These non-converted Jewish people used instruments in their temple. The Christians were right there, thinking they were nothing more than Jews who had found their Messiah, keeping the Mosaic law zealously (Acts 15:1,5; 21:20). There's no hint these Jewish Christians were saying a word against the musical instruments. They felt no need to move their assembly away from the Jewish musical instruments; they met regularly right there in Solomon's Porch (Acts 5:12), right near the "band". It seems to simply have been a non-issue with them.
As the message moved away from Jerusalem and its temple, it moved into the Jewish synagogue. (James specifically refers to the Christian assembly as "your synagogue" - James 2:2 - although most English translations hide that from you.) The synagogue did not have musical instruments. But this was not a result of any command from God (there is no such command in scripture), but rather of tradition. The synagogue seems to have developed during the Babylonian Captivity (without any "authorization" from God; yet Jesus approved by his regular habit of attendance - Luke 4:16). During this captivity, the Jews, when asked to sing a song about their homeland, replied that they were too sad to sing, so they put away their instruments - Psalm 137. (Note that the Jews in this passage associated instruments with "sing", such that "singing" and "harps" were essentially synonymous - they couldn't sing, so they put away their harps. This is the way God uses the word "sing". He never uses it in such a way as to exclude instruments.)
When the church moved away from the temple and into the synagogue, the church moved away from instruments, at least in the common public gathering. Note again that this was not the result of any command from God, but simply a matter of man-made tradition. The last word God had said on the matter of public praise singing was to use instruments; there is no record afterword to not use instruments. There is no record (or evidence) that the early Christians had been told that God's last instruction about how to "sing" had been rescinded. The converts on Pentecost in Acts 2 had been praising God with instruments that morning; by evening, according to our traditional brotherhood doctrine, such praise was sin, yet there's no record or evidence of an apostolic message turning instrumental praise into sin.
When Gentiles began to be welcomed into the Christian family, they did not "learn to do church" in the musical-instrument environment of the temple, but rather in the non-musical-instrument environment of the synagogue. A mere 20 years later, the emerging twenty-year-old leaders of the Gentile churches had known nothing all their lives except non-instrumental regular assemblies. It was this *tradition* that became the norm.
Eighty, a hundred, two-hundred years later, by the time any church leaders got around to writing about instruments one way or the other, they identified their non-instrument tradition as being distinct from both the pagan and the Jewish traditions. They never give reasons of "the apostles teach this" or "Scripture says this"; they give human-logic reasons - "We want to be different from the pagans" (Ex., "lest we should appear to observe any Sabbath with the Jews" - Victorinus, 300 A.D.). These writers, thinking God now hates all things Jewish (a doctrine completely at odds with the New Testament, but bolstered by the destruction of Jerusalem and her temple), condemned all things Jewish, including the instrumental psalms. They did not do so on the basis of God's word, but on the basis of human reasoning.
It's interesting that when we look for actual writing condemning instruments, we don't find it in scripture, but in these post-NT writings. And although we refuse to cite these writers about sprinkling as baptism, or about a pre-Pope "President" of the elders, etc, we cite as gospel their condemnation of instruments.
The early reformation writers were against instruments for pretty much the same reasons: they had grown up non-instrumental (which therefore must be the "old ways"), and they reasoned that God hates Jewishness, therefore he hates instruments. Thomas Aquinas, in the mid-1200s, wrote, "But the Church does not make use of musical instruments, such as harps and psalteries, in the divine praises, for fear of seeming to imitate the Jews." (The more common rendering is, "Our church does not use musical instruments, as harps and psalteries, to praise God withal, that she may not seem to Judaize.")
Even though writers from the second-century to the present have condemned musical instruments in the praise of God, such condemnation is never based on actual words from God or the apostles, but on human logic. The actual words from God neither condemn, nor change his last word on the matter. Any such change must be derived from human reasoning.
And if human reasoning is the standard, then reason just a moment: Did Paul write:
"Teach one another using psalms, except for the ones God has given to you, recorded in scripture, given for our learning of how to be right, given to make us complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work?"Or did Paul write:
"Teach one another using psalms"?Which of the two versions above adds to the word of God?
If we are to teach one another with psalms, without adding any restrictions to what is meant by "psalms", then let me teach:
WEB Psalm 150:Praise him with tambourine and dancing! Praise him with stringed instruments and flute!(it's often claimed that the Psalms are "Old Testament"; but that's a result of how our modern-day printed Bibles divide up the scriptures; the scriptures themselves make a distinction between "the old covenant" and "the psalms" and "the prophets" (Luke 24:44, words of Jesus); even Paul points out that the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis, 430 years older than the "old covenant", was not superseded by the temporary "old covenant" of Exodus-Deuteronomy.)
That's incredibly uncomfortable for many in the Church of Christ. But it's the result of human reasoning that is more consistent with scripture than the human reasoning that converts "psalms" into "psalms except...".
The lame man healed by Peter "danced" for joy in the place where the Christians assembled (Solomon's Porch - Acts 3:8-11), and there is no record of anyone telling him to sit down to be "decent and in order".
Our anti-instrument position is not supported by scripture, but rather by human reasoning and tradition. I think its a fine tradition (I prefer it), but I object when this tradition is turned into a commandment of men and then taught as doctrine.
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