The Restoration Principle, Alfred T. DeGroot, Clement,Exhortation to the Heathen

Alfred T. DeGroot rejects a Restoration Movement and denounces non-instrumental churches as sects. Clement calls for a restoration movement by rejecting pagan or human-composes songs and invented instruments and returning to the Word of Christ as our only song as we are His instrument.

Quotes are from The Restoration Principle, Alfred T. DeGroot, p. 39, Bethany Press

Alfred T. DeGroot   The Restoration Principle
Alfred T. DeGroot   Rejecting Tradition
Alfred T. DeGroot   Subtracting Music
Alfred T. DeGroot   The Instructor
Alfred T. DeGroot   Cyprian
Alfred T. DeGroot   Justin Martyr
Alfred T. DeGroot   Lactantius
Alfred T. DeGroot   Tertullian

Clement of Alexander is one of the proof-text persons used to prove that there was no interest in a pattern for Christian Worship.

Because DeGroot's motive is to denounce churches of Christ as "sectarian" for refusing to add instrumental music as worship, it is fitting that all of the "fathers" denounce instrumental music as a pagan force which had not -- during their times -- dared to be used in Christian worship. We will not the Instructor on instrumental music at the end.

First, DeGroot denies that there are any historical references to the need for a Restoration Movement because the church evolves with the needs of the times.

Second, in another review we noted that Alfred T. DeGroot defined the difference between seeing the Epistles as the opinions of a "living" church which must change with the times, and churches which treat the Words of the Spirit as normative for modern faith and practices:

"Broadly speaking, it may be said that number

1 above generated the present fellowship called Disciples of Christ, and that number (church)
2 gave rise to the Churches of Christ. (sect)

According to Troeltsch,

Disciples would be among the 'church' type and
Churches of Christ among the 'sect' type.

"By 'church' is meant that body of conceptions which says "From the beginning they have been 'high churchmen'...

because they 'never ceased to stress the visible and corporate character of the Church as the Divine Society,' and
rejected 'legalized methods and structural forms which are a contradiction of the living nature of the church.'

"By 'sect' is meant those worshipers whose aim is absolute ritualistic and doctrinal correctness regardless of whether the program actually succeeds in gaining a favorable and general response of the human race. The correctness of this depiction is to be seen by reading the periodical literature of the Churches of Christ... such as Truth, Truth in Love, Primitive Gospel Heralds.

On page 156, DeGroot lists the causes of division as "the organization of the church among secular lines, the professional preacher: "Twenty-five years ago he was scarcely in existence. Today he is among us on every hand." and:

In the third place, instrumental music in worship. 'The little end of the taproot of the division in the ranks of the Restoration Movement is not instruments of music and human societies, but a lack of respect for the authority of God's word.'"

On page 157 DeGroot then drifts off by defining the opposition to instrumental music in worship in the following way which he interprets from a non-institutional source:

"The basic assumption in the argument against instrumental music is of a most curious nature. It goes as follows:

God approved of instrumental music in the 'inferior' worship of Old Testament times, as Bible records about the temple service indicate. (No literate person believes this)

however, when God decided to send Jesus and give a New Testament,

he arranged to test the insight and devout attention to details of revelation not by specifically giving a command not to use instruments after the year A.D. 30 (that would have been too easy),

but by simply not saying anything about the subject. Thus he would see if his followers in the new era would note that by maintaining silence on the topic it should be apparent to any truly devout Christian that the instruments, formerly approved, were now banned.

This 'argument from silence' is at the foundation of Church of Christ Doctrine."

See the High Church Background

Of course this is all fairy tale distortion of churches of Christ are misrepresented consistent with the distortion of Scripture and history. The Law, Monarchy and Sacrificial system were CURSES because of MUSICAL IDOLATRY at Mount Sinai. Stephen knew that God turned them over to worship the starry host. Even under the name of God it was the same old paganism they brought from Egypt. The civilians met in the assembly, Qahal, synagogue or church in the wilderness where music and loud rejoicing was outlawed.

To paraphrase Socrates: "For learning to take place you must first dispel the error before you can discover the truth."

Well, Clement of Alexander called for a Restoration Movement by first abandoning instrumental music, theatrical performance or any external ritual calculated to legalistically move the worshiper into the presence of God.

Exhortation to the Heathen --------

First: Chapter I.-Exhortation

to Abandon the Impious Mysteries of Idolatry
for the Adoration of the Divine Word and God the Father.

The error Socrates was in the Greek theater where feasts, instrumental music and drama were Greek Religion. That religion had flowed via the Gymnasium into the actual Temple in Jerusalem althoughtly stoutly resisted by the Pharisees who resorted to the synagogue while the temple was in civil hands. We might conclude from history that those who would add instrumental music as worship are worse than Pharisees.

When the clergy "piped" and wanted Jesus and John to lament and dance, they were trying to force the "first Christian" into what is pushed int Seeker services of modern pagans. Clement discribes this for us:

Amphion of Thebes and Arion of Methymna were both minstrels, and both were renowned in story. They are celebrated in song to this day in the chorus of the Greeks; the one for having allured the fishes,

As the people thought that Paul and Barnabas were Hermes (Mercury) and Zeus:
Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. Ac.14:12. This is the POINTER to the perverted, musical idolatry as the Abomination of Desolation.

They hoped that Jesus was Dionysus or Amphion for having attracted the fish:
And saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented. Matthew 11:17

Orcheomai (g3738) or-kheh'-om-ahee; (a row or ring); to dance (from the ranklike or regular motion): - dance

and the other for having surrounded Thebes with walls by the power of music.

The Jews claimed that the stones to build the walls of the Temple went up by magic because the "excellers" or musical Levites drove the slave laborers to anesthesized labor. Adam Clark notes the myth which became apparent after Solomon died.

Today's pagans "break down the walls" to allow everyone to come in by the use of theatrical performers.

Another, a Thracian, a cunning master of his art (he also is the subject of a Hellenic legend),

tamed the wild beasts by the mere might of song;
and transplanted trees-oaks-by music.

Too long a story for this article is the close connection between Babylonian symbolism of the Serpent and musical instruments. The imagry begins in the garden of Eden. Clement knew the myths about the magical power of music and the serpent in the Greek versions which came from Babylonia:

I might tell you also the story of another, a brother to these-the subject of a myth, and a minstrel-Eunomos the Locrian and the Pythic grasshopper. A solemn Hellenic assembly had met at Pytho, to celebrate the death of the Pythic serpent,

when Eunomos sang the reptile's epitaph. Whether his ode was a hymn in praise of the serpent, or a dirge, I am not able to say.
But there was a contest, and Eunomos was playing the lyre in the summer time: it was when the grasshoppers, warmed by the sun, were chirping beneath the leaves along the hills; but they were singing not to that dead dragon, but to God All-wise,-a lay unfettered by rule, better than the numbers of Eunomos.
The Locrian breaks a string. The grasshopper sprang on the neck of the instrument, and sang on it as on a branch; and the minstrel, adapting his strain to the grasshopper's song, made up for the want of the missing string.

The grasshopper then was attracted by the song of Eunomos, as the fable represents, according to which also a brazen statue of Eunomos with his lyre, and the Locrian's ally in the contest, was erected at Pytho. But of its own accord it flew to the lyre,

and of its own accord sang, and was regarded by the Greeks as a musical performer.

You may think it ridiculous, thinks Clemement, that anmials can be tamed by music. However, modern musical performers believe that the "worshipers can be moved into the presence of God" by their talent. Or the gods can be appeased by the thinly-veiled sexual display by the "team."

How, let me ask, have you believed vain fables and supposed animals to be charmed by music while Truth's shining face alone, as would seem appears to you disguised, and is looked on with incredulous eyes? And so Cithaeron, and Helicon, and the mountains of the Odrysi, and the initiatory rites of the Thracians, mysteries of deceit, are hallowed and celebrated in hymns. For me, I am pained at such calamities as form the subjects of tragedy, though but myths; but by you the records of miseries are turned into dramatic compositions.

Apollodorus wrote of Cithaeron ("Guitar"). He defined what the clergy tried on Jesus:

Having traversed Thrace and the whole of India and set up pillars there, he came to Thebes, and forced the women to abandon their houses and rave in Bacchic frenzy on Cithaeron. But Pentheus, whom Agave bore to Echion, had succeeded Cadmus in the kingdom, and he attempted to put a stop to these proceedings. And coming to Cithaeron to spy on the Bacchanals, he was torn limb from limb by his mother Agave in a fit of madness; for she thought he was a wild beast. And having shown the Thebans that he was a god,

Dionysus came to Argos, and there again, because they did not honor him, he drove the women mad, and they on the mountains devoured the flesh of the infants whom they carried at their breasts.

Eleminate: But the dramas and the raving poets, now quite intoxicated,

let us crown with ivy; and distracted outright as they are, in Bacchic fashion, with the satyrs, and the frenzied rabble, and the rest of the demon crew, let us confine to Cithaeron and Helicon, now antiquated.

Restore: But let us bring from above out of heaven, Truth, with Wisdom in all its brightness,

and the sacred prophetic choir, down to the holy mount of God; and let Truth, darting her light to the most distant points, cast her rays all around on those that are involved in darkness, and deliver men from delusion, stretching out her very strong right hand, which is wisdom, for their salvation. And raising their eyes, and looking above,
let them abandon Helicon and Cithaeron, and take up their abode in Sion.

"For out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, Isa. ii. 3.

-the celestial Word, the true athlete crowned in the theatre of the whole universe. What my Eunomos sings is not the measure of Terpander, nor that of Capito, nor the Phrygian, nor Lydian, nor Dorian,

but the immortal measure of the new harmony which bears God's name-the new, the Levitical song. Ps. xcvi. 1, xvciii. 1.

"Soother of pain, calmer of wrath, producing forgetfulness of all ills. - Odyssey, iv. 220.
Sweet and true is the charm of persuasion which blends with this strain.

To me, therefore, that Thracian Orpheus, that Theban, and that Methymnaean,-men, and yet unworthy of the name,-seem to have been deceivers,

who, under the pretence of poetry corrupting human life, possessed by a spirit of artful sorcery for purposes of destruction, celebrating crimes in their orgies, and making human woes the materials of religious worship,

were the first to entice men to idols; nay, to build up the stupidity of the nations with blocks of wood and stone,-that is, statues and images,-

subjecting to the yoke of extremest bondage
the truly noble freedom of those who lived as free citizens under heaven
by their songs and incantations.

In Chapter VIII Clement notes:

But against the worshippers of idols he is exasperated, saying, "To whom will ye liken the Lord, or to what likeness will ye compare Him? Has not the artificer made the image, or the goldsmith melted the gold and plated it with gold? -and so on.

Be not therefore idolaters, but even now beware of the threatenings;

"for the graven images and the works of men's hands shall wail, or rather they that trust in them, [ Isa. x. 10, 11.]

Note: the word "idol" is translated "wail" here and it is derived from:

Acab (h6087) aw-tsab'; a prim. root; prop. to carve, i. e. fabricate or fashion; hence (in a bad sense) to worry, pain or anger: - displease, grieve, hurt, make, be sorry, vex, worship, wrest.

for matter is devoid of sensation.

As the harp was made in the image of a bull it became an idol. When you abraded (melody) the strings they actually spoke back to you in the wailing and murmuring sounds. The clergy shamlessly sold this as his "leading you into the presence of the gods" for which you must pay. In all paganism, beginning with Jubal, musical instruments were "houses of the gods" or demons who spoke to you when played by a talented "prophet" or "prophetess."

Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it. Habakkuk 2:19

But the Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him. Habakkuk 2:20

This is why the "fathers" saw Psalm 150 as an allegory. First, the literal instruments could not be used in the physical temple and, two, David restricts those who can worship God to those who have "breath." And Paul said that literal instruments were 'lifeless."

But not such is my song, which has come to loose, and that speedily, the bitter bondage of tyrannizing demons; and leading us back to the mild and loving yoke of piety,

recalls to heaven those that had been cast prostrate to the earth.

It alone has tamed men, the most intractable of animals; the frivolous among them answering to the fowls of the air, deceivers to reptiles, the irascible to lions, the voluptuous to swine, the rapacious to wolves. The silly are stocks and stones,

and still more senseless than stones is a man who is steeped in ignorance.

As our witness, let us adduce the voice of prophecy accordant with truth, and bewailing those who are crushed in ignorance and folly: "For God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham; [Matt. iii. 9; Luke iii. 8.] and He, commiserating their great ignorance and hardness ofheart who are petrified against the truth,

has raised up a seed of piety, sensitive to virtue, of those stones-of the nations, that is, who trusted in stones. Again, therefore, some venomous and false hypocrites, who plotted against righteousness, He once called "a brood of vipers. [Matt. iii. 7; Luke iii. 7.]
But if one of those serpents even is willing to repent, and follows the Word, he becomes a man of God.

Others he figuratively calls wolves, clothed in sheep-skins, meaning thereby monsters of rapacity in human form. And so all such most savage beasts,

and all such blocks of stone, the celestial song has transformed into tractable men.
"For even we ourselves were sometime foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another." Thus speaks the apostolic Scripture: "But after that the kindness and love of God our saviour to man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us. [ Tit. iii. 3-5.]

The salvation Jesus brought was not just "pie in the sky" but it was release from the burden the clergy laid on treating the "audience" as pack animals. The bruden is defined as "spiritual anxiety created by religious ceremonial."

Behold the might of the new song! It has made men out of stones, men out of beasts. Those, moreover, that were as dead, not being partakers of the true life,

have come to life again, simply by becoming listeners to this song.
It also composed the universe into melodious order, and tuned the discord of the elements to harmonious arrangement, so that the whole world might become harmony. It let loose the fluid ocean, and yet has prevented it from encroaching on the land. The earth, again, which had been in a state of commotion, it has established, and fixed the sea as its boundary. The violence of fire it has softened by the atmosphere,
as the Dorian is blended with the Lydian strain; and the harsh cold of the air it has moderated by the embrace of fire, harmoniously arranging these the extreme tones of the universe.

And this deathless strain,-the support of the whole and the harmony of all,-reaching from the centre to the circumference, and from the extremities to the central part, has harmonized this universal frame of things,

not according to the Thracian music, which is like that invented by Jubal, but according to the paternal counsel of God, which fired the zeal of David.

And He who is of David, and yet before him, the Word of God, despising the lyre and harp, which are but lifeless instruments,

and having tuned by the Holy Spirit the universe,
and especially man,-who, composed of body and soul, is a universe in miniature,
makes melody to God on this instrument of many tones; and to this instrument-I mean man-he sings accordant:
"For thou art my harp, and pipe, and temple. -a harp for harmony-a pipe by reason of the Spirit-a temple by reason of the word; so that the first may sound, the second breathe, the third contain the Lord.

And David the king, the harper whom we mentioned a little above, who exhorted to the truth and dissuaded from idols, was so far from celebrating demons in song, that in reality they were driven away by his music. Thus, when Saul was plagued with a demon, he cured him by merely playing.

A beautiful breathing instrument of music the Lord made man, after His own image. And He Himself also, surely, who is the supramundane Wisdom, the celestial Word, is the all-harmonious, melodious, holy instrument of God.

What, then, does this instrument-the Word of God, the Lord, the New Song-desire?

To open the eyes of the blind,
and unstop the ears of the deaf,
and to lead the lame or the erring to righteousness,
to exhibit God to the foolish,
to put a stop to corruption,
to conquer death,
to reconcile disobedient children to their father.

The instrument of God loves mankind. The Lord pities, instructs, exhorts, admonishes, saves, shields, and of His bounty promises us the kingdom of heaven as a reward for learning; and the only advantage He reaps is, that we are saved.

For wickedness feeds on men's destruction;
but truth, like the bee, harming nothing, delights only in the salvation of men.

You have, then, God's promise; you have His love: become partaker of His grace. And do not suppose the song of salvation to be new, as a vessel or a house is new. For "before the morning star it was; [Ps. cx. 3. Septuagint has, "before the morning star."] and "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [John i. 1.] Error seems old, but truth seems a new thing.

Whether, then, the Phrygians are shown to be the most ancient people by the goats of the fable; or, on the other hand, the Arcadians by the poets, who describe them as older than the moon; or, finally, the Egyptians by those who dream that this land first gave birth to gods and men: yet none of these at least existed before the world.

But before the foundation of the world were we, who, because destined to be in Him, pre-existed in the eye of God before,-we the rational creatures of the Word of God, on whose account we date from the beginning; for "in the beginning was the Word." Well, in as much as the Word was from the first, He was and is the divine source of all things; but in as much as He has now assumed the name Christ, consecrated of old, and worthy of power,

he has been called by me the New Song.
This Word, then, the Christ, the cause of both our being at first (for He was in God) and of our well-being, this very Word has now appeared as man, He alone being both, both God and man-the Author of all blessings to us; by whom we, being taught to live well, are sent on our way to life eternal.

For, according to that inspired apostle of the Lord, "the grace of God which bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for the blessed hope, and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. [ Tit. ii. 11-13.]

This is the New Song, [Isa. xlii. 10. Note that in all the Psalms where this expression is used, there is a foretaste of the New Covenant and of the manifestation of the Word.] the manifestation of the Word that was in the beginning, and before the beginning. The Saviour, who existed before, has in recent days appeared. He, who is in Him that truly is, has appeared; for the Word, who "was with God," and by whom all things were created, has appeared as our Teacher. The Word, who in the beginning bestowed on us life as Creator when He formed us, taught us to live well when He appeared as our Teacher; that as God He might afterwards conduct us to the life which never ends. He did not now for the first time pity us for our error; but He pitied us from the first, from the beginning. But now, at His appearance, lost as we already were, He accomplished our salvation.

For that wicked reptile monster, by his enchantments, enslaves and plagues men even till now; inflicting, as seems to me, such barbarous vengeance on them as those who are said to bind the captives to corpses till they rot together.

This wicked tyrant and serpent, accordingly, binding fast with the miserable chain of superstition whomsoever he can draw to his side from their birth, to stones, and stocks, and images, and such like idols, may with truth be said to have taken and buried living men with those dead idols, till both suffer corruption together.

Of the king of Babylon, Lucifer's agent, Isaish wrote about the everlasting fire:

Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm (maggots) is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. Isaiah 14:11

In fact, at Ur--

"The girl harpists' skeleton hands were still resting on the harp strings--or where the harp strings once had been. And the instruments themselves suggested in form the body of a bull, with its beautiful golden bull's head (engravings) bearing a rich lapis-lazuli beard (settings). For this was a mythological bull: the divine lunar bull whose song of destiny had summoned these two willing companies--first of the buried king, then of his lady--to rebirth through death. And we know the name of the god of whom this bull was the animal vehicle. It was the great Near Eastern legendary, god-king and universal savior Tammuz, the dates of whose annual death-and-resurrection festival are now assigned in our own mythic and ritual calendar, by the Synagogue to Passover, and by the Church to Good Friday and Easter." (Campbell, Joseph, Myths, p. 62-63)

In Chapter II about the origin of the pagan Gods Clement wrote:

The token of the Sabazian mysteries to the initiated is "the deity gliding over the breast,"-the deity being this serpent crawling over the breasts of the initiated. Proof surely this of the unbridled lust of Zeus. Pherephatta has a child, though, to be sure, in the form of a bull, as an idolatrous poet says,-

The bull
The dragon's father, and the father of the bull the dragon,
On a hill the herdsman's hidden ox-goad,"

alluding, as I believe, under the name of the herdsman's ox-goad, to the reed wielded by bacchanals.

The ox-goad, symbol of the Sons of Shamgar, a Promise Keepers offspring, was the rod used to keep these worshipers from falling on their face. Paul would say, "Don't get drunk" to sing but "fill up with the Spirit or Word of Christ." Then you can sing the song Clement demands to be restored.

The leopard or fawn skin flute case is in the hands of the fellow using the ox-goad and the little box attached is the "Judas Bag" which was used "to keep the mouthpieces of wind instruments." this is the true Judas message and he "would not triumph over" Jesus in Psalm 41 where "triumph over" was to blow the wind instrument, rejoice and make merry and therefore force Jesus into the choral dance like a common, effeminate bacchanal.

The Restoration Principle, Alfred T. DeGroot, Clement, Exhortation to the Heathen