Instrumental music was commanded by God in the Temple. But when the Babylonian captivity came along the Jews did not have access to the Temple for 70 years. So they established the synagogue system. The Pharisees became powerful about 200 years before Christ. Since Jehovah-God had punished the Jews for worshiping idols by having them taken captive into Babylon (500 years before Christ), the Pharisees decided to be as safe and strict as possible in order not to be punished as a people by God again.

The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music states that the tradition of a capella singing originated  with the Pharisees. The Pharisees thought that anyone who played an instrument would be breaking the Sabbath ban against work by tuning or carrying their instruments. So synagogue worship was limited to a capella singing.

Since there was only a capella singing in the synagogue, it makes sense that early Jewish converts would sing a capella, because of those same issues of conscience that would limit them from eating unclean meats.

Others have theorized that synagogue worship contained no music at all and focused entirely on praying, reading and teaching, and only later included chanting of the Psalms. See I Tim. 4:13

The Roman Catholic Church sang in unison until it accepted two part and four part harmony in the Middle Ages. The use of instruments in worship was introduced about 1000 A.D. probably by a pope who had been an organ maker. The use of musical instruments in churches was hotly debated, the Eastern Orthodox Church rejecting it.

 Among the Reformationists, Martin Luther accepted instruments of music. Ulrich Zwingli, the beginner of the Swiss Reformation, just two years after Martin Luther's 95 theses against indulgences, also opposed the sale of indulgences. Eventually he did not allow any musical instruments in the church although he could play many instruments himself. Zwingli believed the abuses of the instruments in the Roman Catholic Church obstructed the understanding of the word, and he wanted the focus of the assembly to be on the preaching of the word. However he encouraged lively singing. John Calvin, in the next generation of reformers, did not permit instruments of music either. John Calvin restricted the songs to mostly the Psalms in the Bible, and only allowed unison singing, no four-part harmony. Baptists went back and forth on the topic, mostly opposing instrumental music on the basis of the fact that the Church of England used it. Today Primitive Baptists, some Presbyterian groups and the Churches of Christ still do not use instrumental music. Some of the Presbyterian and Reformed churches still do not allow any hymns except the Psalms. Some churches believe it is wrong to have musical notation, only including the words of the songs in the hymn book.

Interestingly, there is a small Presbyterian group that uses the exact same logic as the hard-line Churches of Christ to ban instruments of music in worship. So the roots of using the silence of scripture to ban any other worship in the Churches of Christ goes back to the legacy of Alexander Campbell.

The Incarnation

When Jesus came to earth, God in the flesh, He came as a Jewish man. He spoke, dressed, ate, worked and worshiped as a Jewish man. The people around him only had a problem with the way he described God the Father in heaven, how he rebuked them and how he confronted the way they had replaced heavy burdens for worshiping God.

Jesus told the Pharisees that when the father welcomed the Prodigal Son back home he threw a big party with music and dancing.

The apostle Paul said he had become all things to all people. He did not want to put any stumbling blocks in the way of preaching the good news: that God had come to earth in the flesh and washed all our guilt away.

John said that in heaven we will all have harps to play in praise of God.

There are many wonderful Churches of Christ, however, there are also hard-line Churches of Christ who have difficulty even believing the good news that Paul preached. Far from trying to identify with the people (incarnationally) and then speaking the truth about God (as a Father) and the good news about God becoming flesh and dying for us, the hard-line Churches of Christ have focused on being odd, like the Plain Amish and Old Order Mennonites. They have decided to portray a certain culture long ago and to demand that in order to be pleasing to God one must keep these traditions.

Next Page