I appreciate all of the responses to my post earlier this week. Here are some follow-up comments:
1. I do not deny that there is a time to change. There is also a time not to change. There is a season for everything. It takes wisdom to know which season it is. My main concern in the previous post was to question the wisdom of frequently changing the psalter. I believe that it will prove to be counter-productive and that it will ultimately undermine psalmody. When we regularly revise our translations of God’s Word, we shouldn’t be surprised when we begin to handle it recklessly. Hence, the introduction of hallelujah choruses into Psalms 24 and 150. This is a radical development for our new psalter. A quick survey of older psalters in the presbyterian tradition will show that this is not how the psalter has been handled by our forbears.
2. With regard to Psalm 8, in particular, I find Rev. King’s observation to be very interesting. I think he may be on to something. The only English translation I could find that used “just less than divine” was the JPS Tanakh of 1985. We’re not Jews; we are Christians. Shouldn’t we consult the NT in our translation and interpretation of the Psalms? “Next to God” or “lower than the angels” are sound translations. Doesn’t “just less than one divine” sound like a [heretical] theological statement? I’m almost ready to dub this new psalter “The Arian Psalter”. Tear out that page!
3. I’m reminded of something said by William Willimon, I believe. Becoming a Christian is like learning a new language. New Christians have hurdles to jump; that’s not a bad thing. Rev. Eshelman: Should we remove the hurdles of theological language, too? Should we stop using words like “propitiation”? If we try to reach the lost by watering down (or, vulgarizing) our language, I fear we may lose the reached. It’s not as if language is either vulgar or not. There are degrees of vulgarity. How vulgar is too vulgar? When do you lose something by vulgarizing?
4. The triumphalistic assertion that we now have singable tunes is debatable. I would give examples, but I don’t want to offend the composers.
5. I’m willing to grant, I suppose, that the King James English must eventually die out. However, I lament its departure, and I’m still not sure that we must abandon the name “Jehovah”.
6. The comments by Rev. Rockhill on tradition trouble me. If the traditions surrounding the use of Psalm 24 are good traditions, then why break them? Why must we end these traditions at this time? Just because a particular church committee tells us to?
7. I agree with Rev. Chellis in the mea culpa. I’m guilty of the same thing.
That’s all I have time for right now. I don’t necessarily want this discussion to dominate the DRC blog. Perhaps we need a separate blog where we can critique the 2009 RP psalter more thoroughly. Or perhaps we should do that here. I think this could be a very fruitful discussion. Thoughts?
The Psalm debate is fair game. If not here, where?
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Re: your point number 5. I’ve been recently convicted that LORD is not a valid translation of YHWH. In that we Reformed people laugh at the Jewish people who would not say the name of God and instead replaced it with “the name” and refused to use it in conversation.
If nothing else, the word Jehovah conveys the sense of God’s eternality – “I AM” – rather than dominion, which is the sense of the word Lord, which is already a concept tied to a different Hebrew word, which is also translated Lord in our psalter.
— on the comment in the last post, though. One of the reviewing pastors I know specifically talked to Duncan Lowe to object to the revision of Psalm 136 (combining parts of two verses to fit the tune better). The report that came back was that there was “significant disagreement” within the committee on that revision, but that the committee had chosen to edit it that way. It may be quite possible that the scholars on the committee were overridden by the musicians with regards to the accuracy of the translation.
(a side note on Psalm 136, though is warranted. The committee may object that the words do not fit the tune; however, they saw fit to use Psalm 98 from the Psalm Settings book which has a similar half way repeat that was used in both selections of 136 in the ’73 psalter.) So, the only ground I would think they could stand on there is removed. It can’t be fidelity to scripture that caused them to remove the parts, and it can’t be refusal to have an awkward repeat in the new psalter.
I’ve wondered why the committee was so tight-lipped. There are people I highly respect on the committee and I would have expected them to take those objections back to Synod, but what we have, seemingly, is a committee completely unified on the final work.
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In a conversation with Dr. Joel Beeke last year, I discovered that both our sessions/consistories had come to the same conclusion after much painful experimentation: important matters should not be discussed, much less debated, via e-mail.
E-mails, blogs, and the like rarely result in the highest imaginable quality of reasoned discourse. McLuhan was not entirely wrong when he said that the medium is the message. When used for discussion of important matters, these media tend to produce broadband dissemination of much idle speculation, half-digested hypotheses, incorrect facts, misunderstood words, and smatterings of libel. I do break from my own rules from time to time (like now), but you will find very few comments from me in internet blog debates.
So I would plead for a different course of action: examine the new psalter carefully, reread the revision committee reports of the last twelve years for context (unless you already know everything that’s in them, of course), do some actual research, get our facts straight, and then, after several months of thoughtful and prayerful consideration, find a suitable medium for discussing the new revision. THEN publish the results on the internet.
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I just wanted to address two issues:
1) This whole Arian Psalter thing needs to be put to rest. I am stunned and amazed that it even came up. Aside from the seriousness of the charge, it has absolutely no hermeneutical grounding whatsoever.
The new Psalter reads – “Yet You created him to be just less than one divine.”
The NAS reads Psalm 8:5 Yet Thou hast made him a little lower than God, And dost crown him with glory and majesty!
I see little or no difference in the meaning. Yet I never heard anyone charge the NAS of being Arian. I agree that as Christians we should consult the NT for our interpretation of the Psalms, but we do not necessarily need to so for the translation of the Psalms. Remember the Psalms were (and still are) Jewish. If it weren’t for Heb. 2 who would know that Ps. 8 is a prophetic reference to the humiliation and exaltation of our Lord Jesus Christ? But because of Heb. 2 we see it in Ps. 8 and can interpret/preach it that way – but it ought not to affect the translation. We also have to remember that Ps. 8 has another (less prophetic) meaning – the “man” who was made lower than God also refers to Mankind as God’s unique creation. So Psalm 8 also speaks of the glory and dominion of Man over the creation. In this regard then Ps. 8 as it was rendered in the red psalter was actually erroneous (“next to God you have made man”) – Mankind was not created “next to God” implying equality with God – he was created below God – he was a creature. Allowing Heb. 2 to effect the translation of Ps. 8 imposes a “christianizing” of the text. Isn’t this what we fault Watts for? The Psalms don’t need to be “christianized” they are already Christian as they are also Jewish. But as Christian pastors, preachers and teachers we let the OT text stand as it is but then we must be faithful to show in our preaching and teaching how these passages were understood and interpreted in the NT. We are to bring Christ out of the text not put Him in (because He is already in)!
2) As to tradition and the whole Ps. 24A and communion issue. As I thought about it the other day it struck me that the fault lies with me and other pastors who have allowed particular Psalm settings to be the “only” ones used in the celebration of the Lord’s supper. And then I read Tom Fisher’s comment about what Christian A. did in Cambridge (using different and also appropriate psalms for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper). Then it hit me that this is exactly what tradition tends to do – it puts you into a box and restricts your freedom. So I have put my congregation in a box by tying the celebration of the Lord’s supper to certain psalms. Again – on one level there is nothing wrong with this – and we may continue to use the same psalms, or maybe not. But now I realize that the traditions of men (i.e. in this case preferences for particular psalm settings during the Lord’s Supper) have suddenly now limited my freedom (and the freedom of the worshippers) to worship God in Spirit and truth with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. We should be able to sing through Ps. 22 or the Hallel psalms for Communion, but we can’t because we have put ourselves in a box that restricts us to only use Ps. 24A “Varina”, Ps. 45A “Louisville” and Ps. 133A! Agghh – help, get me out!
So to sum up I agree traditions are not necessarily evil and we shouldn’t dispose of them just to dispose of them – but we must also be careful of the pitfalls of tradtions that can so easily ensare us and trap us and restrict our freedom and liberty in Christ to worship Him as He has commanded and not in the way we prefer.
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