Cultural Relatives

Another form of the same objection is found in an unpublished paper by Leonard J. Coppes, an Orthodox Presbyterian minister and a published author in Old Testament studies. "Exclusive Psalmody and Progressive Revelation: A Response" has circulated since 1989, and was recently cited as providing a significant rationale for using uninspired songs in the worship of God.(8)

Coppes argues that as long as the biblical message is preserved, no special warrant is required for the use of singing in worship. He regards song as an art form, whose only test is beauty, and declares that because the music is not given in the Bible, there is nothing there which significantly distinguishes singing from other forms of communication. Coppes says that it is not scriptural to make an exact distinction between the functions of words ("prophecy, preaching or teaching, praise, and prayer"), and song as a form of communication. He concludes that the only criterion for the content of a form of communication is faithfulness to the revealed message.(9) What Coppes has done is to exempt any particular worship form from the restrictive force of the regulative principle.

The obvious answer to Coppes is that we do not need to have the Bible supply us with the tunes in order to grasp what singing is, and to understand that such an act is different from the sound preaching of the Word. Instead, a text is supplied to us in the Psalter, and the Bible tells us that it is for singing.

Coppes seeks to demonstrate the validity of his objection by arguing that "singing played the same role in Israel's worship that it did among her cultural relations."(10) Because singing permeated all ancient Near Eastern worship, and Israel was a part of that cultural pattern, singing did not require a specific justification in Israel's worship. Coppes points out similarities between the societal patterns and laws of Abraham and Moses, and those of their contemporaries in the surrounding nations. "Ugarit knew some of the same sacrifices" as Moses; "to be sure, such matters are distinguished and molded by the influence of monotheistic religion, but the similarities cannot be denied."(11) The structure of the songs in Exodus 15 bears a resemblance to norms of good poetry in Ugaritic. This leads him to plead that it was to be expected that Israel would use song in worship, given its widespread use among Israel's cultural relatives.

However, Israel's neighbors were not her religious relatives, for no other nation had God's Word. "He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them." (Ps. 147:19-20) The Lord plainly declares that the worship of Israel's neighbors was an abomination to Him, and places many restrictions upon Israel to dissuade His people from following the pattern of the other nations. The separation of Israel is one of the most pervasive themes in the Old Testament. It was in this very context of separation that expression was given to the regulative principle in worship (Deut. 12:29-32). While Coppes suggests that songs were not introduced into worship in response to God's command, but simply as norms of human culture, Exodus and Leviticus repeatedly teach that everything in worship must be done in accordance with the divinely revealed pattern. With respect to music in particular, we are told of the specific authorization and provision, through prophets and seers, which lay behind the arrangements for its use in the temple (II Chron. 29:1-2, 25-30; 35:15; Ezra 3:10).

Coppes appeals to the absence of a recorded command of God to compose the songs found in Exodus 15, or to present them in worship. "Yet they are received by him without judgment. Therefore, to introduce song into worship was not viewed by God as a violation of the nature of worship even though He has not specifically commanded that they be so introduced."(12) "God voiced no principial objection to the human introduction of song."(13) What Coppes misses is that not all of the commands God gave to His people in redemptive history are recorded in Scripture.(14) We have a similar situation in the biblical account of the sacrifices made by Abel and Noah; the narrative makes no mention of a preceding divine institution of sacrifices. Did these early worshipers have instruction from God about how to worship? The question goes to the heart of our concept of the worship which is acceptable to God.

In contrast to Coppes' contention that "God neither commanded nor judged" the introduction of song into his worship, and that song as a form was not related to the regulative principle,(15) Calvin's comments about worship in early redemptive history illustrate the Reformed concept of worship as an act of faith based upon some word of divine institution. Writing on Gen. 8:20, Calvin says: "But here it may be asked, by what impulse Noah offered a sacrifice to God, seeing he had no command to do so? I answer: although Moses does not expressly declare that God commanded him to do it, yet a certain judgment may be formed from what follows, and even from the whole context, that Noah had rested upon the word of God, and that, in reliance on the divine command, he had rendered this worship, which he knew, indubitably, would be acceptable to God.

"We have before said, that one animal of every kind was preserved separately; and have stated for what end it was done. But it was useless to set apart animals for sacrifice, unless God had revealed this design to holy Noah, who was to be the priest to offer up the victims. Besides, Moses says that sacrifices were chosen from among clean animals. But it is certain that Noah did not invent this distinction for himself, since it does not depend on human choice. Whence we conclude, that he undertook nothing without divine authority. Also immediately afterwards, Moses subjoins, that the smell of the sacrifice was acceptable to God. This general rule, therefore, is to be observed, that all religious services which are not perfumed with the odour of faith, are of an ill-savour before God. Let us therefore know, that the altar of Noah was founded in the word of God. And the same word was as salt to his sacrifices, that they might not be insipid."(16)

John Owen teaches the same concept of the nature of worship in A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God (1667). There he says that a principal way by which we sanctify the name of God in his worship is "When in every ordinance we consider his appointment of it, and submit our souls and consciences unto his authority therein; which if we observe any thing in his worship but what he hath appointed we cannot do. Not formality, not custom, not the precepts of men, not any thing but the authority and command of God, is to be respected in this obedience. This is the first thing that faith regards in divine worship; it rests not in any thing, closeth not with any thing, but what it discerns that God hath commanded, and therein it eyes his authority as he requireth it."(17)

Jonathan Edwards says the same thing in respect to worship practice early in redemptive history. "Sacrificing was not a custom first established by the Levitical law, for it had been a part of God's instituted worship from the beginning. We read of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, offering sacrifice, and before them Noah, and Abel. And this was by divine appointment; for it was part of God's worship in his church, which was offered up in faith, and which he accepted. This proves that it was by his institution; for sacrificing is not part of natural worship. The light of nature doth not teach men to offer up beasts in sacrifice to God; and seeing it was not enjoined by the law of nature, to be acceptable to God, it must be by some positive command or institution; for God has declared his abhorrence of such worship as is taught by the precept of men without his institution. (Is. 29.13)

"And such worship as hath not a warrant from divine institution, cannot be offered up in faith, because faith has no foundation where there is no divine appointment. Men have no warrant to hope for God's acceptance, in that which is not of his appointment, and in that to which he hath not promised his acceptance: and therefore it follows, that the custom of offering sacrifices to God was instituted soon after the fall; for the Scripture teaches us, that Abel offered 'the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof,' Gen. 4.4. and that he was accepted of God in this offering, Heb. 11.4."(18)

Also significant is the Westminster Assembly's judgment that prior divine sanction for worship practice may be rightly demonstrated from biblical example: "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 is no foregoing precept recorded in Scripture. 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."(19)

Coppes argues that the regulative principle of worship asks nothing more than that a form of communication faithfully convey the biblical message.(20) Does not this position postulate a freedom to express the truths of revelation in worship actions of our own invention? Is the form of worship itself unregulated by Scripture, and aesthetic beauty to have free play so long as the message communicated is that of the Bible? Can it be seriously argued that the Westminster Confession means nothing more than keeping to a biblical message when it declares, "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" (XXI.i)? But Scripture does dictate the very forms of worship, as our Confession teaches (XXI.iii and v). The argument advanced by Poythress and Coppes is that the regulative principle does not govern the specific means by which biblical functions of worship are carried out. But this is precisely the Lutheran and Anglican principle of worship; in other words, the argument is an abandonment of the Reformed regulative principle.

Notes
(8) W. Gary Crampton, "Exclusive Psalmody," Trinity Review, no. 92 (October 1992), p. 3.
(9) Leonard J. Coppes, "Exclusive Psalmody and Progressive Revelation: A Response" (unpublished), pp. 1-2.
(10) Ibid., p. 3.
(11) Ibid., p. 2.
(12) Ibid., pp. 3-4.
(13) Ibid., p. 5.
(14) Cf. John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (1850-53, reprint ed., London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1966), 13:467 and 448-50.
(15) Coppes, "Exclusive Psalmody and Progressive Revelation," p. 9.
(16) John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis (1847, reprint ed., London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 1:282; cf. pp. 192-93, on Gen. 4:2.
(17) Owen, Works, 15:456.
(18) Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman (1834, reprint ed., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 1:537.
(19) Alexander F. Mitchell and John Struthers, eds., Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1874), pp. 237-238, resolutions on June 1, 1646. This is an example of Assembly resolutions which were not incorporated into the Confession's text, but which serve as a significant background to the Confession's statements. Cf. Owen, Works, 13:467.
(20) Coppes, "Exclusive Psalmody and Progressive Revelation," pp. 1-2 and 9.

Go to the next installment:
III. Singing of Psalms: Circumstances of Worship