elnwood
Puritan Board Junior
The problem is, Don, that you are not using a Biblical argument to deny the exclusive use of Psalms in church worship. Your main argument sounds like it stems from a pragmatic "It feels right to sing more than the Psalms, because we get to sing about Jesus and the resurrection". Now, I'm probably misreading you, but I think that you need to be more clear.
I am not an EP'er, but because of these reasons I feel your argument falls a little flat.
You need to remember, if I am reading you correctly:
1) Sola Scriptura: the Scriptures, not pragmatic experience, should be our guide in faith and practice.
2) The apostles had no Apostolic example in a New Testament upon which to base their Apostolic example.
3) The Hebrew Scriptures in the Old Testament were all they had upon which to preach and teach. So, in some way, it must be possible for a church to preach Christ's crucifixion, resurrection and ascencion from those very scriptures.
Just my
Hi Vaughan,
Keen observations. What you said is true because I'm not trying to form a biblical argument to deny EP in worship. If I were, I would have spent more time debunking the Regulative Principle, discussing the meaning of "songs, hymns and spiritual songs," and using historical evidence.
No, the original post was "does your church sing Psalms?", and the argument was them asking my why I personally don't use a Psalter in worship, and so that's why I responded in kind. I am responding as a person who already has presuppositions of denying EP and the RPW. Thus my answer to this pragmatic question is going to consist of a subjective "I choose these types of songs over these types" in the same way a preacher pragmatically decides, "I am going to preach these types of sermons in these books of the Bible." There is confusion because I am arguing based on different presuppositions than the ones who are arguing against me. Does that make sense?
Thus, my reply is going to be something along the lines of "I believe we should choose songs that reflect the whole of Scripture" in the same way a preacher would say, "I think I should use the whole of Scripture to preach the sermon" instead of just preaching from one book of the Bible, or even only using words found in one book of the Bible.
This is a pragmatic question. There are other threads addressing EP, some of which I have posted in. But that wasn't the original question.