Journal: Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal
Volume: DBSJ 26:1 (NA 2021)
Article: From Text To Expression: “Fittingness” As A Guideline For Biblically-Informed Worship Music
Author: Scott Aniol

DBSJ 26 (2021) p. 103

From Text To Expression: “Fittingness” As A Guideline For Biblically-Informed Worship Music

Scott Aniol1

Christianity has always encouraged the translation of the entire Bible from its original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into new languages as Christianity spreads to new civilizations, and this is equally true for musical expressions of biblical truth. From early plainchant, Lutheran chorales, to American folk hymns, and beyond, God’s people have expressed God’s truth in diverse musical forms that reflect the biblical standard of songs like David’s Shepherd Psalm and Mary’s Magnificat. Yet while a biblical standard can easily provide guidelines for the theological and poetic content of contemporary musical expressions, some Christians have questioned whether the Bible has anything to provide in terms of guiding the musical forms of contemporary Christian worship music.

This article will argue that since Scripture itself expresses truth through various aesthetic forms, what kinds of poetic and aesthetic expressions God chose to use in the communication of his truth in Scripture should inform the kinds of contemporary musical expressions Christians produce as they communicate the gospel and disciple believers. Employing the principle of “fittingness” as articulated by both Kevin Vanhoozer and Nicholas Wolterstorff, the article will suggest how the literary aspects of Scripture provide important aesthetic guidelines for diverse contemporary worship music by way of similarities across artistic modalities. Consequently, if those writing contemporary worship music desire to accurately reflect the meaning of Scripture in the songs they compose, then they must give careful attention to aesthetic correspondence between Scripture’s meaning and the contemporary form.

The Form Of Scripture

Scripture’s Form

The basis for my argument of extending the authority of Scripture

DBSJ 26 (2021) p. 104

to its aesthetic forms is the doctrine of verbal-plenary inspiration. The Holy Spirit of God inspired every word in the original autographs of Scripture. This implies that while the word choices, grammar, syntax, poetic language, and literary forms were products of the human author’s writing style, culture, and experiences, we must also affirm that these aspects of the form of Scripture are exactly how God desired his truth to be communicated.2

Those who hold to verbal-plenary inspiration rightly insist that what words biblical authors chose are important, as are how those words were put together into sentences and paragraphs. We rightly emphasize that how we interpre...