Yes, people would rightly object if I started preaching in Esperanto because it would violate God’s law just as if I started slaughtering bulls during the service. It’s not as if Scripture does not speak to this. The Apostle Paul gave very clear instructions on this.

The equivocation between language and instrumental music doesn’t work.

I’m not sure you understand the RPW or I’m not sure we understand it the same way. As I understand the historic understanding of WCF 21 and HC 96, we confess that, regarding elements, we may only do that in Scripture that which is required by God’s Word. To be sure we always do so in circumstances that are ordered by the light of nature (time, place, language), but the great sin of the modern period is the way we’ve conflated circumstances and elements.

We’ve majored in time and place (circumstances) and, in my view, corrupted the elements with will worship (Calvin’s word).

As to Nollie, I think he’s reacting to what he’s seeing in the Philippines. If you have trouble with his tone, maybe you should speak to him privately? Perhaps he doesn’t realize how he’s coming across? I know him to be a gentle and sweet soul.

you say music is affective, but so is language. i bet you’ll have a riot in your congregation as well if you start preaching in esperanto. does that then make language an element (or an aspect/extension of it)? hardly.

still consider language not affective? don’t tell me you’ve never slept through a sermon in your whole life!

anyway, please pardon my tone. i think you’re one of the most gracious and humble reformed ministers i’ve encountered. it’s just that i got to this post of yours via Nollie’s blog. you should share with him some of your writings, specifically the one about jerks. i cannot, for the life of me, understand how he could have graduated from WSCal still in the “cage-phase”.

It won’t work to reduce this to a matter of preference. An element is a divine institution. Our response to God (prayer) is a divine institution. We are not entitled to make up additions to elements or to revise instruments or to make up new circumstances.

In other posts on this topic I’ve made the point that a circumstance is not religious. It is a time, a place, and things of that sort. It has nothing to do with how we respond to God but only when. A language is a circumstance but slaughtering bulls and goats or playing instruments isn’t a circumstance.

did it occur to you that when you got those reactions, they’re not really defending their church organs, but rather their right to judge a circumstance in their own wisdom?

and when you say “let’s get rid of them”, aren’t you also using your own wisdom in judging the circumstance of instruments? and the fact that you’re bothered by the presence of instruments, doesn’t that mean they aren’t “adiaphora” (to borrow your term) to you as well?

if i may reverse your quote to clarify my point above:
“I make this observation to explain how, even though [instruments] are often defended as mere circumstances and as adiaphora, when it comes to treating the [absence of instruments] as adiaphora, we find out that they aren’t really. I don’t think we’re being completely honest about the [absence of instruments]. If they were mere circumstances, mere adiaphora, then we could [have] them with nothing added or lost to the service. Clearly most proponents of the [absence of instruments] don’t regard them that way.”

that’s what makes a circumstance a circumstance. it can or can not be there. you think instruments shouldn’t be there, others do. end of story.

No, sorry.

Have you recorded those classes on the Fathers?

You’ve missed the distinction I’ve made between offices. The office of the laity is to hear the Word of God preached and to repeat God’s Word to him. It is the office of the minister to speak the Word of God.

As to disruption, that’s a matter of “decently and in order.” No consistory can require anyone to violate the law of God. At the same time no one has the right to disrupt a service, even one that is observing the RPW imperfectly. So far it hasn’t been a problem.

If I’m in a setting or situation when the RPW is not being observed, I sing when I may and participate whenever possible. I’m there to worship the living God not to make statements. If I can find a psalm or other portion of God’s Word set to the same meter, I sing along quietly — it’s probably less disruptive than someone singing a part loudly.