“What I have learned to grasp from Scripture, I speak with certainty. Since I do not reach for such a high altitude, I reverently adore with humility and trepidation that which is too sublime for even angels.  Therefore, I often admonish in my writings that nothing is greater than a wise ignorance.  For those who entrust themselves to know more than they should rave like madmen.”

I’m also reading Calvin Stapert’s book: A New Song for an Old World: Musical Thought in the Early Church (Eerdmans, 2007). You can read a review of it here. Here is a summary of what Stapert says about Clement of Alexandria’s perspective on music:

In the wake of the siege of Rome by the barbarians in 410 A.D., Augustine defended Christianity against the accusation that Christianity had weaken the Roman Empire thereby making it vulnerable to the attack. Thus, came The City of God.

In 1949, Billy Graham started his famous evangelistic crusades in Los Angeles, a.k.a “The Canvas Cathedral Crusade”.  Near the end of the crusade “America’s most famous sermon - ’Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ - was preached by America’s most famous preacher.”  Thanks to the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University, you can now hear audio clips of that sermon. 

Something.

I wasn’t an elder a year ago when Greg, Keith, Aaron, and Bruce where thinking through Greg’s question. But here’s how I would begin. (Let me paint with broad strokes.)

Keith very helpfully showed how confessions have a negative and positive role. They function negatively by saying who’s “out” and postively by saying who’s “in.” I’m re-reading through “Authority: Where to Go for Truth” in Our Legacy: The History of Christian Doctrine by John D. Hannah. I want to give a simple example of how confessions said who’s “out” and who’s “in.”