The Pursuit of Excellence in Conservative Christian Music

Where exactly does Scripture itself teach how we are to determine what things it says are “incidental” and what things are not?

Where does it say that grammar matters or that authorial intent matters or that a passage means the same thing today as it did yesterday?

There are some a priori things that go with reading a book. One of them is that the writing has a genre and that we, at least in part, understand the meaning by factoring in the genre.

This is a common error with parables, for example. A parable usually has one main point and may or may not have a few supporting points. But people have been trying to squeeze insights and principles out of incidental details in parables for a long, long time. Leading to all sorts of contradictory and very-low-confidence interpretations—because it’s obvious to listeners that the speaker/writer’s imagination is the main factor in finding that meaning there.

I could preach a sermon on David’s drool in 1 Sam 21:13, but quite a few listeners would immediately know that I’m mostly preaching my imagination. This is because details in narratives don’t clearly have any one significance—other than being story details. Once we step away from that, we can go the way of Origen freely, stacking metaphor on metaphor until nobody has any idea why they should believe us.

So, there are two parts to the answer, to summarize:

• Books and writing have built-in rules
• Persuasive speaking requires that audiences be able to understand how your conclusions follow from your evidence

That second will not be the case for a lot of people if we try to make principles out of incidental details.

In the end we are usually left with someone's personal oplnion.

Ron,

You're 100% right on this. When I have asked for specific guidelines that can be used by the average pastor with slightly above average musical skills in determining which music is appropriate, I am left with little more than blank stares. I guess each church just needs to hire a trained musicologist to make the decisions on a piece by piece basis.

I can't help but smell a bit of gnosticism lurking in the shadows here, where only the initiated have the secret knowledge of what specific music is acceptable.

There are some a priori things that go with reading a book. One of them is that the writing has a genre and that we, at least in part, understand the meaning by factoring in the genre.

This is a common error with parables, for example. A parable usually has one main point and may or may not have a few supporting points. But people have been trying to squeeze insights and principles out of incidental details in parables for a long, long time. Leading to all sorts of contradictory and very-low-confidence interpretations—because it’s obvious to listeners that the speaker/writer’s imagination is the main factor in finding that meaning there.

I could preach a sermon on David’s drool in 1 Sam 21:13, but quite a few listeners would immediately know that I’m mostly preaching my imagination. This is because details in narratives don’t clearly have any one significance—other than being story details. Once we step away from that, we can go the way of Origen freely, stacking metaphor on metaphor until nobody has any idea why they should believe us.

So, there are two parts to the answer, to summarize:

• Books and writing have built-in rules
• Persuasive speaking requires that audiences be able to understand how your conclusions follow from your evidence

That second will not be the case for a lot of people if we try to make principles out of incidental details.

The Bible is not like any other book or literature. Every word of the Bible is exactly what the Spirit wanted it to be. Holding to the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture is essential.

Historical narratives are not parables. Claims that details are "incidental" are just that--they are mere claims.

I did not say anything about preaching a sermon on "David's drool."

The NT teaches us that details in historical narratives matter. For example, many hold that the people's eating, drinking, and playing in Exodus 32:6 are mere incidental details.

The Spirit teaches us otherwise through direct apostolic citation of that verse in 1 Cor. 10:7. The Spirit could have supported the command to NT Christians that they must not be idolaters by citing the people's making the idol, bowing down and worshiping it, or giving offerings to it.

In His perfect wisdom, the Spirit, however, did not inspire Paul to cite any of those aspects of their idolatry. He directed Paul to cite their eating, drinking, and playing as the basis for His command.

Those details in historical narrative were not incidental.

The topic is music. Biblical interpretation is a side issue. (And a little less "cut and paste" would make things easier to understand.)

No, biblical interpretation is not a side issue. Faulty handling of the Bible is why you and so many others like you lack the very understanding of what music pleases God that you claim that you want to know.

Rajesh, your own website links modern musical styles to voodoo. You can deny that this is guilt by association all you want, but the fallacy does have a definition that applies to your work.

(or a pro tip; denying a claim is not the same as refuting it)

Another pro tip for you; if you are going to use perjorative stereotypes about African-Americans (like voodoo) in railing against the use of musical genre that they developed--predominantly in their churches, ahem--then prepare to be called a racist.

Or, put bluntly, if you don't want to be cited as a bad example, don't be one.

Bert, you’re upping the emotional ante there… I don’t think it helps clarify things. We’re better off focusing on deeper problems like how to understand the Bible.

The Bible is not like any other book or literature. Every word of the Bible is exactly what the Spirit wanted it to be. Holding to the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture is essential.

Historical narratives are not parables. Claims that details are “incidental” are just that—they are mere claims.

It looks like a lot of missing the point is likely if we continue to delve into this. But I’m not ready to give up yet.

The is both like and unlike every other book.

• Unlike: As you noted, every single word is inspired and there for a purpose.
• Like: It is still a book and still must be read and interpreted in the ways all books must be read and interpreted.

Historical narratives and parables are both forms of narrative. They are stories. The latter are clearly fictional and the former are not. But because they are narrative, they have quite a bit in common.

• In the case of parables, at least in the gospels, we know there is a spiritual/doctrinal point to each.
• In the case of historical narrative, there is also a doctrinal point, but we have less certainty about what scope of story is intended to make it. That is, “the point” may lie in several stories/events taken together rather than a different point for each. So, just as with parables, we do not know that smaller bits of text are intended to make a doctrinal point.

There is always purpose.

I think we would agree that plenary inspiration means there is always a purpose for a detail being there. Can you prove from Scripture that the purpose is always a doctrinal purpose?

I’m confident you don’t actually use the Scriptures that way consistently, because there are built in problems with trying to do that. Chiefly, how do you know what doctrine is intended? As I noted in my previous post, the nature of narrative details is that you can play free association all day and come up with dozens of “points” that have no warrant—no support, other than imagination.

So, my point is that story details (whether fiction or non-fiction) have an inspired purpose, but the Bible does not tell us that purpose must be doctrinal. It’s purpose could be to help us more deeply feel the plight of the character(s). It could be to build tension. It could be to arouse curiosity. It could be to make the story more beautiful (a lot of the book of Ruth is like that), or it could be to help us understand the motivations and character of the people involved.

All of these other purposes help us get the actual spiritual/doctrinal point of the story, but they do not necessarily have distinct doctrinal meaning in themselves.

I’ve written about this before, so I’ll not do a rewrite here.

As David approached Goliath, he took five stones from a brook (1 Sam 17:40). I recall one preacher who expounded on “five stones you need to have in your bag to be successful against temptation”—or something like that.

We know a stone can be a metaphor (2 Sam 22:3, 1 Cor 10:4). But are we supposed to see David’s five stones as representative of something more? Is there anything in the immediate context or the rest of Scripture to suggest that we should? And is David’s behavior in picking up stones supposed to teach us about overcoming temptation?

Suppose for a moment these “hidden meanings” are really there. Listeners who have learned any critical thinking skills at all are still going to be very skeptical. It’s always better to preach meaning that you can help hearers see is truly in the text.

We have no choice

We could back and forth about basic hermeneutics for quite a while without profit, but at the end of the day, just reading the Bible forces some realities on us.

Pick any OT narrative at random and start reading, and one of two things will happen, probably some of both:

• You will make assumptions about what has doctrinal meaning and what doesn’t. A lot of that is pretty obvious to most people, I believe. We know from early childhood how stories work.
• You will get curious about story details and wonder if the writer intended to make a point by noting this or that.
  • If you get curious you’ll then have to ponder how you will go about deciding whether the writer intended to make a doctrinal point or only to more fully develop a character, help us better understand the setting, help us feel the truth more deeply at an emotional level, or some other non-doctrinal purpose.
  • If you develop criteria for making those decisions, you’ll have to have some idea why and what sort of certainty you can attach to both your criteria and your application of them to specific narrative bits and pieces.

Fortunately for all of us, students of the Bible have given all of that a great deal of thought already and written lots of books (many great, many not so great) on how to interpret biblical narrative in general and historical narrative in particular.

So anyone who needs to can benefit from reading up on those topics. In seminary I had a whole semester, maybe two on biblical hermeneutics, and I think we had to read like a couple thousand pages for each!

Maybe some other readers can list some good books. For me, it’s been too long since I’ve studied on that topic, so I’m not prepared at the moment to make recommendations.

But the truth is that 99% of the time, common sense works just fine. We know from our toddler days what a story is and we know that each particular conveyed in a story does not have a distinct point or value as evidence for a concept. It is not how story works. Inspiration does not turn stories into non-stories. They are still stories and work like stories.

So… with inspiration, each particular detail (indeed, each word) has purpose, but there are lots of purposes besides “providing doctrine” or “providing evidence for deriving principles.”

Apologies for the double post, but @Rajesh, your post contained a lot observations that are not in dispute. I think it helps to affirm points of agreement.

• Every word is inspired and important (verbal plenary inspiration)
• OT narrative is important.
• The details are important.
• When a NT write references details from an OT text, it’s important and has a purpose.

Where we differ is (a) the assumption that each detail’s importance is doctrinal importance or that each purpose is a doctrinal purpose, (b) even when there is doctrinal meaning there, what that meaning must be/what the possibilities are.

Aaron said:

Bert, you’re upping the emotional ante there… I don’t think it helps clarify things. We’re better off focusing on deeper problems like how to understand the Bible.

To understand Scripture properly, we need to jettison racist guilt by association fallacies.

Yes, it has emotional impact. I own that. But the ugly fact is that for at least the past 150 years, there has been an argument against the various forms of African-American music that really boils down to "it's associated with pagan religions of Africa", and the example given is of voodoo, the picture drawn being akin to the weirder rites found in Haiti and New Orleans as used in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die. Again, look at Rajesh's site on the topic, and ask yourself how you'd feel if every time the work of Isaac Watts was mentioned, somebody brought up the weirdness of Teutonic or Druidic mythology.

Most advocates of the 1700s-1900s traditional music sanitize their arguments, thankfully, but the same thing is in play. As I've noted many times before, the implicit message appears to be "The white man's music, at least prior to Elvis Presley, is OK, but other peoples'....not so much." Don't think that message doesn't get through.

[Aaron Blumer said:] Apologies for the double post, but @Rajesh, your post contained a lot observations that are not in dispute. I think it helps to affirm points of agreement.

• Every word is inspired and important (verbal plenary inspiration)
• OT narrative is important.
• The details are important.
• When a NT write references details from an OT text, it’s important and has a purpose.

Where we differ is (a) the assumption that each detail’s importance is doctrinal importance or that each purpose is a doctrinal purpose, (b) even when there is doctrinal meaning there, what that meaning must be/what the possibilities are.

No apologies, necessary, Aaron. My post was long and contained lots of observations because you have made multiple statements in your posts that I wanted to respond to.

I, too, probably read thousands of pages over the span of my graduate seminary coursework for two degrees, the second of which was in NT Interpretation. I am not sure what your point is in mentioning your having done so.

I have not assumed anything about the doctrinal importance of every detail. My comments have been in response to your previous statements that, in effect, to me, asserted that details in historical narratives do not have doctrinal importance and are merely incidental. I reject that position categorically.

I am not inclined to pursue this matter further with you. What I will say is that whoever asserts that particular details about music in narrative passages are merely incidental and do not have any doctrinal importance has to prove that they are merely incidental and do not have any doctrinal importance. Mere assertion is not proof.

I, too, probably read thousands of pages over the span of my graduate seminary coursework for two degrees, the second of which was in NT Interpretation. I am not sure what your point is in mentioning your having done so.

I meant no insult, but there seemed to be some gaps on the basics. But maybe you learned those concepts, evaluated them, and rejected them? So in that case, we just have different hermeneutics.

I have not assumed anything about the doctrinal importance of every detail. My comments have been in response to your previous statements that, in effect, to me, asserted that details in historical narratives do not have doctrinal importance and are merely incidental. I reject that position categorically.

I appreciate the effort to clarify your view. I think I am less certain what your view is now, though.

I’ll define what I mean by a couple of terms, then pose a couple of questions that might help me understand your position and process.

By “incidental,” I don’t mean trivial or unimportant. What I mean is they provide information about incidents. So, story details. I’ll just use that.

Edit to add: “doctrinal importance”… I’m not sure I used that term. I mean more like “doctrinal use” independently of the story itself. That is, story details often shape the story in a way that the story gives us doctrinal use/information. But what I mean by “doctrinal use” is direct use.

So here are some questions….

• Is it your view that all story details have doctrinal importance or only some story details?
• If only some, how do you determine which ones do and which ones do not?
• Having determined that a story detail has doctrinal importance, how do you identify what importance/contribution to doctrine it conveys?

To those interested in the music question specifically…

The discussion about interpretation might seem in the weeds, I know, but it’s really not. I think there are at least two reasons why music debates go in circles and get insulting, etc., and don’t really land anywhere useful.

• There isn’t an agreed upon body of authoritative evidence to work with
• There isn’t an agreed upon view of how to use/reason in a valid way from that body of evidence

So both of these point back to “we agree the Bible rules, but we don’t agree on (a) what is relevant in it or (b) how to use what is relevant in it.”

Both point back to Bible interpretation in general. Whatever we see as sound principles/process of interpretation, it’s not going to be different in any essential way from topic to topic. Whether it’s music or food or work or relationships or money or power or whatever. Sound method would be the same for all of these.