New Fad: Let's Sing Hymns

Christian artists breathe new life into old hymns
What with Phil Johnson's blogging (and excellent) critique of an "evangelicalism" given to fads, this Billboard story seems quite timely. Apparently, the new "thing" for Contemporary Christian Music is to emphasize the old complete with millions spent on making sure we know CCM is emphasizing the old. :-)

Billboard's Deborah Evans Price writes: "With so many hymns albums being released this year, Word Distribution created a special marketing program for Christian retail. The "Hymns & Stories" promotion runs through Monday and features 11 titles, including albums by Grant, Cleveland, Greene, Fernando Ortega, Randy Travis and Gordon Mote, as well as several compilations."

Price quotes Amy Grant who says "...the lyrical depth and theological content found in the hymns are providing a source of renewed inspiration for artists and fans. "The lyrics are the things that are so phenomenal about the hymns," Grant says. "You might forget every sermon from your childhood, but you remember the teaching because it was in the songs." Michael Horton agrees: "The average Christian will learn more from hymns that from systematic theology..." (Michael Horton, In the Face of God, p. 195).

Ashley Cleveland sees hymns as a uniting force. "There is a mindset that they represent antiquity, [that] they are dusty old relics that aren't relevant, but to me nothing could be more relevant," she says. "There is so much division in our culture and even within the Christian community, but when you pull out a hymn that everybody knows, we are all unified." And here I thought it was truth that unifies and error that divides. All we need is a little Kum-ba-yah to give peace a chance.

I'll grant (no pun intended... well maybe) that we have a new generation of Christian kids who really don't know the classics. But it would be interesting to make up a list of all of the hymns that are being "re-introduced" to a new generation. In one of the great treatments of the inherent gnosticism of American Revivalism and its children, In the Face of God, Michael Horton points out that many of the hymns we grew up singing are grounded in the Romanticism and subsequent Revivalism of the late 1800's. Many of these hymns, "claiming a direct, immediate, secret, mystical, and indeed unique experience with God...represent the romantic shift from the objective to the subjective, from the person who is known to the person who is knowing (knowing in the gnostic sense, viz., experiencing)." (In the Face of God, p. 197).

Horton continues: "'Victory' and perfect peace, perfect joy, perfect surrender are prominent themes in these songs, heavily influenced not only by Romanticism, but by the Keswick 'Higher Life' movement, which B. B. Warfield characterized as 'Protestant mysticism'... the God and the Christ outside of us (the Reformation emphasis) is replaced with God and the Christ within the indvidual's heart (the medieval and gnostic emphasis)... the mystic's love for Jesus is romantic; the orthodox believer's love for Jesus is filial and is always linked to his saving work. We do not love Jesus 'just for who you are', for apart from his saving acts we do not have any reason to love him any more than we love any other historical figure." (Michael Horton, In the Face of God, pp. 197-199).

Horton is reminding us that just because something is "old" and "sentimental", doesn't mean it has value. Some of these hymns that are being "reintroduced" to a new generation are best forgotten.

Life in the Spirit: The First-Fruits of the Heavenly State

"The New Testament, by spiritualizing the entire Messianic circle of ideas, becomes keenly alive to its affinity to the content of the highest eternal hope, and consequently tends to identify the two, to find the age to come anticipated in the present. In some cases this assumes explicit shape in the belief that great eschatological transactions have already begun to take place, and that believers have already attained to at least partial enjoyment of eschatological privileges. Thus the present kingdom in our Lord's teaching is one in essence with the final kingdom; according to the discourses in John eternal life is in principle realized here; with Paul there has been a prelude to the last judgment and resurrection in the death and resurrection of Christ, and the life in the Spirit is the first-fruits of the heavenly state to come." -- Geerhardus Vos, "The Eschatology of the New Testament"

Blessed by the Blessed One to Bless God

Psalm 103 and 104 both begin with a familiar phrase: Bless the Lord, O my soul. If God is so far superior to His creatures (and fallen creatures, at that), how is it possible for the creature to "bless" the Creator? After all, the author of Hebrews uses this inferior-superior relationship in chapter 7 to describe Melchizedek's blessing of Abraham. How is it then that we who are "inferior" can bless the "Superior"?

Some have suggested that the Psalmist is using "bless" and "praise" interchangeably. Certainly, the parallel drawn at end of Psalm 104 lends itself to that kind of understanding: "Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!" But, I believe there is evidence, given the entirety of the canon and its use of the word "blessed" that the Psalmist may be enriching our understanding of "praise" with "bless" as a complementary term, rather than as merely interchangeable. Although we tend to think of "bless" in terms of praise and certainly an element of praise is inherent to bless, we need not make them exhaustively synonymous.

It is true that Hebrews 7 gives us an overarching "eschatology" of bless... verse 7 is "grounded" in Heb. 6:14 in God's promise to "bless" Abraham". Melchizedek is following the pattern God has established in his "swearing" (a reference to the swearing made on Moriah concerning Abraham's "son", but also the "bless" of Gen. 12:2) when he blesses Abraham. It is true that there can be no greater "blessing" than to have Christ, the last Melchizedek, bless the true offspring of Abraham through a better covenant and a better sacrifice. Yet, the Psalmist calls us to "Bless the Lord". How can that be? I believe it's a "reciprocity" reality inherent to THE Blessing in Christ himself.

Some brief thoughts that jump out:

1. The context of the Psalms seems to indicate an act of glorification or praise, or specifically denoted, setting apart (singling out) for praise.

2. "Bless the Lord" is the reciprocal response of Psalm 1's (and Matthew 5's) "blessed man". One who is blessed will bless.

3. The contextual "reason" for blessing the Lord in the Psalms seems to be what God has done in salvation... in Psalm 34, the man who is "blessed" takes refuge in God his salvation. The "answered" and "delivered" of vs. 4 are first and foremost soteriological (and Christological... every Psalm is by nature Messianic).

4. Both Paul (2 Cor. 1:3, Eph. 1:3) and Peter (1 Pet. 1:3) place the reciprocal response (2) of what God has done in salvation (3) in Christ. "Blessed" is defined as comfort in the sharing of Christ's sufferings (2 Cor. 1), in Christ with every spiritual blessing in high places (Eph. 1), and born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Christ (1 Pet. 1). God is blessed because we have been blessed with Christ himself.

5. Luke places the reciprocal response in terms of redemptive history when he invokes "bless the Lord" in reference to the Christ event (Luke 1:68)... and Zechariah's invocation is followed by Simeon's corrobative statement in Luke 2. This then, has tremendous implications for Luke's own use of Psalm 1's "blessed man" in the Sermon on the Mount (Luke 6:20-23).

6. Matthew shows that Christ becomes his own fulfillment of his blessed man in chap. 5 (via Psalm 1), in highlighting the response of the people in Matthew 23:39. Matthew 5's blessed man is Christ himself (Matthew 23:39). So not only is Psalm 1 looking forward to the Kingdom's blessed man of Matthew 5, but is looking forward to Christ himself. The implications are huge: the only reason we are blessed is because Christ is blessed... He is our identity as "blessed men".
7. Matthew, then, places the identity of the "blessed man" of Matthew 5 in Christ... the "blessed man" who "blesses" has eschatological implications... because in Matt. 24:46 and 25:34, the "blessed man" is pronounced "blessed" at the consummation of redemptive history "when the Son of Man comes in His glory". That Son of Man is one and the same as the One who is called "blessed" in Matthew 23. The blessing pronounced on the Son in humility
(Matthew 23) is now the blessing pronounced on the redeemed in glory. It is interesting to note that those who are to "come" because they "gave me drink" are already "blessed"... that's the objective reality of the indicative... it is a pronouncement that has already been made in Christ.

8. The beatitudes are indicatives, rather than imperatives. IOW, these are the marks of the blessed man of Psalm 1... and that the rest of the Sermon on the Mount flows from those indicatives (i.e. the blessed man loves his enemies, is reconciled to his brother, etc.). Then, if the Blessed man of Matt. 5 is the Blessed man of Matt. 24:46 & 25:34, then we must conclude that the one who is "poor in spirit", "pure in heart", a "peacemaker", etc. (granting that all beatitudes are first and foremost fulfilled and identified in Christ... Christ is the pre-eminent Blessed Man of Psalm 1) results in or is lived out in giving drink, giving food, clothing "the least of these my brothers". Given the reciprocity of being blessed and then blessing the one who has blessed, the "giving drink, food, clothing, etc." of Matt. 25 is part and parcel to *how* we Bless Christ as acts of glorification or praise. After all, Christ says in Matt. 25, "as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me".

One who has received all spiritual blessings in Christ and has been lavished with Christ beyond measure cannot help but "spill over" those blessings and Christ himself to others in his life, and therefore, back to Christ. The fruit on display in Matthew 25 is the fruit of the Matt. 5 blessed man. Or put another way, we bless God because he first blessed us in Christ (see 1 John 4:19's parallel thought).

9. There is one more redemptive-historical nuance of this reciprocity that comes from the etymology of the English usage of the word "blessed": "hallowed by blood". I suppose it might be conjecture as to how much of the contextual greek is reflected in the English etymology in the NT passages above, but the redemptive implications would be obvious if such an etymology
is reflected in the text.

10. The blessing of God is a blessing in Christ. When we bless God, we are not mere "creatures" blessing God. Cloaked in the robes of Christ's righteousness, in Christ we bless God. Thus, even the Hebrews 7:7 observation that the inferior blesses the superior is not an issue. Nothing or no one is more superior than Christ. Christ, as the exalted One, sits enthroned as a co-equal with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Christ, through his human instruments, blesses God. Ultimately, our fulfillment of Pslam 103 and 104 rests not on our ability to bless God, but on our union to the One who is Most Superior.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. (Psalm 103:1-5)

Vos on Scofield's "Chiliasm": Reckless Abuse of O.T. Exegesis

"Chiliasm (pre-millenarianism) has to its credit the astounding readiness it evinces of taking the O.T. Scriptures in a realistic manner, with simple faith, not asking whether the fulfillment of these things is even logically conceivable, offering as its sole basis the conviction that to God all things are possible. This attitude is of course, not attained except through a reckless abuse of the fundamental principles of O.T. exegesis, a perversion invading inevitably the precincts of N.T, exegesis likewise, heedless of the fact that already the O.T. itself points to the spiritualizing of most of the things in question. Apart from accidental features, and broadly speaking, Chiliasm is a daring literalizing and concretizing of the substance of ancient revelation." -- Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology, p. 227

Note: what could be said of early 20th century chiliasm can be said of today's "literalism" in fundamentalism. One could easily switch "chiliasm" and "literalism" in the above quote. Literal interpretation understands the scriptures as literally true. Literalism understands the scriptures as truly literal. Vos goes on to suggest that Christ as the fulfillment of the Old Testament precludes the latter.