kelly and Needham
That said, the essays by Drs. Kelly and Needham on the Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW) - the good and necessary consequences of the Second Commandment as confessed in the reformed catechisms and creeds - and its application to the singing of psalms and musical instruments in worship, fall short of the mark and leave much to be desired, if not that their shortcomings should corrected in the planned third volume. Of the two, Needham’s is by far the longest, if not the centerpiece of all the essays in WCF21 at 116 pages with the next closest in length being Fesko’s 50 pages on Calvin, the Confession and supra/infralapsarianism, while Kelly's at 36 pages is seventh of fourteen articles and about average in length.

General Error and Negligence

Whatever their respective lengths though, the general error of Kelly and Needham is a twofold negligence of the primary sources and the secondary literature.

Primary Sources
While Needham takes a stab at it, both fail to really consider the the Westminster Standards as a whole, instead of just the Confession of Faith. Nevertheless the Westminster Confession is not the only part, but rather instead, the “chiefest part (emph. added)" of that "uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of church government, directory for worship and catechising” called for in the first head of the Solemn League and Covenant (SL&C) in 1643 which gave the Assembly its charge and direction under the Long Parliament. (Previously the Assembly had only been responsible for revising the Anglican 39 Articles.) Consequently we might reasonably assume that the Assembly's Directory of Public Worship (DPW) - as well the Larger and Shorter Catechisms (LC, SC) and the Form of Church Government (FCG) - would hold up the hands of the Confession, as Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses (Ex.17:12) rather than contradict it.

Likewise, both Needham and Kelly fail to consult the historical record in the actual day to day Minutes of the Westminster Assembly (archived online) as available in print today (1874, rpt. 1991, SWRB). Though this version of the Assembly Minutes is somewhat incomplete/imperfect, it is still sufficient to throw much more light on the question of the regulative principle and its application than either essay gives us. This is even before the Westminster Assembly Project publishes a critical full edition of a transcript of the original minutes, only recently located in manuscript.

Secondary Literature
Needham and Kelly also fail entirely to mention, much more refute in substance, Michael Bushell’s Songs of Zion, A Contemporary Case for Exclusive Psalmody (C&C, 1980, 1993) which is the contemporary classic on the question, blackballed and blacklisted for all practical purposes and unanswered, if not unanswerable. Bushell is a ruling elder in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), which on the whole is not a psalm singing denomination, being the orthodox secession from the northern Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUSA) in 1936. His title however, is published by Crown & Covenant, the publishing arm of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America (RPCNA) which never left off the historic confessional presbyterian practice of singing the inspired psalms in the public worship of the church.

Further, while Needham does list Girardeau’s Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church (IMPWC, 1888, rpt. 2006, PR) in his bibliography, and agrees with it practically, but not principally, Kelly however, does not, essentially dismissing it out of hand as "basically dispensational (WCF21, p.97)". Still Girardeau’s title is the American, if not Southern Presbyterian classic on the question and was favorably reviewed by R. L. Dabney in its day (IMPWC, p.165). This is of note because the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) claims to be the continuing church of Thornwell and Dabney, separating as it did, from the old southern mainline Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) in 1973. Both Kelly and Duncan, the WCF21 editor, have close ties to the PCA and serve as professors at the Reformed Theological Seminary (WCF21, pp. 537,9), which seminary not only encouraged this symposium, but which is also closely aligned with the PCA and its strength and location is in the south where the PCA is largely located.

The Subsequent Question
Consequently, we might wonder if Needham’s essay, as well as Kelly’s, is somewhat of a sop thrown to those staunch Southern Presbyterian conservatives cum confessionalists in the PCA, who have discarded the RPW if not as well the Assembly's Directory of Public Worship and who might appear to be largely influenced by revivalism in welcoming uninspired hymns and musical instruments, as well as ecclesiastical feast days into public worship. While there has been a virtual renaissance and explosion of literature among the English speaking P&R churches in recent years, not only as regards the reformed faith, but specifically worship (see the survey "The Regulative Principle of Worship; Sixty Years in Reformed Literature (1946- 2007)", in The Confessional Presbyterian, Vol. 2, & 3), Kelly still plainly tells us:

[T]he majority of Reformed Churches today, even those professing the Westminster Confession of Faith, do not agree that the regulative principle requires either non-instrumental music or exclusive psalmody (WCF21, p. 79).

While we agree that Kelly has correctly stated the majority opinion in modern/moderate reformed churches today, and notwithstanding reasons for encouragement in those same churches (including the PCA and OPC), we cannot agree with him that this majority position is correct; that it is the majority position of presbyterian and reformed churches in history.

Of course, it is true in all this, that the Assembly divines may have been wrong on the RPW and its application for exclusive psalmody and against instrumental music, but the first question is what did they actually teach on these questions and why, before going on to necessarily disagree with it. However popular the latter is, Needham and Kelly unfortunately, unnecessarily and inexcusably only continue to promote the typical misconceptions about the Assembly, its Standards and what both approved of in worship.

I. "The Puritan Regulative Principle and Contemporary Worship
More specifically, Dr. Kelly’s “The Puritan Regulative Principle and Contemporary Worship (WCF21, II:63-98)” while not without some merit, makes a couple of fundamental errors, if not promotes some confusion:

1. Calvin and the Regulative Principle of Worship
On the one hand, early in his essay, Kelly might seem to agree with Olds and Packer, supposedly quoting Davies on the English Puritans, that the Puritans went further than Calvin, much more that the regulative principle is not found at all in Calvin's theology according to Olds. In his Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite of the 16th Century (1992), Olds denies three times that the Reformers held to the view that 'whatsoever is not commanded is forbidden in worship ' which is the popular characterization of the RPW (pp. x, 102, 283). Kelly for his part, only quotes the last two instances:

The Reformers did not intend to make a choice between 'what is not forbidden is allowed' and 'what is not commanded is not allowed.'

The principle of 'what is forbidden is allowed' as well as its opposite, 'what is not commanded is forbidden', were equally unacceptable. They were determined to find a third principle, the reform of the church 'according to God's Word' (WCF21, pp.71,72).

Later though, Kelly says that the regulative principle is taught in Calvin's theology:

Writers on the regulative principle have done serious exegetical work in establishing the canon that only what God prescribes (explicitly or implicitly) is acceptable in worship. . . . John Calvin does so, particularly in Institutes, book IV, chapter 10, and to some degree in chapter 19, as well as in “the Necessity of Reforming the Church” and “Reply to Sadoleto.

Further:

All of these theologians properly focus on the significance of the Second Commandment with its prohibition of graven images, and on such incidents as the death of Uzziah and Hadab and Abihu for tampering with God's clearly prescribed way of worship They also emphasize the significance of Christ's once-for-all Lordship and the sufficiency of Scripture, with the prohibition not to add to or take away from the divinely imposed covenant words (WCF21, p.80).

Which is it? Does or does not Calvin affirm the regulative principle? What exactly is the point of bringing up someone of the stature and reputation of Olds, who denies that the RPW is part of Calvin's theology in the first place? This blunts Kelly's affirmation of Calvin on the RPW later and would seem to be less than a clear blast on the trumpet, particularly when more time is spent on Olds and Packer's view of Calvin than Calvin himself. If nowhere else, the appendix to Brian Schwertley’s Sola Scriptura and the Regulative Principle of Worship (Reformed Witness, n.d., pp. 143-72) lists the mentions of the RPW in Calvin’s works; again if nowhere else in his commentaries on Lev. 10:1, Deut. 12:32, Jer. 7:31, Matt. 15:1 or Col. 2:22,3.

Calvin, on Jer. 7:31 and the Jews burning their children in the high places of Tophet “which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart” says:

This reason ought to be carefully noticed, for God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, “I have not commanded them”, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstition, than that they are not commanded by God: for when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to his commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship, in which they absurdly exercise themselves, would fall to the ground. . . Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying his word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet’s words then are very important, when he says, that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind; as though he had said, that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew (italics added).

Call it what you will, Calvin affirms the principle that we are to worship God according to how he has commanded us and that something is not commanded by God is sufficient to determine the question in the negative, much more is a 'perversion of true religion'.

But that is not to say, that Calvin doesn’t touch on the matter in his Sermons on 2nd Samuel 1-13 (BoT, 1992) translated by Kelly himself. In Sermon 18 on 2 Sam. 6:12-19 entitled “Humble David and Proud Michal”, Calvin says:

Now one could raise the question whether today it would be legitimate for us to follow the standard of David both in the linen ephod and in all the rest. My first response is we must always go back to the difference which our Lord has put between us and the ancient people. For otherwise, we would create terrible confusion, which would serve to corrupt and divert the worship of God. Now that depends on an even higher principle, namely, that is not for us to invent things which may occur to our fancy as a mode of worshipping God. Rather we should seek to worship him by observing what he has ordained, as has been declared previously. Therefore, it is up to God to give us the rule for worshipping him properly, and his authority is that which distinguishes between the good and the bad (p.265, italics added).

Calvin may not refer explicitly to or use the term, “the regulative principle of worship”, but the essence arguably can be found in his theology, contra Kelly who should know better rather than to damn it with faint praise as he certainly seems to do in his essay.

2. The Minutes of the Westminster Assembly and the Synagogue

More onerous than any equivocation over Calvin and the regulative principle, is Kelly's failure to establish the Westminster Assembly’s view of synagogue worship. The Minutes of the Westminster Assembly (1874, rpt. 1991, SWRB) in the debate surrounding church government, give us a record of the divines’ conclusions about the ways by which the will and appointment of Jesus Christ - jus divinum or "divine law" - is set out in Scripture. The Assembly determined that not only 'express words' and 'necessary consequences' give us God's law, but also that “Some examples show a jus divinum and the will and appointment of God”. In other words, the "good and necessary consequence" of WCF 1:6 is not a "Confessional Modification[s] of the RPW" as one of Kelly's subtitles has it following Cunningham (WCF21, p.76), it is necessarily, part and parcel included in it.

The minutes for June 1, 1646 continue further, saying:

Resolved upon the Q., The like we may say of Jews having synagogues and worshipping God in them and in particular their reading of Moses and the prophets there every Sabbath-day. . . . . . In all of which examples, as we have cause to believe that the fathers at the first had a command from God for those things whereof we now find only their example for the ground of their posterity’s like practice for many generations (pp.237,8).

The Assembly understood that not only are there explicit commands in Scripture regarding worship, there are also approved examples in Scripture of worship; examples of obedience to a divine command, though we do not have the command explicitly given to us in the Scripture. In other words, the existence and mention of the synagogue and its worship in scripture is a demonstration of the appointment and will of God for it.

This denies the contemporary pseudo P & R argument of those like Frame as quoted by Kelly (WCF21, pp. 81,2) who as notoriously latitudinarian in worship, would like to drive a wedge between the application of the RPW to the ceremonial and typical worship of the Old Testament temple and the worship of the synagogue to which the RPW does not apply at all. Rather Frame wants to relegate the synagogue worship to the realm of circumstance, in which essentially nothing is divinely commanded or required. As WCF 1:6 states, there are:

(S)ome circumstances concerning the worship of God, and 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.

Frame according to Kelly, tells us that the synagogue worship is "without a divinely revealed Directory. It is worship which simply applies the general principles of the word to various human circumstances." The problem of course, is that previously Kelly has told us that Frame interprets the regulative principle "in such a way as to allow for the possibility of drama in worship as a circumstance or "mode" of preaching (WCF21, p.79)". Who knows how far Frame will go in that not only has he cut the RPW loose of the Second Commandment (see his Worship in Spirit and Truth, 1996, pp. 37-9), but the worship of the synagogue from the RPW, as above supposedly according to WCF 1:6 regarding those "circumstances . . . common to human actions and societies" and "the general rules of the word". (We do know at this point and can gather from subsequent statements of Frame in his Doctrine of the Christian Life (pp.250-263) on pictures of Christ and the Second Commandment, that his arguments would be hard pressed to find some reason not to admit the blasphemous idolatry of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ into the reformed service of worship.)

Girardeau and Dabney's View of the Synagogue
Yet all of this could be resolved and cleared up if both Kelly and Frame would pay more attention again to Girardeau's Instrumental Music in the Worship of the Church (1888, rpt. 2006, PR) as well Dabney's favorable review of it. Therein Dabney states Girardeau's thesis:

God set up in the Hebrew Church two distinct forms of worship; the one moral, didactic, spiritual and universal, and therefore perpetual in all places and ages—that of the synagogues; the other peculiar, local, typical, foreshadowing in outward forms the more spiritual dispensation, and therefore destined to be utterly abrogate by Christ’s coming. . . . But the Christian churches were modelled upon the synagogues and inherited their form of government and worship because it was permanently didactic, moral and spiritual, and included nothing typical (pp.166,7).

Further Girardeau tells us:

In the first place, no element in the synagogue-worship was typical and temporary. This is too evident to require argument. The reading and exposition of the divine Word, hortatory addresses, the singing of psalms, and the contribution of alms, are elements of worship which cannot be regarded as types foreshadowing substantial realities to come. They belong to the class essential and permanent.

In the second place, the essential and permanent elements of worship, as fundamental to all public religious service, entered of course into the temple-worship. In this respect there was no difference between the worship of the temple and that of the synagogue (p.34).

In a word, "the essential and permanent elements of worship, as fundamental to all public religious service" were not only present in both the temple and the synagogue, they were and are divinely commanded either by express instruction, necessary consequence or approved example. That the OT ceremonial worship was more highly prescribed and typical and now discarded takes nothing away from the classic reformed view of the synagogue and its worship. Nor does it find the same to be largely circumstantial. It is moral, didactic and centered on the Word read, preached and sung. Frame's argument is only in order to throw off the confessional RPW in favor of a more popular style of worship where anything goes, be it contemporary karaoke Christian pop music or plays and skits according to the general sensibilities of whomever is the master of ceremony at the moment resulting in chaos and confusion, however much its adherents and enthusiasts might care to characterize it as freedom and liberty.

In other words, according to the Westminster divines - contra Frame as quoted by Kelly - there are not two strains of worship in the Bible, one regulated and one unregulated. Rather Frame's view as entertained by Kelly could not be more foreign from and contrary to the divines' views and is the nose of the camel in the tent in light of all those like Jordan and Schlissel who explicitly, if not implicitly follow Frame's lead on the RPW, the Second Commandment, good and necessary consequences and the example of synagogue worship and further assault reformed worship in principle and practice.

3. Psalmody
While Kelly tells us that “primary songbook of both the ancient and Reformed Church was clearly the 150 Psalms of David”, as well that “the Psalms should comprise the bulk of the church's praises (WCF21, p.96)”, he is in favor of other inspired and uninspired songs as well in public worship. Suffice it for now to note that it is a weak argument that the supposed hymnic fragments scattered through out the New Testament ought to necessarily supplement the distinct OT Book of Psalms. The inspired writers of the New Testament did not see a new inspired songbook as a necessity, otherwise the Holy Spirit would have graciously provided one. (Neither again, as above, does the RPW only apply to the OT ceremonial worship as over and against synagogue worship, which for Frame and his ilk, means that after the demise of the temple worship, we are free to sing whatever unregulated and uninspired songs we care to in the worship of God. That is when we are not dancing and miming.) Rather Calvin and other reformed theologians and churches - who we shall return to below - believed that the Psalms, as one of the most quoted books in the New Testament by Christ and the apostles, adequately prophesied and talked about the life, death, resurrection and redemption of Christ. Consequently there was no need to supplement, much more replace the Psalter as the songbook of the New Testament church.

That new revelation and redemption were opportunities for new songs and psalms in Scripture also does not necessarily mean that after the close of canon, the church can likewise institute new songs of praise. Rather it assumes that gift of charismatic inspiration necessary for the songs in the scriptural canon continues after the close of that canon, which is hardly a reformed argument or position. So too that “the saints and angels are singing a new song above” in the Book of Revelation, is hardly sufficient ground for the still to be glorified and perfected “believers below to sing new songs based on his completed work and continuing ministry (WCF21, p. 97)”. As Calvin below, this is to confuse heaven and earth.

Further the old songs of the Old Testament were new songs if sung with a regenerated spirit which enlightened one's eyes to see Christ in them. That David is the sweet psalmist of Israel lifted up on high, of whom the Holy Spirit spoke by his tongue (2Sam. 23:1,2), automatically disqualifies uninspired hymns and hymnwriters, who are lifted up nowhere as high, much more if the bulk of the church's praises is again to consist of the psalms, how can they consistently share the throne with uninspired songs without their inspiration suffering detraction?

Bushell particularly sees the argument for uninspired hymns to not only be contrary to the RPW, but also necessarily the inspiration of the divine songbook, leading to a further downgrade in the doctrine of Scripture. After quoting from Romaine's Essay on Psalmody (1775) "I want a name for that man who should pretend that he could make better hymns than the Holy Ghost. . . .", Bushell continues:

[T]he sufficiency and divine origin of the psalter are in themselves adequate arguments for its exclusive use in worship . . .[T]hat the Bible contains a book of inspired psalms immediately places worship song in the same category as the authoritative reading of the Scriptures in worship (Songs of Zion, p. 29).

There is nothing new under the sun though, and the argument that sidesteps the inspired psalter and claims that singing is on par with and has the same liberty as praying or preaching is very common even in Presbyterian and Reformed circles. We shall see it again below, when Needham essentially repeats Ian Murray on the question; that what is sung is merely a circumstance, just as the substance of the prayers or sermon in public worship. Yet in this day of what is supposed to be universal literacy, the reading of Scripture does not seem to be given its due as a distinct element of worship and singing - of the inspired psalms - is seen as the odd man out that must be necessarily lumped in with the ordinances of preaching and prayer and their accompanying liberty to depart from a strict verbatim repetition/recitation of the inspired Scripture.

4. Musical Instruments
To argue that Girardeau basically employs a dispensational argument in connecting musical instruments with the ceremonial worship of the temple which has passed away in Christ and with the coming of Pentecost by claiming as Kelly does, that there is not that much “clear cut discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments (WCF21, p. 97)”, is preposterous, if not to basically ignore Girardeau's arguments. More to the point, Kelly has previously quoted Calvin at length on his Commentary on Hebrews and Institutes 2:9-11, IV:14-17 regarding the finished work of Christ, our high priest, which, according to Kelly again, only leaves the major elements of apostolic worship in Acts 2:42 (WCF21, pp.83-86). Exactly. The ceremonial shadows and typical worship of the Old Testament temple has been finished and done away with in Christ.

For that matter, Calvin tells us pretty much the same thing, regarding 2 Sam. 6:5, as translated again by Kelly himself:

There is a difference, however, concerning the instruments of music. It would be nothing but mimicry if we followed David today in singing with cymbals, flutes, tambourines and psalteries. In fact, the papists were seriously deceived in their desire to worship God with their pompous inclusion of organs, trumpets, oboes and similar instruments. That has only served to amuse the people in their vanity, and to turn them away from the true institution which God has ordained. We must, at the same time, be aware of all the privileges which we have in common with the fathers who have lived under the Law and, on the other hand, be aware of the things wherein they are separated from us. All those things which we have in common with them are lasting, and must be maintained unto the end of the world. But we are not to keep observing these things which were only for the time of the Law, unless we want to make a confused mixture which confounds heaven with earth. In a word, the musical instruments were in the same class as sacrifices, candelabra, lamps and similar things. . . .
As I have said, we must notice that what God has instituted for the time of symbols (before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ) must be put aside and not enforced today. It is true that God ought to be heartily praised, both by musical instuments and by mouth. But it is another matter when we conduct the worship of God in church. If we want to sing praises in the name of God, we would do much better to have psalms instead of common dissolute songs. We sing in order to give him thanks - and not in order to produce a solemn ceremony as a meritorious work that we do for God. Those who take this approach are reverting to a sort of Jewishishism, as if they wanted to mingle the Law and Gospel, and thus bury our Lord Jesus Christ. When we are told that David sang with a musical instrument, let us carefully remember that we are not to make a rule of it. Rather, we are to recognize today that we must sing the praises of God in simplicity, since the shadows of the Law are past, and since in our Lord Jesus Christ we have the truth and embodiment of all these things which were given to the ancient fathers in the time of their ignorance or smallness of faith. They did not have such revelation as we have it today in the Gospel (Sermons on 2nd Samuel 1-13, pp.241,2, emph. added)

Calvin says what God instituted for the "time of symbols before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, must be put aside". "Musical instruments are in the same class as the sacrifices, candelabra, lamps" and other paraphernalia. Those things that were for the time of the Law are not to be mingled with the Gospel, unless we want to 'confound heaven and earth'. Consequently to dismiss Girardeau's statement of the classic reformed position - that if the bloody and typical sacrifices of the temple were fulfilled in Christ at Calvary, so too the musical accompaniment to those bloody sacrifices, typical of the joy of the Holy Spirit and fulfilled at Pentecost- is less than persuasive, if not rather evasive, as well that it contradicts Calvin, without a rebuttal of any real substance.

Likewise, the argument from the presence of musical instruments in the Book of Revelation proves too much. Calvin from the same passage above again says: "But we are not to keep observing these things which were only for the time of the Law, unless we want to make a confused mixture which confounds heaven with earth (p.241)". To argue from Revelation for musical instruments is to confound heaven with earth, if not the typical OT dispensation with the New. If instruments are lawful, then so too, white robes and crowns, incense and candles. In short, to resort to the ceremonial worship of the Old Testament in the New Testament era, is to judaize ala the papists whom Calvin says, have shown themselves "in every possible way to be apes without any discretion (p.242)". It is not the historic presbyterian and reformed point of view which sees the simple, plain and didactic worship of the synagogue emphasizing the reading, preaching and singing of the Word along with prayer continuing into the NT era with the addition of the two sacraments. On the other hand, the ceremonial and elaborate cult of the temple is fulfilled at Calvary and Pentecost, however much John refers to aspects of it in describing his vision of the indescribable worship of heaven in Revelation.

5. The Assembly's Directory of Worship and the Church Year
While Kelly properly and confessionally wants to see a return to the centrality of the Lord's Day in the worship of the church, which he acknowledges might make the church year superfluous(!), he also sees something to be said for Calvin's celebration of Christmas and Easter. While he recognizes Knox and the Scotch General Assembly qualified their acceptance of the Second Helvetic Confession in 1566, excepting the celebration of the six dominical holidays of Christmas, Circumcision, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost (WCF21, pp.93-6), Kelly inexcusably fails to mention that the Westminster divines were hardly silent about their opinion of what Scripture taught. “AN APPENDIX, Touching Days and Places for Publick Worship” to the Assembly's DPW clearly states that:

There is no day commanded in scripture to be kept holy under the gospel but the Lord's day, which is the Christian Sabbath.
Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.

Again the Westminster Confession is hardly self begotten, conceived in a vacuum or unaccompanied by other doctrinal standards on worship and government which categorically tell us what the Assembly's considered opinion is on the church year. While Kelly quotes Olds against the church year (WCF21, p.95), for some reason the at least historically authoritative and authentic testimony of the DPW's Appendix is entirely and again, inexcusably ignored.

Conclusion
While Kelly thankfully does major on preaching, prayer and the sacraments and advocate the recovery of the Lord’s Day or Christian Sabbath, when it comes to the confessional elements of worship, there is unfortunately more than enough unnecessary equivocation and confusion brought in on the topic of the regulative principle and its application to the synagogue, psalmody and musical accompaniment, as well as Calvin's position on it. Neither is there any appeal to the classic standards and literature on the question of feast days as for example, Gillespie’s Dispute Against English-Popish Ceremonies (1637, rpt. 1993, Naphtali), much more again Bushell on psalmody or Girardeau substantially on musical instruments. Consequently, Kelly’s effort leaves the door open for the current assault on reformed worship to continue from those at least nominally themselves within the reformed camp, such as Frame, Schlissel and Gore as regards the RPW itself, if not its application. This is unacceptable for a symposium which aims to commend the Westminster Confession and its theology to the presbyterian and reformed church of the 21st century.

II. "Westminster and Worship: Psalms, Hymns? And Musical Instruments?"
Prof. Needham’s “Westminster and Worship: Psalms, Hymns? And Musical Instruments (WCF21, II:223-301)?” consists of essentially four parts. The first two sections contain an adequate survey of the regulative principle in the Westminster Confession and catechisms (pp. 233-240) and its biblical/theological justification (pp. 240-247) - though we have yet to see any exposition of the RPW for or against that explicitly acknowledges WCF 2:2; that to God “is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience He is pleased to require of them". The two remaining sections explore how the Regulative Principle of Worship is to be applied to the "singing of psalms with grace in the heart” of WCF 21:5 (pp. 247-290) and likewise whether musical instruments are lawful in the worship of God (pp.290-302). The bibliography of primary and secondary references, the only one in WCF21, runs four pages (pp.303-306). Unfortunately Needham in his largest section of the essay descends to special pleading and question begging as to what the Westminster divines actually meant by the “singing of psalms” of WCF 21:5. His appeal to the commentaries of that day rather than first to thoroughly examining the Standards as a whole and then the actual Minutes of the Assembly themselves for the answer is a fatal turn in his argument and consequently prejudices, if not forecasts his incorrect answer.

Moreover, his rambling historical survey is given to judicious omission, if not that as much weight is given to the exceptions as to the rule. For that matter, the exceptions to the predominant psalmody of the reformed churches are just that and comparatively minute as regards the other inspired songs of scripture, never mind what reasonable connection there is between the inspired songs in scripture outside of the Psalter and uninspired hymns, but it is one of the common non sequiturs of those in favor of uninspired hymnody. It would seem that once the restriction to singing only the psalms is breached and other inspired songs admitted, wishes become horses, beggars may ride and presbyterians somehow also get to sing uninspired hymns to boot in the bargain.

Yet while Calvin and the Synod of Dordt made some room for the inspired songs of Scripture other than the psalms in the public worship of God, the Westminster Assembly shut the door on anything but the 150 Psalms of David. Needham goes on to beg the question regarding what circumstances are in worship, wanting to consider what is sung on par with what is preached, but this again betrays a misunderstanding of the Assembly’s implicit understanding of the elements of worship and the respective qualities and distinctions that surround the question.

1.The "Singing of Psalms" and the Westminster Standards as a Whole
To his credit Needham does begin by mentioning the last chapter in the DPW, “Of the Singing of Psalms”. This is to the point in that again we might reasonably assume that the Directory, along with the Catechisms and the FCG, as integral and interlocking parts of the covenanted uniformity called for in the SL&C, would sustain, if not clarify the testimony of the Confession, rather than contradict it, a threefold cord being not quickly broken (Ecl. 4:12).

The "Singing of Psalms" and the Form of Church Government
The Assembly’s FCG makes this clear in requiring any ministers to sign/take the SL&C if they were to be examined and properly ordained by a presbytery; to wit, he that is to be ordained is to “bring with him a testimonial of his taking the Covenant of the three kingdoms". (This as per the authoritative reprint of the Standards containing Carruthers' corrected text of the Confession published by the Free Presbyterian Church, WCF, rpt. 1997, p.413). In other words, contra what is usually asserted, subscription from the beginning was to the Westminster standards as a whole, not just the Confession and catechisms and that long before the Form of Subscription of 1693 in the Scotch Revolution Settlement Church. In a day and age when “system”, if not “good faith” subscription has been upheld in at least the PCA, a return to the practice of the Assembly would clean a lot of house, if not clarify the original intent of the Assembly and its Standards as to exactly what was permitted in worship, as we shall see below.

For that matter, while the DPW will be the main emphasis below, the FCG does explicitly consider the “singing of psalms” to be one of the Ordinances in a particular Congregation and under the 9th head under the 9th rule in the Rules for Ordination, we are told that "singing of a psalm" is to conclude an ordination service (WCF, pp.404, 415).

The "Singing of Psalms" and the Directory of Public Worship
Further, there are eight references to the “singing of the psalm” or “psalms” in the Directory for Public Worship, as well as the two mentions above in the FCG. Starting with the third chapter of the DPW, the first mention of the "singing of psalms" is the opening line to Of Public Prayer before the Sermon , "After reading of the word, (and singing of the psalm), the minister who is to preach..." The second line to the end Of Prayer after Sermon reads, "The prayer ended, let a psalm be sung, if with conveniency it may be done," which is the only other example Needham cites (p.248) prior to quoting the last rubric in full. The closing paragraph of Sanctification of the Lord's Day says: "That what time is vacant, between or after the solemn meetings of the congregation in publick, be spent in reading, meditation...singing of psalms..." Publick Solenmn Fasting reads: "So large a portion of the day as conveniently may be, is to be spent in publick reading and preaching of the word, with singing of psalms...(WCF, pp. 376, 382, 386, 391, emph. added)".

The section entitled Concerning the Observation of Days of Publick Thanksgiving says:

And, because singing of psalms is of all other the most proper ordinance for expressing joy and thanksgiving, let some pertinent psalm or psalms be sung for that purpose, before or after reading some portion of the word suitable to the present business...

The sermon ended, let him not only pray. . . And so, having sung another psalm, suitable to the mercy, let him dismiss the congregation with a blessing. . . When the congregation shall again be assembled, the like course in praying, reading, preaching, singing of psalms, and offering up more praise and thanksgiving, that is before directed for the morning, is to be renewed and continued, so far as the time will give leave . . . (pp.392,3, emph. added)

We note, among other things, that the Westminster divines did not believe that the ordinance of exclusive psalmody was oppressive or burdensome, but rather that the "singing of psalms is of all other the most proper ordinance for expressing joy and thanksgiving"! Unfortunately, this does not by any means, seem to be what most presbyterians (or baptists) would say about the matter today. Rather it might seem they are "apt to study arguments unduly to put asunder (WCF 24:6)" what the divines have joined together; if not the WCF 21:5's "singing of psalms" and the Book of Psalms, at least psalmody, joy and thanksgiving and that we think to their and the church's loss.

As for the last rubric or section of the DPW, Of Singing of Psalms, we quote it entirely.

It is the duty of Christians to praise God publickly, by the singing of psalms together in the congregation, and also privately in the family.
In singing of psalms, the voice is to be tunably and gravely ordered; but the chief care must be to sing with understanding, and with grace in the heart, making melody unto the Lord.
That the whole congregation may join herein, every one that can read is to have a psalm book; and all others, not disabled by age or otherwise, are to be exhorted to learn to read. But for the present, where many in the congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the minister, or some other fit person appointed by him and the other ruling officers do read the psalm, line by line, before the singing thereof (p.393, emph. added).

Compare this with the concluding paragraph in the DPW's second section, Publick Reading of Holy Scripture:

Besides publick reading of the holy scriptures, every person that can read, is to be exhorted to read the scriptures privately, (and all others that cannot read, if not disabled by age, or otherwise, are likewise to be exhorted to learn to read,) and to have a Bible (p.376, emph. added).

Alexander T. Mitchell in his The Westminster Assembly, Its History and Its Standards, (1883, rpt. 1992, SWRB), clarifies the origin of the parallel.

A few verbal alterations were suggested by the House of Lords and adopted by the Commons. The most important of these was, that to the direction in the section of singing of Psalms 'that every one that can read is to have a Psalmbook.' their Lordships proposed to add the words, 'and to have a Bible.' The Commons, improving on the suggestion, proposed to transfer the words to the section of the public reading of the Scriptures and developed them into a paragraph similiar in form to the one in the section of singing of Psalms (p.217).

For that matter, two paragraphs previous, the same section in the DPW reads:

We commend also the more frequent reading of such scriptures as he that readeth shall think best for the edification of his hearers, as the book of Psalms and such like (p.376, emph. added).

In other words in all this, there is an explicit approved parallel between the Psalter and the Bible. (That is why many bibles of the day included a psalter bound in and even to this day, the Trinitarian Bible Society offers the English version of the Reformation Bible, the Authorized or "King James" bound up with the Scottish Psalter of 1650.) Can we seriously argue that the divines might think uninspired hymns ought to be held in the same respect as the psalms or the scripture? To ask is to answer, we think, if not that we doubt it. While all the references to psalms in the DPW and FCG do not explicitly mention the 150 of David, taken as a whole, much more the testimony below of the Minutes of the Assembly regarding Rouse’s psalter, we think it only too obvious what the divines meant.

2. Rouse's Psalter and the Minutes of the Assembly
Yet again, the glaring and inexcusable omission to all this is Needham’s failure to consult the Minutes of the Westminster Assembly (1874, rpt. 1991) on the question. While Needham does mention that the Scottish Psalter 1650 was a further revision of the Assembly’s own psalter, which was their revision of Rouse’s psalter (pp.277,8), Needham fails to mention that the Assembly had actually commended their own revision for public use on Nov. 14, 1645 in answer to a request by the House of Lords to consider Barton’s psalter.

Ordered – That whereas the Honble House of Commons hath, by an order bearing the date the 20th of November 1643, recommended the Psalms set out by Mr. Rouse to the consideration of the Assembly of Divines, the Assembly hath caused them to be carefully perused, and as they are now altered and amended, do approve of them, and humbly conceive that if may be useful and profitable to the Church that they be permitted to be publicly sung.

Rouse’s amended psalter was then subsequently published on Jan. 25, 1646 by the House of Commons though the Scotch General Assembly had not yet officially approved it. Barton was still not satisfied and petitioned the House of Lords on March 20th, 1646 to also allow the use of his psalter, which House then requested the Assembly to reconsider the matter. On April 22, 1646, the Assembly pointedly and decisively replied:

That whereas on the 14th of November 1645, in obedience to an order of this Honourable House concerning the said Mr. Barton's Psalms, we have already recommended to this Honourable House one translation of the Psalms in verse, made by Mr. Rouse, and perused and amended by the same learned gentleman, and the Committee of the Assembly, as conceiving it would be very useful for the edification of the Church in regard it is so exactly framed according to the original text: and whereas there are several other translations of the Psalms already extant: We humbly conceive that if liberty should be given to people to sing in churches, every one the translation which they desire, by that means several translations might come to be used, yea, in one and the same congregation at the same time, which would be a great distraction and hindrance to edification (emph. added).--Journals of House of Lords, vol. viii. pp.283, 284 (Minutes, fn. pp.221, 222).

Note, the Assembly says that despite there being several other translations of the Psalms available, they still only recommended one, that of Rouse as amended by the Assembly. A multitude of psalters, never mind hymnbooks, was the furthest thing from their mind. Two, WCF 1:8 states that:

[B]ecause the original tongues [of Hebrew and Greek] are not known to all the people of God, who have right unto, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship Him in an acceptable manner; and, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope (emph. added).

Consequently the Reformation practice of Reformed Churches was to not only translate the Scripture, but also the Psalms in a psalter that men might 'worship God in an acceptable manner'. Rouse's translation was just that as was the Assembly's committee work of 'persuing, altering and amending' them from Nov. 1643 through Nov. 14, 1645 and later the Scotch Church from July 8, 1647 till November 23, 1649 until they were finally approved for use on May 1, 1650 (Millar, Four Centuries of Scottish Psalmody, 1946, pp. 91,97,99).

It is passing strange, if not begs reasonable belief that as per Needham the Assembly would allow, intend or mean uninspired hymns in WCF 21:5 when they were so insistent on exactly what translation of a psalter they would recommend, Rouse's and not Barton's. Either that, or Needham must show that said psalter contained other inspired or uninspired songs officially approved by the Assembly and not something slipped in by the printer as happened at other times and with various editions of the Scotch church's psalter.

Regarding the last, Needham though at least acknowledges that "competent historical authorities agree that these supplements apparently had no direct authorization from the Church itself through its General Assembly". Here, he seems to be alluding to D.H. Fleming, who, in his "Hymnology of the Scotch Reformation" (1884, rpt. 1991, Naphtali, pp.223-46) demonstrates - contra H. Bonar who asserted in his day that uninspired hymns were permitted by the Scotch church at the Reformation, like Needham today of the Assembly - that these additions to the Scotch psalter before and after the Westminster Assembly were not the intention of the Scotch church in its best moments and soundest days. Granted at times, prelacy and its practices crept in, if not printers took it upon themselves to include what they saw fit, but that is not what advocates of uninspired hymnody acknowledge and except. Needham does admit though, "In actual liturgical practice, the Reformed Church of Scotland was exclusively psalm-singing (p.274, emph. added)". He unfortunately will not go on to say the same of the Westminster Assembly and Standards, but instead spends most of his time ignoring the obvious and conducting an exercise in diversion.

The Psalms as Religious Songs and Uninspired Hymns
Unfortunately in response to all this in the historical and confessional record, which Needham seems to be entirely unaware, he essentially begs the question of what the Assembly actually meant by “psalms” by taking a false turn in quoting Poole, Baxter, Daille, Cartwright, Bayne, Byfield, Elton, Manton, Lightfoot, Boyd, Ferguson, Cotton and the so called Westminster Annotations (they were never approved by the Assembly though some who were members worked on them), all of which understand the proof texts of WCF 21:5, Eph. 5:19, Col. 3:16 and James 5:10 to include other scriptural songs besides the Psalms, if not uninspired hymns. The examples of Geneva, the French, German and Dutch Reformed Churches are also cited as to their practice of singing or allowing for not only other scriptural songs than the psalms, but also uninspired song, as well the supposed exceptions to the rule of exclusive psalmody in the Scotch church.

The Explicit Authorization in the Confession
Yet Needham tells us when he begins to discuss psalmody that,

We begin with the following important assumption: in light of the Confession's full-blooded commitment to the regulative principle, we must take it for granted that the acts of worship the Confession explicitly authorizes are the only acts for which it finds scriptural justification. . . The only logical assumption we can make is that what the Westminster actually sets down as the acts of worship authorized by God in Scripture are the only acts the Westminster divines believe were thus authorized (pp.247,8, emph. added).

He goes on to say again regarding musical instruments that:

[W]e must take it for granted that the acts of worship the Confession explicitly authorizes are the only acts for which it finds and claims scriptural justification. This is axiomatic - indeed, it is the only logical assumption we can make, in light of Westminster's committment to the regulative principle as the hermeneutic of acceptable worship. If we grant this, it settles in advance the question of instrumental worship. Thus, what the Westminster divines actually set down in the Confession as the acts of worship authorized by God in Scripture, were the only acts they believed were thus authorized; and they did not set down the playing of musical instruments as an act of worship authorized by God in Scripture for His New Testament Church. The Confession is deafeningly silent on the issue. So are all the other Westminster documents. Clearly the Westminster divines did not believe in the validity of instrumental worship (p.291, emph. added).

One might easily enough reply 'physician heal thyself', if not 'thou art the man'. Would that Needham recognized the consistency regarding any other songs than the psalms, whether inspired or not, as well as musical instruments. The WCF, as seen in the context of the DPW and the FCG, much more the Minutes, only and explicitly authorizes the "singing of psalms" as well as a "psalmbook" whatever Needham's efforts to redefine the terms. While "psalm" may mean any uninspired religious song, that is hardly the scriptural use of the term and the generally accepted understanding. On the other hand, the Confession, as all the other Westminster documents, is deafeningly silent on the singing of hymns. (The "hymn" of Matt. 26:30 is generally understood to be one of the Hallel psalms, 113-117.) In other words, they did not set down the singing of uninspired hymns as an act of worship authorized by God in Scripture for His New Testament Church. Should it not be axiomatic that we would take them at their word? To ask might seem to be to answer.

Needham's Conclusion
Needham eventually concludes his essay in part by saying that not only does he “think uninspired hymns are in principle lawful;” but that “ I incline to think that the Confession’s authorization of “singing of psalms” does not exclude uninspired hymns (WCF21, p.290. emph. added)”. We think this only possible if he ignores the testimony of the Minutes of the Assembly above wherein we find a pretty authoritative indication of what exactly the divines meant by the ‘singing of psalms’ of WCF 21:5 when the Assembly twice exclusively recommends their revision of Rouse’s psalter over Barton's. Again, can Needham then demonstrate from the historical record that the Assembly’s Psalter contained other inspired songs than the Psalms or even much more uninspired songs approved for public singing? That is the question and all the rest surrounding the question which he brings up is only so much pomp and circumstance. He may care to take up the pursuit of finding inspired or not additions to the Assembly’s approved psalter, but we are inclined to think it on the order of the quest for the so-called holy Grail.

The Contrary Opinions of Other Expert Witnesses and Competent Historical Authorities
Even further Needham's assertions run the risk of contradicting other experts and commentators on the question. For one, S.W. Carruthers, the 20th century editor of the authoritative/critical text edition of the Westminster Confession, in the chapter entitled “The Metrical Psalms” in his Everyday Work of the Westminster Assembly (1943, rpt. 1994, RAP,) says:

After the Confession of Faith and the Shorter Catechism, the best known piece of work by the Divines is what is usually called the "Scotch Metrical Psalms." They were neither originated, nor were they finally completed by the Assembly, but it was due to their adoption by that body that they came, as a part of the proposed uniformity of worship, to be used in Scotland, and their singing by the Covenanters endeared them to the heart of that nation (pp.161-8).

This as excerpted from a reprint of Carruthers, edited by the very same editor of the WCF in the 21st Century series, J. L. Duncan, who specifically calls attention to this reprint of Carruthers in his “Introduction” to the first volume of the series (WCF21, I:xi), but who also tells us in the second volume that "Needham's conclusions will enlighten and, perhaps, surprise many (WCF21, II:xiii)". Indeed Needham's conclusions do, but hardly in the manner that the editor seems to assume. Rather we are surprised to see such special pleading in print, much more the stated purpose of the company it is found in, that of furthering the Westminster Confession and its theology.

B.B. Warfield, in his Westminster Assembly and Its Work (1931) - which is not only listed in Needham’s bibliography, but is also called a “masterful treatment of the history and work of the assembly” by David Calhoun in the same WCF21 volume as Needham (II:306, 38) - says, contra Needham’s conclusions, though B.B. is no psalm singer himself:

One of the sections of the Directory is given to the Singing of Psalms, and declares it "the duty of Christians to praise God publickly, by Singing of Psalms together in the Congregation, and also privately in the family." This rubric manifestly implied the provision of a Psalm Book, and it was made part of the function of the Assembly in preparing a basis for uniformity in worship in the Churches of the three kingdoms, to supply them with a common Psalm Book (p.52, emph. added.).

At the very least again, Needham needs to prove that the Assembly’s psalter like the Anglo-Genevan, Sternhold and Hopkins or Tate and Brady contained other inspired songs than the psalms, if not also uninspired and that these were approved by the Assembly and not merely inserted by the printer and intended for private use.

3. Psalmody in Reformed History
To his credit, Needham does at least quote Calvin’s preamble to the 1542 Genevan service book:

As for public prayers, there are two kinds: the one consists simply of speech, the other of song. . . Now, what Augustine says is true, namely that no one can sing anything worthy of God, which he has not received from him. Therefore, even after we have carefully searched everywhere, we shall not find better or more appropriate songs to this end than the Psalms of David, inspired by the Holy Spirit. And for this reason, when we sing them, we are assured that God puts the words in our mouth, as if he himself were singing through us to exalt his glory (WCF21, p.256, emph. add.).

This is high praise indeed of the Psalms, but this only as an orphaned quote from Calvin with out any real exposition or comment to follow from Needham. That Calvin quotes Augustine with approval, when he says there are not "better or more appropriate songs" to the end of praising God "than the Psalms of David, inspired by the Holy Spirit" is not anything Needham really cares to deal with. Rather he evasively rushes on to appeal to the commentaries of Calvin on Col. 3:16 and Eph. 5:19, having previously noted the inclusion of the Nunc Dimittis and the Ten Commandments in the Genevan and French psalters - which at least are inspired portions of Scripture contra Needham's thesis that uninspired hymns are lawful in public worship. Yet in all this, Needham fails to do full justice to the full scope of and reference to psalm singing in the corpus of Calvin’s writing. Two examples might suffice.

Calvin and Psalmody
It is true, even Parker at first, the greatest living authority on Calvin, in his first brief Portrait of Calvin (1954, p. 31) glided over the fact that a return to congregational psalm singing , i.e. “hymnsinging”, was one of the four things asked for by Calvin, Farel and Corauld of the Geneva city council. Yet later in his more thorough John Calvin: A Biography (1975, pp. 62, 87, 88), he clarifies the matter. The Articles of Church Organization and Worship of 1537 led to Calvin’s exile to Basel in 1538 before he returned via Strasbourg to spend the rest of his life in Geneva in 1541. Regarding psalmody the same Articles say:

Further, it is a thing very expedient for the edification of the Church, to sing some psalms in the form of public devotions by which one may pray to God, or to sing his praise so that the hearts of all be roused to and incited to make like prayers and render like praises and thanks to God of one accord . . . On the other hand there are the psalms which we desire to be sung in the church, as we have it exemplified in the ancient Church and in the evidence of Paul himself, who says it is good to sing in the congregation with mouth and heart. We are unable to compute the profit and edification which will arise from this, except after having experimented. Certainly as things are, the prayers of the faithful are so cold, that we ought to be ashamed and dismayed. The psalms can incite us to lift up our hearts to God and move us to an ardour in invoking and exalting with praises the glory of his Name. Moreover it will be thus appreciated of what benefit and consolation the pope and those that belong to him have deprived the Church; for he has reduced the psalms, which ought to be true spiritual songs, to a murmuring among the themselves without any understanding.

This manner of proceeding seemed specially good to us, that children, who beforehand have practiced some modest church song, sing in a loud distinct voice, the people listening with all attention and following heartily what is sung with the mouth, till all become accustomed to sing communally (Calvin: Theological Treatises, 1954, pp.53,4).

This revival of congregational singing, much more psalmody in place of the Romish choirs and silence of the congregation was a hallmark of Calvin’s reformation of worship and deserves to mentioned as such, though there were a few other songs included in the Genevan Psalter. That the Apostles’ Creed is uninspired - Calvin considered it apostolic - yet a metrical version was included in the Genevan Psalter of 1542, but not in the authoritative and final version of 1562, is hardly an across the board argument for uninspired hymns (cf. Bushell, p.180).

The second example is from Calvin’s lengthy preface to his commentary on the Psalms. While the "varied and resplendent riches which are contained in this treasury it is no easy matter to express in words; so much so, that I well know that whatever I shall be able to say will be far from approaching the excellence of the subject"; still in order to give his readers a "taste, however small" of the book, he tells us that he calls it "An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul", as well as an "unerring rule for prayer". Further as regards the praise of God in song, he says,

Besides, there is also here prescribed to us an infallible rule for directing us with respect to the right manner of offering to God the sacrifice of praise, which he declares to be most precious in his sight, and of the sweetest odor. There is no other book in which there is to be found more express and magnificent commendations, both of the unparalleled liberality of God toward His Church and of all His works; there is no other book in which the evidences and experiences of the fatherly providence and solicitude which God exercises toward us, are celebrated with such splendor of diction, and yet with the strictest adherence to truth; in short, there is no other book in which we are more powerfully stirred up to the performance of this religious exercise. (1557, rpt. 1989, Baker, IV: xxxviii-xxxix, emph. added).

Now certainly, to say that the Psalms are an 'infallible rule for the sacrifice of praise' is high praise indeed, but somehow that got left out of Needham’s survey, as well that there is "no other book in which we are more powerfully stirred up to the performance of this religious exercise" of praise - not even a hymnbook. Further, as we see time and time again in the question begging that surrounds the issue, that Calvin arguably used other Scriptural portions or songs is no argument per se for uninspired hymnody, with the Apostles Creed being the only uninspired piece sung and that because Calvin thought it - what else? - apostolic. While there were exceptions, for all practical purposes, Calvin and Geneva predominantly sang the psalms. At the time of the Assembly, the presbyterian practice was declared to be exclusive psalmody. To further point to the inspired exceptions, if not the only uninspired item, the Apostles’ Creed, in Geneva to essentially make the case for Amazing Grace and any other uninspired hymn evangelicals care to sing is to border on disingenuousness.

In short, Warfield, an authority on the theology of not only the Assembly, but also Calvin, says:

We say nothing, again, of his reorganization of the worship of the Reformed Churches. and particularly of his gift to them of the service of song: for the Reformed Churches did not sing until Calvin taught them to do it. There are many who think he did few things greater or more far-reaching in their influence than the making of the Psalter - that Psalter of which twenty-five editions were published in the first year of its existence, and sixty-two more in the next four years; which was translated or transfused into nearly every language of Europe; and which wrought itself into the very flesh and bone of the struggling saints throughout all the "killing times" of Protestant history (Calvin and Augustine, 1956, rpt. 1971, p. 20.)

Bushell asserts that psalmody was integral to the piety and vigour of the reformed churches, so much so that the Genevan psalter was outlawed in parts of France as early as 1550. Eventually by 1662 psalm singing had become a felony (Songs of Zion, p.186), if not that Protestantism itself was outlawed later in France at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes 1685. That, however, is not anywhere close to the conclusion that we might gather of Needham’s on Calvin, if not the reformed church. Needless to say, history does not agree.

The Genevan Book of Order
Needham also appeals to the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible (1560, rpt. 1969) as translated by Knox and Whittingham, that the "psalms, hymns and spiritual songs of Col. 3:16 essentially do not refer exclusively to the Davidic psalter (WCF21, p.262), however much that a metrical psalter did accompany the Genevan Book of Order (1556, rpt. 1993, PHP) and the Scottish Church which took over that Book of Order was a psalmsinging body. As quoted by Needham, that same Genevan Book of Order says, under the chapter heading of "What Songs We Ought To Delight and Use", that: "There are no songs more meet than the Psalms of the prophet David, which the Holy Ghost has framed to the same use, and commended to the church, as containing the effect of the whole scripture. . . " . The passage continues, by saying:

that hereby our hearts might be more lively touched, as appears by Moses, Hezekiah, Judith, Deborah, Mary, Zacharias, and others, [The proof texts in the margin at this point read: Ex. 15:1-19, Isa. 38:10-20, Judith 16:1-22, Judges 5, Lk. 1:46-55, 68-79.] who by songs and metre, rather than in their common speech and prose, gave thanks to God for such comfort as he sent them.

It then mentions the format or metre of the Psalms which lends them to versification or rhyming for song, saying:

Here it were too long to treat of the metre, but forasmuch as the learned doubt not thereof, and as it is plainly proven that the Psalms are not only metrical, and contain just cesures [metrical pauses, divisions], but also have grace and majesty in the verse more than any other places of the scriptures, we need not to enter into any probation [proof]. For they that are skillful in the Hebrew tongue, by comparing the Psalms with the rest of the scriptures, easily may perceive the metre. And to whom is it not known, how the Holy Ghost by all means sought to help our memory, when he fashioned many Psalms according to letters of the alphabet; so that every verse begins with the letters thereof in order. Sometimes "A" begins the half verse, and "B" the other half, and in other place, three verses, yea and eight verses with one letter, even the Psalm throughout, as if all men should be inflamed with the love thereof, both for variety of matter, and also briefness, easiness, and delectation. . .(emph. added, pp.32,3)

Mark that, the Psalms, according to the Preface which agrees with John Calvin, contain "the effect of the whole scripture" with more "grace and majesty . . . than any other places of the scriptures". Neither are the examples of Moses, Hezekiah etc. appealed to in support of singing other inspired or even uninspired hymns, but rather the singing of the Psalms of David is commended, "which the Holy Ghost has framed to the same use. . .that all men might be inflamed with the love thereof, both for variety of matter, and also briefness, easiness, and delectation!" Consequently the Anglo-Genevan Book of Order compiled by the likes of Knox and Whittingham and approved by Calvin was accompanied by a metrical psalter.

Needham makes much of the fact that supposedly Whittingham appended a metrical version of the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer to this psalter. Regardless, not only was the Genevan Book of Order as authored by John Knox and the other Marian exiles, adopted by the Scotch Church in 1564, so too the Scottish psalter of 1564 was largely based on the Anglo-Genevan psalter and was originally purged of any additions besides the psalms according to Needham (WCF21, p. 274). In other words, the Scotch Church was largely, if not exclusively, a psalm singing church even before the Westminster Assembly and its Standards. That the Scottish General Assembly asked Zachary Boyd to versify other portions of Scripture in was all that they did at the time they revised and approved of the Westminster Assembly psalter and proves nothing per se, other than they did exactly nothing with the report once they had received it. The provisional implementation of any Scriptural paraphrases in Scottish presbyterianism did not take place until well afterward in the late 1700's, much more the same were never uninspired hymns, which is where again Needham really ends up after perusing reformed history.

The English Bible Annotations
Likewise Needham makes much of the Westminster or English Annotations (1645) on the Bible for Eph. 5:19 to the same conclusion (WCF21, p.276). While the English Annotations, which was first published in 1645, and the Assembly, were both commissioned by the Long Parliament in 1640 and 1643 respectively, and though six of the thirteen responsible for those Annotations were members of the Assembly, it was not an official production of the Assembly (See Scripture and Worship, Muller, P&R, 2007, pp. 4,5,19-26). Yet the "Argument" or introduction to the Book of Psalms in the English Annotations speaks to the sufficiency of the Psalms, saying that:

This Book is by some called, the Anatomy of the soul: And that not unfitly, for herein we see all the affections of God's servants lively expressed in excellent patterns. We finde them sometimes grieving for sin, and troubles: otherwhiles, rejoycing in deliverances: Now praying to God, then praising of God: Putting forth one while their desire of God, and dependance on him: another while, their joy in God, and care to please him. And all these and many other are set out in excellent expressions.

It continues, appealing to two of the proof texts for the "singing of psalms" of WCF 21:5, Col. 3:16 and James 5:16.

This varietie of Hymns is left to us upon record, that we might in Gods publike service, and in private by singing, make use of them, according to several occasions, Matth. 26.30 Colos.3.16. James 5.13. This (besides the often reading and meditating on them) is the right use of the Book of Psalms.

In other words, just as much extraneous material might be cited one way or another on the question, once we are cut loose from the primary sources of the Standards themselves and the Minutes to the Assembly as to the original intent of the divines on the singing of psalms. Reid in his Memoirs of the Westminster Divines, (1811, rpt. 1982, I:302) quotes Calamy's son to the effect that Featley was responsible for the notes on Paul's epistles and Casaubon on the Psalms. Yet while Casaubon never attended the Assembly, Featley did, but he was thrown in prison by the Parliamentary party (Cyclopedia of Bibl. Theo. and Eccl. Literature, McClintock & Strong) and his name is absent from the "List of the Divines who met in the Assembly at Westminster" at the front of the WCF (pp.15,6) and any biographical mention by Reid. In short again, any mention of the English Annotations or any other Bible commentator short of those who actually attended the Assembly (never mind the Assembly's comments themselves on the question) is something of a red herring and needless confusion, which is basically what Needham's essay consists of.

The Favorite Puritan Divine of Presbyterian Hymn Singers
As for the Puritans and Presbyterians of the British Isles, again Needham’s survey seems to partake more of the exception than the rule, as it was for Ian Murray in his The Psalter- The Only Hymnal? (BoT, 2001) which Needham’s effort resembles in other ways as well. For just one example, Needham fails to mention the English Puritan preface to a reprint of the Scotch Psalter in 1673 signed by Manton, Owen, Poole, Watson, Vincent, Jenkyn, Meade and 19 others, including Calamy, a Westminster divine. It concludes by saying in the last of its three paragraphs:

Now, though spiritual songs of mere human composure may have their use, yet our devotion is best secured, where the matter and words are of immediately divine inspiration. And to us, David's Psalms seemly plainly intended by those terms of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, which the apostle useth, Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16. But then, 'tis meet that these divine composures should be represented to us in a fit translation, lest we want David, in David, while his holy ecstasies are delivered in a flat and bald expression. The translation which is now put into thy hand cometh nearest to the original of any that we have seen, and runneth with such a fluent sweetness, that we thought fit to recommend it to thy Christian acceptance, some of us having used it already, with great comfort and satisfaction (emph. added).

Not only do we have a clear statement in favor of psalmody and that in connection to the same verses WCF 21:5 uses for proof texts, the presence of Manton's name is auspicious. As Needham mentions, while Manton is not found on the list of the divines who sat in the Westminster Assembly (WCF, pp.15,16), he is one of the forty five ministers that sign the first of the two letters preceding the WCF and the sole author of the second Epistle to the Reader (WCF pp.6, 10, WCF21, p.268). If he can be found to advocate anything other than inspired psalmody, it would have to count for something in an argument based primarily on secondary authorities and sources as Needham's is.

Yet in the four pages or so in his commentary on James 5:13, one of the proof texts for the ‘singing of psalms’ in WCF 21:5, Manton largely argues for scriptural psalmody. The most he says for uninspired songs which Needham quotes (WCF21, p.269) is that, "I confess we do not forbid other songs; if pious and grave, after good advice they may be received into the Church. Tertullian, in his Apology, showeth that in primitive times they used this liberty, either to sing scripture psalms or such as were of private composure." Out of four pages, that is all he says. But he continues after the previous quote saying: "But that which I am to prove, that scriptural psalms may be sung, and I shall, with advantage over and above, prove that they are fittest to be sung." Even further, "Therefore, upon the whole matter, I should pronounce, that so much as an infallible gift doth excell a common gift, so much do scriptural psalms excel those that are of a private composure." Moreover he refers to "the excellent translations of . . . Rous, Barton and others” (1693, rpt. 1998, BoT, in loco). “Rous” as in the version approved by the Westminster Assembly.

Previously, in the preface to his commentary, Manton says "to conceal known adversaries is an argument of fear and distrust (p.9)". Further, suppression, if not ignorance, of the truth is the first step to the expression of error. We do not pretend to know or even accuse Prof. Needham of wilful malice or deceit, but we do know that too many salient distinctions have been overlooked for whatever reason in his essay on the topic that consequently render it generally unreliable and mistaken on the question of WCF 21:5 and the original intent of the Assembly. Again, however sincere or inadvertently one deals in half truths, the practice generally leaves one open to descending to that which is wholly a lie, which is the danger Needham courts, if not finds himself entangled with in his essay. One may, of course, disagree with the original intent of the Assembly and think it unscriptural, but the foremost question and primary issue is what did they actually say and believe. Only after determining that, can one profitably disagree with them, if indeed one disagrees with the genuine original intent as opposed to Needham's so far unsubstantiated opinion.

American Psalmody
In that Needham (WCF21, pp.270,1) appeals to the example of the American puritan, John Cotton, who allows for the singing of other inspired songs than the Psalms in his Singing of Psalms, a Gospel Ordinance (1647, rpt. 2006, p.20), it must also be said that Cotton took the “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” of Eph. 5:19 and Col. 3:16 to refer to the titles of the psalms in the Hebrew Bible (p.23). Further in 1642, Cotton, Hooker and Davenport, all ministering in New England were requested to come to the Westminster Assembly, but none did. (Only Phillips and Vane at the Assembly had lived in New England. See Barker’s Puritan Profiles, 1996, pp.260-287). Regardless, while Cotton does not argue for the Assembly’s position, neither does he argue for Needham's view on the lawfulness of singing uninspired hymns.

Yet Cotton Mather, a namesake of John, who was his maternal grandfather, gives us the version of the Westminster Confession affirmed by the New England divines at Cambridge in 1648 in his Great Works of Christ in America (1702, rpt. 1979, BoT). While Chapters 30 and 31 on Church censures and councils respectively from the original Westminster Confession were dropped, and a new chapter 20 "Of the Gospel, and the Extent of the Grace Thereof" added, Chapter 22:5 of the Cambridge Confession speaks of the "singing of psalms," yet without the "with grace in the heart" of Westminster Chapter 21:5 (2:200). In other words, as we shall see, while the New England churches did not use the psalter recommended by the Assembly and further amended by the Church of Scotland - the Scotch Psalter of 1650 - still in both profession and practice, the early American puritans were psalm singers. (Not so their contemporary congregational heirs or modern presbyterian cousins).

The First American Book and Psalter (However Unknown)
Mather tells us further that:

About the year 1639, the New-English reformers, considering that their churches enjoyed the other ordinances of Heaven in their scriptural purity, were willing that the ordinance of "The singing of psalms," should be restored among them unto a share in that purity...Resolving then upon a new translation, the chief divines in the country took each of them a portion to be translated. . .The Psalms thus turned into meetre were printed at Cambridge, in the year 1640 (1:407).

This psalter is that known as the Bay Psalm Book. It was the very first book published in New England North America in 1640 (rpt. 1956, Univ.Chicago facsimile) and like the Westminster Standards, it is a more definitive ecclesiastical statement of the question, again over and above whatever individual theologians might say. Lo and behold it also essentially gives us a reprise of the state of the question when the preface of 13 un-numbered pages opens by saying:

The singing of Psalmes, though it breath forth nothing but holy harmony, and the melody: yet such is the subtility of the enemie, and the enmity of our nature against the Lord, & his wayes, that our hearts can finde matter of discord in this harmony, and crochets of division in this holy melody. -for- There have been three questions especially stirring concerning singing. First. what psalmes are to be sung in churches? whether Davids and other scripture psalms, or the psalmes invented by the gifts of godly men in every age of the church (emp. added).

In answer to this question, it says:

[C]ertainly the singing of David’s psalmes was an acceptable worship of God, not only in his owne time, but in succeeding times. as in Solomons time 2 Chron.5.13. in Iehosphats time 2 Chron. 20.21 in Ezra his time Ezra 3. and the text is evident in Hezekiah’s time they are commanded to sing praise in the words of David and Asaph 2 Chron.29,30.

Further, “some things in it indeed were ceremonial, as their musical instruments etc. but what ceremony was there in singing praise with the words of David and Asaph? What if David was a type of Christ, was Asaph also?” The preface continues to argue that if David’s songs were typical

because the ceremony of musical instruments was joyned to them, then their prayers were also typical, because they had that ceremony of incense admixt with them: But wee know that prayer then was a moral duty, notwithstanding the incense; and so singing those psalms notwithstanding their musical instruments.

It continues in finding that if:

the singing [of] David's psalmes be a morall duty & therefore perpetuall; then wee under the new Testament are bound to sing them as well as they under the old: and if wee are expressly commanded to sing Psalmes, Hymnes, and spirituall songs, then either we must sing David’s psalmes or else [we] may affirm [that] they are not spiritual songs: which being penned by an extraordinary gift of the Spirit, for the sake especially of God’s spiritual Israel.

But they are spiritual songs; therefore they are to be sung.

The answer in part to the objection in favor of new (charismatic) songs is the quite common view of the Reformation. The inspired Old Testment psalter is sufficient for for worship and praise of the New Testament church: "[T]he booke of psalmes is so compleat a System of psalmes which the Holy Ghoste himself in infinite wisdom hath made to suit all conditions, necessities, temptations, affections &tc. of men in all ages" which "most of all our interpreters on the psalmes have fully and particularly cleared" - contrary to what Needham seems to find - "therefore by this the Lord seemeth to stoppe all mens mouths and mindes ordinarily to compile or sing any other psalmes (under the colour that the ocasions and conditions of the Church are new) &tc. for the publick use of the Church, seing, let our condition be what it will, the Lord himself hath supplyed us with farre better".

And therefore in Hezekiah’s time, though doubtless there were among them those which had the extraordinary gifts to compile new songs on those new occasions, as Isaiah and Micah &tc. yet wee read that they are commanded to sing in the words of David and Asaph, which were ordinarily used in the publick worship of God: and wee doubt not but those that are wise will easily see; that those set formes of psalmes of Gods own appoyntment not of mans conceived gift or humane imposition were sung in the Spirit by those holy Levites, as well their prayers were in the spirit which themselves conceived, the Lord not binding them therin to any set formes; and shall set formes of psalmes appoynted of God not be sung in the spirit now, which others did then?

There is nothing new under the sun, in Solomon’s day or ours. While the spelling to the Bay Psalter’s preface is archaic, so too the objections. Yet the answers are up to date enough to answer Needham’s objections and then some.

As again per Calvin and others, such as Bushell, the Bay Psalter preface considers the psalter to be not only an inspired, but also an infallible book of praise that covers the whole gamut of religious experience and emotion. No uninspired hymnwriter or singer can say with David, the son of Jesse, a man raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel: “The Spirit of the LORD spake by me, and his word was in my tongue (2 Sam. 23:1)”. As such that word in the Psalms is sufficient after the close of canon to circumscribe any and all needs of the church in public praise. Even in the Old Testament age, after David when the gifts of the Holy Spirit for prophecy had not yet ceased, Israel was exhorted to praise the Lord with the songs of David, Asaph and Korah and at every revival, reformation and renewing of the covenant, that is exactly what they did as the preface to the Bay Psalter notes (cf. 2 Chron. 5:13,, 7:3, 18:21, 23:18, 29:30, 35:18, Ezra 3:10,11, Neh. 11:22, 12:45,46).

Neither can the singing of arguably new inspired psalms in 1 Cor. 14:26, be a rule for today after the close of the canon of Scripture and the cessation of the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit. Further, if the psalms are seen as typical, because of the example of David himself or musical instruments, the psalms also include compositions by the nontypical Asaph, much more according to the argument, prayer then too must be considered typical because accompanied by incense, which is to say the argument proves too much. Yet as the Bay Psalter notes, while the Levites composed prayers in the spirit though uninspired and not according to forms, but sang psalms according to form, so too we are to do likewise these days. In other words, the standard objection that liberty in praying or preaching applies to singing in the worship of God carries no weight or water with the Bay Psalter. Of that more below.

4. Miscellany on Inspired Songs
Neither is it really difficult to answer Needham's question, why would the Holy Spirit "inspire such beautiful songs, incorporate them in canonical Scripture, and sternly forbid us ever to sing them in church worship"? The answer would be that we don’t know, but we do know that God has not included them in the inspired canonical songbook found in those very same Scriptures. Bushell says, "we see no clear indication in the Scriptures that such songs were intended by God for perpetual use in His Church (Songs of Zion, p.15)". Needham continues saying, "Also in the New Testament, we have the heavenly songs of Revelation 5:9-10 and 15:3-4. If the citizens of heaven sing these songs, there is no coherent reason why their fellows on earth should not join in (WCF21, p. 283)". Yet the argument proves too much. Bushell says, "To argue that we may do what angels and glorified saints sitting in heaven before God's throne may do, is manifestly false (p.94)". Or as Calvin, previously on the Old Testament worship and musical instruments, this is to 'confound heaven and earth'. The Apocalypse is not intended to be a Directory for worship, Anglican though it may be, with approved examples of vestments, candles, harps and incense, as well the four living creatures and the 24 elders in public worship. Glorified and perfected saints and angels in a prophetic book are no approved example for those still in the here and now.

What About Watts?
All this follows Needham's appeal to Isaac Watt's argument that the Old Testament psalter is insufficient for the New Testament church. Yet if Watts cannot find Christ in the Psalter, the NT authors surely can, though perhaps the references are not as explicit as a fundamentalist might desire, but they are there nonetheless for those who meditate on and examine the scripture. Neither is Watt's opinion of the clarity of the psalms that of Calvin and others.

The Dutch Annotations on the Bible
Another authoritative witness and alternative testimony on the question would be that of the Staten Vertaling or States General Bible. It was officially called for by the Synod of Dordt in 1618 and published in 1638. It is the Dutch counterpart of the English Authorized Version of 1611 and the English delegates to the Synod related for the same what went into the 1611 translation. Yet as per the Geneva Bible of 1560, it contained reformed notes and explanations of the text printed in the margin, which ironically was one of the reasons King James desired the Geneva to be replaced by what came to be known as the 1611 King James. In 1645 many of the Westminster divines attested to their desire to see it translated into English with a public certificate, to which Parliament in 1648 heeded, giving exclusive right to one Theo. Haak to reprint his translation for 14 years. (In this translation of 1657, reprinted in 2002, the textual notes and explanations were bracketed and incorporated into the text, which itself is in an italic font.) The "Argument" or summary of the Book of Psalms which precedes that book, says the Psalter is a:

. . . singular jewel, the value and usefulness whereof can never sufficiently be comprehended, much less uttered by the Tongue, or described by the Pen. . . the compleat Summary or compendious rehearsal of the whole Bible, Law and Gospel; or of all the true knowledge and worship of God.

Not only does it contain "very solid and wholesome Doctrinals and Instructions . . . Moreover, touching the Person and Saving Office of the Messiah, our LORD and Saviour Jesus Christ", the Psalms instruct us of:

. . . his eternal Godhead, Incarnation, Suffering, Dying, rising again from the dead, ascending into heaven, sitting at the right hand of his Father, yea about the enlarging and spreading of his Kingdome among the Gentiles by the preaching of the holy Gospel; about the sinful estate and condition of man, the quality and property of Regeneration, of true Repentance, of the Love and Fear of God; Again, of the Nature of true Faith, of relying and glorying in God, of the Assurance of Salvation, of the Combate between the Spirit and the flesh.

Suffice it to say, the historic Dutch Bible of the Reformation era disagrees with the complaint of Watts - and Needham/modern reformed evangelicalism - that David's songs are insufficient to glorify and proclaim Christ in all his fulness. How the gold is become dim (Lam. 4:1). Further that there were exceptions to exclusive psalmody in the Dutch reformed church is not necessarily an approved example; clearly the Westminster Assembly did not think so.

A Modern Conference on Psalmody
The Psalms in Worship (PIW) is not only the collected lectures given at the 1907 United Presbyterian Church of North America Conference on Psalmody, the title is listed in Needham's bibliography (WCF21, p. 305), though ther is no mention of it at all in his essay. Russel in his address entitled "Christ in the Psalms", notes that:

Much has been said about the absence of Christ from the Psalms, and the need, therefore, of songs presenting Him. There is much that is tender and seemingly commendable in this desire for fuller statement as to Christ's person and work in our songs; but when we find that in our Saviour's time the failure to see Christ in the Old Testament Scriptures was because of blindness, we may ask whether modern failure to find Him in the Psalms may not be attributable to the same cause. Our Lord certainly found the Psalms filled with references to Himself (PIW, pp. 216, 217, emph. added).

Which is exactly the problem in our day as well as Watt's, spiritual blindness. That is the reason we cannot understand that the Psalms are about Christ. Further, there was no dearth of inspiration among the apostles, that if need be or God commanded it, a new songbook would have been given out and included in the NT canon as the Psalms were in the Old. Watts' argument is essentially dispensational and baptistic. He requires either an explicit NT command or replacement for OT psalmody which he denigrates as being far from a Christian spirit. If that were true though, Watts must for one instance, again tell us why Christ and the apostles quote repeatedly from it.

5. Circumstantial Confusion
Next is Needham's appeal to the standard argument/confusion of Frame and Poythress, if not Ian Murray (as answered previously in the preface to the Bay Psalm Book.) Supposedly just as there is liberty in preaching or prayer in public worship, so too there is liberty in what we shall sing (See Murray’s The Psalter- The Only Hymnal?, BoT, 2001, pp. 8,9). Further, in the realm of circumstance, Needham asserts ‘whatever is not forbidden is lawful, so long as it is edifying (p.284)’. For that matter, praise is part of or a mode of prayer. It may be spoken or sung and if we may not restrict one’s freedom in the first, we may not in the second. Thus again, uninspired song is lawful because it is edifying and not forbidden (p.285).

Murray of course might have more credibility to his Puritan and reformed credentials as a founder and editor of the Banner of Truth Trust than either Frame or Needham. Needham as a Reformed Baptist, might reasonably be assumed to be less than sympathetic to the historic Presbyterian position and distinctive on the singing of psalms whether personally or in principle, in that the London Baptist Confession of 1689 particularly modified WCF 21:5 to read not only “the singing of psalms,” but also “hymns and spiritual songs”, the last two being essentially uninspired. But this is to give away the day before it has even begun. Again - as always? - there are exceptions, Malcolm Watts being one Baptist psalm singer. See his response to Ian Murray in God’s Hymnbook for the Christian Church (James Begg Society, 2003) if not that Needham might seem to be responding in part to Watts' rebuttal.

Conclusion
In all this Needham also wants to go on record that uninspired hymns should never be allowed to displace the Psalms or other scriptural songs, though he does admit that historically uninspired hymns largely have done just that (p.289). The further comment is that Needham’s historical survey has pretty much done the same by emphasizing the exceptions over and above and in exclusion of the rule and practice of psalmody itself. Physician, heal thyself, might be the appropriate reply.

Yet with a broader view of the elements in WCF 21, the argument for psalmody considers that the Scripture has the pre-eminence in public worship. While the reading of Scripture and the singing of psalms in the worship of God are both restricted to the inspired text, the preaching of the Word and public prayer are not so restricted, but are at liberty to depart from the inspired text. This regardless that Needham ala Frame will argue that because the psalms are prayers, so too we have liberty in what we shall sing. Still, this is a lame though much used argument to set aside what is plainly the position of the Westminster Confession, much more the rest of the Standards; that the singing of the 150 psalms of David alone in the public worship of God is largely the historic position of not only the presbyterian, but also the reformed churches, though they may not do so today. Granted there were some exceptions and the position for “exclusive psalmody” was not as fully self conscious and decided as it is today.

Still, arguments for allowing other inspired songs are not arguments for uninspired songs, which is where most, if not Needham himself ends up (p.290). Two, if we cannot even give our audience the historic confessional position of the Westminster Assembly to begin with, in a series supposedly dedicated to one of the fundamental constitutional documents of historic presbyterianism, the Confession of Faith, regardless if we agree with it or not, any comments or critique of the same will necessarily be a blindman’s buff affair on our part. So it is with Prof. Needham’s effort. Again we do not pretend to know if this article by our Baptist professor is a sop to the popular and prevailing view in modern moderate American presbyterianism in favor of uninspired hymnody, but we think its deficiencies call for definite correction in the third volume planned in the series.

6. Musical Instruments
When it comes to the question of musical instruments, the modus operandi is pretty much the same in worship in Needham’s essay. While the historic reformed on musical instruments is mentioned and while Needham is better than Kelly, in the end Needham settles for the pragmatic modern (Dutch?) reformed argument for musical accompaniment as merely an aid and not a distinct act or object of worship. To his credit again, he does say “the ideal to be desired and preferred, if practicable, is the ancient Christian ideal of unaccompanied singing (p.302)” Unfortunately he fails to specify the singing of “psalms”.

Originally though, even the continental reformed churches did not hold to this view of instruments and the arguments for a pitch pipe or tunebook have been addressed before, not the least by Girardeau, largely in Chapt. VI of his, regardless that we are not given those answers. One, the pitchpipe only gives the pitch to the precentor, if not the congregation and does not accompany the singing. Girardeau grants that the organ could do this as well, but somehow people will not let the organ sit silent otherwise. It must also accompany the singing. Two, as regards a tunebook, it is a circumstance. If nothing else the precentor must have a tunebook in his head to give the tune. Further, musical instruments were not a circumstance in the OT ceremonial worship. Musical instruments were only introduced into the tabernacle worship by the command of God to David. They typify the joy of the Holy Spirit and accompany the bloody sacrifices. With the coming of Calvary, as well as Pentecost, all the Old Testament types of Christ and the Spirit are fulfilled and abrogated. By what right or wave of the wand can we make it a circumstance in NT worship? Hence to introduce them again for even practical or supposedly “circumstantial” reasons is to judaize.

III. The Overall Conclusion
In other words, it is precisely because of Prof. Needham’s and Dr. Kelly's previous theological competence and literary accomplishments, either in church history or translation of Calvin, that these essays in WCF21 are categorically unacceptable. Both essays unfortunately and distinctly fail the task at hand in explicating and defending the historic Regulative Principle of Worship and its application to psalmody and musical instruments as set forth in the Westminster Confession. Both authors inexcusably fail to thoroughly examine the primary sources in the larger Westminster Standards, if not the Minutes of the Assembly, in order to authoritatively determine how the divines not only viewed the example of the synagogue in Scripture, but also exactly what they meant by the "singing of psalms with grace in the heart" of WCF 21:5. As a consequence the reader is left with a confused and mistaken view of what the Westminster Assembly in their Confession actually teach.

In other words, contra the goals of the symposium as set forth in the “Introduction” by the editor (WCF21, p.x), these two essays fail across the board to:

1. "Inform the reader about the Assembly in its historical, theological, political and social setting".
2. "Challenge inaccurate assertions commonly made about the Westminster in relation to both earlier and later Reformed theology".
3. "Give a fresh evaluation of the Assembly’s place and contribution to the Calvinist tradition".
4. "Commend the Westminster theology as a faithful expression of clear-headed Christian thinking for our own generation".

We hope it would not be to much to think that situation would be rectified in the planned third volume of the series, and that entirety of the original religious uniformity as called for in the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 and set forth in the Directory for Public Worship and the Form of Church Government, as well as the Confession of Faith and Catechisms, would be acknowledged. That, not to mention the historical record of the Minutes to the Assembly and the Assembly's revision of Rouse's psalter, without ignoring the larger literature on the question, beginning with Bushell and Girardeau.