Music & Art

Too loud. Too soft. Too rhythmic. Too classical. Not relevant enough. Not transcendent enough. Not polished, creative, innovative, interesting, or powerful enough. Not good enough—at least not for me...

The majority of Church Fathers between AD 100 and 500 did not accept the use of musical instruments in church and the Christians worshipped God with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs in a chanting fashion...

A hymn is an expression of worship—our glad and grateful acknowledgement of the "worth-ship" of Almighty God, our confession of our own creatureliness before our Creator, our bowing before his transcendence...

The early christians faced a musical dilemma. They were surrounded by pagan spectacles featuring lavish choral singing, instrumental music, and dancing, and these were often associated with lust-provoking drama (performed in the nude) and the notorious roman blood combat.

In many churches today you will find styles of music that appeal to today’s generation in a way that they sing the words as they go about their everyday lives and are a means of godly transformation; this was exactly the strategy of the Church Fathers, Ephraim and Hilary, and of Luther, and those that followed him centuries later.