Featuring a sermon puts it on the front page of the site and is the most effective way to bring this sermon to the attention of thousands including all mobile platforms + newsletter.
Text-Featuring a sermon is a less expensive way to bring this sermon to the attention of thousands on the right bar with optional newsletter inclusion. As low as $30/day.
Swertley is a gifted presenter. So does the fact that I am not convinced reveal a deep bias? If any NT passage were sung, would this be a violation? What about singing the Law or the Prophets. The Psalter is not in fact the Psalms. It is uninspired, sinful man’s attempts to approximate the inspired Psalms into singable form based on the English language. What of modern attempts to make the Psalter more singable? As good as the inspired Psalms undoubtedly are, certain hymns may well expound and describe certain attributes of God, the Trinity, and various Doctrines and issues with even greater clarity and power. While they are not canonical, who would say that their authors where in fact inspired by the Spirit of Christ within them.
Scripture is reliable and sufficient to be sure. It makes no claim to being exhaustive. I am reminded of the prophecy of Joel referred to by Peter in Acts. God loves New Wine from the sanctified creativity of zHis children guided and inspired by Scripture.
Scott Wilkinson (7/11/2012)
from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
I Think Schwertley Is Correct In summary, Shaw's argument seems to be: Since we cannot know if the Bible allows for uninspired songs to be sung in worship, we can conclude that we should sing them based on the need for songs that are more clearly understood than the Psalms.
In summary, Schwertley argument is: We have warrant from the Scriptures that we are to sing psalms (and possibly the few other inspired songs in the Bible), but we do not have any warrant in Scripture (by command, example, or necessary deduction), that we may sing uninspired compositions in worship.
I believe Schwertley had a far superior argument. He argued that we can concluded from Scripture that we should sing psalms. Schwertley says, if we don't know from Scripture if we can sing uninspired compositions, then we don't have a warrant from Scripture to sing them. In his opening statement, Shaw admits that we should sing psalms, but then argues that since it is “possible” that Paul was referring to “songs in general” and not just “inspired songs”, we must not be restricted to inspired songs. IOW, since we don't know if we can sing uninspired compositions, we should sing them!