The Pursuit of Excellence in Conservative Christian Music

May I suggest that any of you who have questions or comments about the content of Taigen Joos' article respond to him at Proclaim and Defend. So far there are no responses there and it seems evident that he does not read SI. P and D would probably like the attention as well as few of their articles seem to get commented on.

Actually, we don't solicit comments on P&D. Commenting is available, but please note the posted rules for commenting:

Comments – Proclaim & Defend (proclaimanddefend.org)

We aren't a discussion board like SI and often reject comments. Nothing personal, just want to keep any discussion focused.

I will say that I think this thread missed Taigen's point. And then it drifted hither and yon as these threads tend to do. We are planning a second post next week from Taigen that might help you get what he is saying.

In this particular thread, I want to have an extended discussion with you about your approach to the music questions.

My approach to music style questions would be very similar to how I’d approach a lot of other questions regarding “what should we do today in our setting?”

It is hierarchical, starting with the clearest, highest-certainty teaching, and working down to less certain/less clear teaching. (But as I get further down, it gets harder to put them in that order… things sort of flatten out on certainty/clarity.)

1. Do we have direct instruction on the ethical use of X in church, outside church, etc.? (Usually, this takes the form of imperatives in the epistles)
2. Do we have direct instruction in the form of principles specific to X in church, outside church, etc.? (This could be in epistles, in Acts, in the gospels. In narrative, this is more than a report that someone behaved in a particular way. There would need to be some evidence there that their behavior should be seen as exemplary—to qualify as ‘direct,’ as I mean it here.)
3. Do we have indirect instruction on similar topics or similar settings that we should reason from to make applications to X?
4. Do we have narrative examples of use/principles/nature of X in somewhat similar settings that are clearly exemplary in some way?
5. Do we have occurrences of X or something similar in narrative in ways that we might be able to reason something from?

This is a quick summary, so I’m sure it’s not complete, but I have found that there is usually plenty to work with without getting around to level 5. That is, most of the time, if there is anything useful at level 5, it just confirms what we already knew from 1 or 2, maybe some 3 or 4.

As a quick, concrete example, giving as a part of church gatherings would be, in many ways, parallel to music. So I would look first for direct teaching on how giving should work in NT churches.

Then I’d look for examples of how giving occurred, probably with exemplary intent, in Acts. I’d look for direct teaching on giving that is either broadly applicable to applicable to settings in many ways similar to the church.

There would be examples of giving in the OT in similar settings: the people of God giving together.

What I would not feel the need to do is comb the OT and look at every instance in narrative where some individual or group gave something in order to try to draw conclusions about what kinds of things should be given, in what manner, how often, etc. Most of these would have such low certainty as a basis for doctrine, they would not be very useful.

Now if I was writing a book on “All the Giving in the Bible,” I would catalogue those occurrences. I’d have to. My title would promise it, so… unavoidable. But I wouldn’t expect to draw teaching on NT church giving from how Abraham gave livestock to Abimelech as part of making a covenant with him (Gen 21.27).

I wouldn’t read Gen 21.27 and think, “Ah, perhaps giving should always be livestock. Perhaps giving livestock is better than giving money. Perhaps we should always make covenants when we give.”

The context gives no indication that these details have that kind of instructional purpose.

I might deduce something about the nature of giving in general, but there are so many better places for that kind of information.

Though every detail is there for a reason, it is not a given that the reason is to serve as a basis for doctrine on the nature of X or the practice of X in the NT church.

So, a lot of references to music in OT narrative would be somewhat similar.

I’ll anticipate an objection: What about 2 Tim 3:16 “for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction…”?

What 2 Tim 3:16 doesn’t specify is what size portion of Scripture can serve those purposes or how directly or indirectly a portion of Scripture would do those things. So we have to figure that out in various ways.

(Another close parallel that would be interesting to analyze is clothing styles. Probably this would work better than giving, since there is actually some ‘style’ information in the OT as well as the new… wish I’d thought of that earlier! 😀)

It is hierarchical, starting with the clearest, highest-certainty teaching, and working down to less certain/less clear teaching. (But as I get further down, it gets harder to put them in that order… things sort of flatten out on certainty/clarity.)

I like this. I'd also add, we need to understand how Jesus' life, teaching, and sacrifice fulfills / interprets what we learn about X in the OT (Matt. 5:17), especially as it relates to OT religious patterns, methods, and practices.

What I said was, "We don't get to fill in the blanks with our preferences or opinions and stamp God's imprimatur on them."

We all have preferences or opinions about worship music and worship styles, but it is only one side of the argument that attempts to claim God's imprimatur on a particular European musical style for the worldwide church for all time.

Along the same lines, do you regard as equally faulty those who would make certain kinds of music that are especially of one particular people group in America mandatory for acceptance by all believers everywhere?

I will say that I think this thread missed Taigen's point. And then it drifted hither and yon as these threads tend to do. We are planning a second post next week from Taigen that might help you get what he is saying.

I hear this from time to time, and I always wonder, how did I miss the point? What was the point, then?

Was this not his point, or integral to it?

There are a lot of assumptions in this piece about what’s good and bad in musical styles and developments. One of the biggest—and Joos is hardly alone on this point—is that the church-centeredness of cultural influence in the west before the Enlightenment = superior musical style.

So what I took him to be saying is that we're missing the boat on excellence because excellence is serious music of the pre-Enlightenment era.

Which I think is plausible, but not obvious.

The idea of excellence requires some way of measuring quality, some kind of standard. So when it comes to style, what would be the standard?

Modern music is not different from older music in this respect: there is a lot of it that was and is lazy and easy. People are having fun with it (as they did centuries ago). Then there is a much smaller group that is highly skilled and capable of composing and performing at a level that most people are not. Then you have the whole range in between.

Is any of that "excellence"? Well, we could agree that highly skilled is excellent in some respects, for some purposes. Like an Olympic runner is excellent. But if I run from a burning building and survive, was my running excellent? Arguable, I lived so it was. That was it's only purpose.

So people may have fun with music excellently. Because it's for fun.

In church, what are our purposes for music? I think they correlate only somewhat loosely with ideas of excellence in academia or professional performance--because the purposes are different.

Was this not his point, or integral to it?

There are a lot of assumptions in this piece about what’s good and bad in musical styles and developments. One of the biggest—and Joos is hardly alone on this point—is that the church-centeredness of cultural influence in the west before the Enlightenment = superior musical style.

So what I took him to be saying is that we're missing the boat on excellence because excellence is serious music of the pre-Enlightenment era.

It is "The Pursuit of Excellence in Conservative Christian Music"

The piece is not saying Conservative Christian Music is best so much as it is advocating the pursuit of excellence in that style of music.

Yes, I know, we can argue if Conservative Christian Music is best (hey, a new CCM!!) and I think it is. This is what we usually argue about here.

But that is not Taigen's point

Along the same lines, do you regard as equally faulty those who would make certain kinds of music that are especially of one particular people group in America mandatory for acceptance by all believers everywhere?

Yes. Each local church context is different. I believe that as long as the regulative principle is followed, Christ gives his church freedom of form. Therefore, the elements of worship should be similar, yet each will be contextualized based on the local church.

Rajesh wrote:

Along the same lines, do you regard as equally faulty those who would make certain kinds of music that are especially of one particular people group in America mandatory for acceptance by all believers everywhere?

Probably the first question that ought to be asked in response, Rajesh, is "when precisely did such a thing occur?" I've been following these threads for a while, and I can remember no times anyone here, myself included, suggested that a particular genre ought to be "mandatory", let alone a genre identified strongly with any particular people group.

I suspect what you are trying to get at, however, is my note that when your blog has claimed "the roots of rock & roll lie deep in the soil of voodoo", that this is not only a guilt by association fallacy, but also one that will reasonably be interpreted as racist in intent. Which is a very different claim than the one you make.

Ironically, I think you've implicitly admitted that my claim is true; that your GBA fallacy should reasonably be interpreted as racist. After all, a "genetic" fallacy (the category into which ad hominem and GBA fall) will almost always be seen as attacking those who share the "genes".

It is “The Pursuit of Excellence in Conservative Christian Music”

The piece is not saying Conservative Christian Music is best so much as it is advocating the pursuit of excellence in that style of music.

I get it, thanks. The conservative part is assumed.

But I’m not sure it really works ultimately to advocate for excellence within an assumed idea of conservative.

Either way, there are some questions that we would have to try to answer biblically, some harder than others:

• What is excellence in church music in the local congregational setting? Why?
• What are we identifying as needing conserving (as basis for our concept of “conservative”)? Why?

So, of course, unless you want to write a whole book on it, it’s perfectly fine to assume several answers and make a case for excellence. It’s just that every bit of “let’s conserve and do it excellently” flows from upstream concepts and raises lots of questions. And though some of these are controversial and hard to answer, and often unfruitfully debated (or just squabbled over), that doesn’t mean they are unimportant.

People are still waiting for actual examples of excellent music as well as actual examples of unacceptable music. Until that happens it seems we're left with people's preferences. Popular music? Bach was popular I his time. Examples are needed.

Excellence in Conservative Christian Music Begins in the Home – Proclaim & Defend (proclaimanddefend.org)

[Aaron Blumer said:] I might deduce something about the nature of giving in general, but there are so many better places for that kind of information.

Though every detail is there for a reason, it is not a given that the reason is to serve as a basis for doctrine on the nature of X or the practice of X in the NT church.

So, a lot of references to music in OT narrative would be somewhat similar.

I’ll anticipate an objection: What about 2 Tim 3:16 “for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction…”?

What 2 Tim 3:16 doesn’t specify is what size portion of Scripture can serve those purposes or how directly or indirectly a portion of Scripture would do those things. So we have to figure that out in various ways.

I have had almost no access to the internet from last Friday morning until yesterday afternoon. I have many responses to these remarks that I hope to make in the near future, but ongoing limited access to the internet means that it may be a while before I am able to make the in-depth responses that I want to make.

Your comments about 2 Tim. 3:16 are indeed a very important discussion that must be had. Moreover, that is not the only passage that poses a significant problem for some aspects of your approach to historical narratives.

Just a brief digression. Rajesh, I empathize with what you guys in the Greenville area are going through after Helene. My daughter and son-in-law also live in your area (outer Greenville up towards Traveler’s Rest). Last I heard, they still don’t have power and there are many trees down in the area, etc. My church has many relatives and friends in Western NC that are dealing with even more than that right now. My prayers are with all of you affected by this, to whatever degree.

Instead of classifying things as "classical" or otherwise, I'd have to suggest that those who want excellence in music ought to classify music as "canonical" vs. "forgotten."

That is, if you go back to the days of Bach and Vivaldi, continuing on through really Strauss and even Tchiakovsky, what you had was that pretty much every prince, king, or government of significance in Europe had their own court musicians, and hence there is a tremendous amount of "classical" music which has (often thankfully) been lost. This is, really, the joke that Peter Schickele was making with his ""PDQ Bach" records--that sadly, he was finding old works that had been forgotten for a very good reason.

Even Bach was forgotten for a long, long time. So what we think of today as "classical" music is the result of an admittedly imperfect process by which the good things were largely retained, and the forgettable things were largely forgotten. The same process works with folk, bluegrass, country & western, jazz, and the like. What we think of as "excellent" is really "that which has survived".

And that means that blanket statements about superiority of one genre really boil down to preferences.

Another set of realities about "classical" music is that it's really divided into a number of categories--baroque (Bach, Vivaldi), classical (Mozart, early Beethoven), romantic (Beethoven, Strauss), modern (Tchikovsky), and probably a couple others that I've forgotten. Contrary to the usual rhetoric, it can be fairly intellectual (e.g. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik ) or hilariously comic (e.g. Die Zauberfloete, also from Mozart). Also contrary to much rhetoric, it's not intellectual vs. emotional--if you can go through Beethoven's symphonies, Papageno, or Bach's passions without detecting the emotion, you need to see a good cardiologist!

Finally, the usual application of "you need to listen to classical music" is "these are much more like the hymns we sing", and the reality is that this is really not true. Yes, there are hymns like "Ode to Joy" and "Be Still my soul" that take snippets from the old "classical" composers, but there are also large numbers of songs extracted from the "folk" traditions of the day. One might object "but there are four part harmonies", but you'll find tight harmonies in barbership, jazz, and even rock & roll--e.g. a fair amount from Van Halen, especially on "Diver Down".

Perhaps you could start a new thread with Taigen's second article. That way we could stay on topic and you and Rajesh could continue your side discussion here.