Whate’er my God ordains is right

This is an old (1676) Lutheran hymn by Samuel Rodigast and translated by Catherine Winkworth (there are also some newer translations of this hymn available). The tune to which it is commonly sung is WAS GOTT TUT, which is itself quite old, and was used by Bach in at least three cantatas (BWV 98, 99 [...]

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Christoph Wolff on Bach’s B-Minor Mass

Christoph Wolff, Adams University Professor for the Harvard Department of Music and author of Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (published by Norton in 2000), can be heard lecturing on the great Mass in B-Minor here at the Indiana University website. The website not only offers audio of the lecture, which includes live (and well-done) [...]

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Selections from Calvin and Athanasius on song in worship

This selection comes from John Calvin's "Preface to the Psalter" (trans. Charles Garside in John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety, ed. Elsie Anne Mckee [CWS; New York: Paulis, 2001], 94) You can find an on-line translation of this document here.
"And in truth we know from experience that song has great force and vigor to around [...]

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Idolatry

I believe that it would be a good thing for us to realize just how prone we are to idolatry.
"What we say about God on the basis of our general intuition of divinity may reveal more about us than about the living God. . . . Thinking ourselves theologians, we unwittingly (but easily) can become [...]

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Bauder on The Da Vinci Code, part 1

Kevin Bauder's first sermon on the Da Vinci code is available for download: "Worshippers of the Goddess?" Right click on the link and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the file (it will probably not stream effectively; the file must be saved).
I have also posted this under my new page "Audio, etc" and it is [...]

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Antony’s fight against lust

From Athanasius' Life of Antony:
5. . . . But when the enemy [the devil] saw himself to be too weak for Antony's determination, and that he rather was conquered by the other's firmness, overthrown by his great faith and falling through his constant prayers, then at length putting his [...]

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Cantata BWV 93: Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten (If thou but suffer God to guide thee)

This cantata (you can find streaming recordings, a score of sorts, the text, and English translation at bach-cantatas.org) was not composed for any “special” day, and yet it displays great imagination and variety from the Bach’s standard cantata formulae. He wrote it in 1724, his second year at Leipzig, a year where he only wrote [...]

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Evolutionism is the Ultimate Fatalism

If evolution is true, then you have no will.
I am not talking here about "Theistic Evolution" or any other theories that synthesize God and nature, but pure naturalistic evolutionism. If naturalistic evolution is true, you are not a person. You are simply a bunch of chemicals firing away inside your brain. You are merely a [...]

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So much for the ’sacred feminine’ in the Gospel of Thomas

Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life.’
Jesus said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’
From the [...]

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Mohler on consumerism and worship

I heard Al Mohler say,
"A very important issue . . . is What persons expect when they come into a church service. And a generation raised to believe that everything in the culture is there for their entertainment has a hard time understand that worship is about praising and glorifying a transcendent and holy God, [...]

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The Power of Lousy Hymns

This story, "The Power of Classic Hymns" is a gem if you're in for a good laugh (warning: you may get upset when he starts pontificating on what the resurrection "means to him"). I love it when he starts singing the "classic" "hymn," "He lives." Be sure to listen to the "web extras" (particularly "Bill [...]

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Which has priority?

A. W. Tozer reminds us that the purpose of evangelism is worship, which means that worship has ultimate priority for man.
"It's more important that the Church of Christ should honor the God of glory than they should even preach the gospel to the heathen. But it is so in the will of God that preaching [...]

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Two Good Friday services

This last Good Friday I "attended" two services, and, although I am a Baptist to such a degree that when I bleed I leave a "trail of blood," (that was said more of an excuse for a bad joke than anything; I do not embrace Landmarkism), both of the services were Presbyterian.
The first service was [...]

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A. W. Tozer on fundamentalist worship

“When fundamentalism lost her power to worship, she invented religious clap-trap to make her happy. That is why I have hated it and preached against it and condemned it all down these years. . . . Ventriloquists with wooden dummies on their knee and wood on top of their necks, worshipping God supposedly. Worshipping God, [...]

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