A New Song for an Old World

by Stapert, Calvin R.

• ISBN13: 9780802832191
• ISBN10: 0802832199
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-12-18
• Publisher: Eerdmans Pub Co

Summary

While the worship wars continue to rage in the church, many do not realize that conflict over music in congregations goes back to the earliest Christians.In "A New Song for and Old World: Musical Thought in the Early Church" Calvin Stapert challenges Christians to depart from our obsession with the new and to take advice from earlier thought on music. He draws parallels between the pagan cultures of the second and third centuries and our own multicultural realities, enabling readers to comprehend the musical ideas of myriad early Christian thinkers, from Clement and Tertullian to John Chrysostom and Augustine.This able treatment of the attitudes of the early church towards Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, is ideal for scholars of early Christianity, church musicians and all Christians looking to add an ancient yet relevant perspective to their worship today.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD, by John D. Witvliet	xi
PREFACE	xiv
1. Prelude: Honor Father and Mother	1
2. The Song of the Church in the New Testament	13
3. The Church in a Pagan Society	29
4. Clement of Alexandria: Musical Cosmology and Composed Manners	42
5. Tertullian: Pagan Spectacles and Christian Households	60
6. Expansion and Persecution, Triumph and Trouble	76
7. St. Ambrose: Administrator and Mystic	92
8. St. John Chrysostom: Christian Households amid the Devil's Garbage Heap	109
9. Rejection: The Music of a Pagan World	131
10. Affirmation: Psalms and Hymns	149
11. St. Augustine: The Problems of Eloquence and Inordinate Love	180
12. Postlude: What Can the Early Church Teach Us about Music?	194
APPENDIX I: Early Christian Hymns in Devotional Context	210
APPENDIX II: The World of Early Christianity	215
APPENDIX III: Timeline	216
FOR FURTHER READING	217
WORKS CITED	219
PERMISSIONS	228
INDEX	229