In the book ‘Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns’, T. David Gordon questions why being ‘contemporary’ has become the great aim of segments of the present day church, when that aim that has never been shared by any previous generation of the church. Is there a good reason why Johnny and this present generation must junk the past?
Gordon thinks not:
The changes of his [the hypothetical Johnny] generation, or so he thinks, are so great as to render the past passé. But let’s test that theory. Suppose we allow our imaginations to wander across the pages of history for a moment, asking this question: What generation, in the entire history of the human race, would have been justified in regarding itself as so new and distinctive that the past could be discarded? What generation, in other words, would have witnessed such new realities that everything prior to it could be dismissed as passé? Surely it would be the apostolic generation, God had come to earth in Jesus of Nazareth, lived and supped with us, died unjustly and cruelly. Most importantly, the Crucified One rose from the grave three days later. Truly this changed everything.
And yet, were those of the apostolic generation contemporaneous? Though their day truly witnessed “new creation,” though truly at that moment the old had passed away and “behold, the new ha[d] come” (2 Corinthians 5:17), they were not contemporaneists at all. Almost every page of the New Testament make reference to the Old Testament, and the forty verses of Hebrews 11 do not place before our consideration a single New Testament saint, but instead urge our consideration of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets, and others “of whom the world was not worthy” (v.38) Though contemporary with the most significant event in human history, the members of the apostolic generation did not disregard the individuals or traditions that antedated them. As soon as Johnny persuades me that cell phones, laptop computers, or PDAs ore more significant that Christ’s empty tomb, I will join him in his contemporary insanity. Until then, we should offer him asylum in the church, hoping and trusting that there his poor rootless soul will discover the sanity of communing with an everlasting God and the saints of all ages.
Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns (P&R Publishing, 2010) pp.174-175.
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