# PCUSA rejects popular hymn “In Christ Alone”



## Dieter Schneider (Jul 31, 2013)

PCUSA rejects popular hymn “In Christ Alone”. Why? Click here to find out!


----------



## SeanPatrickCornell (Jul 31, 2013)

I guess the EP folks can always say "Good! Now toss out the others too!"


----------



## N. Eshelman (Jul 31, 2013)

SeanPatrickCornell said:


> I guess the EP folks can always say "Good! Now toss out the others too!"


Sean, I hope that was tongue in cheek. 

It's one thing to "toss" out hymns because of God's prescriptions for biblical worship, it's quite another, and a horrendous thing, mind you, to toss them out, as you say, because of a rejection of the Gospel.


----------



## Backwoods Presbyterian (Jul 31, 2013)

This is really nothing new. The PC(USA) when it came out with its last hymnal neutered a whole bunch of popular hymns.


----------



## Jack K (Jul 31, 2013)

"In Christ Alone" is one of few songs I can think of that's just a decade or two old but is rich enough in content that the words _sound_ like a surviving hymn from hundreds of years ago.


----------



## rookie (Jul 31, 2013)

Jack K said:


> "In Christ Alone" is one of few songs I can think of that's just a decade or two old but is rich enough in content that the words _sound_ like a surviving hymn from hundreds of years ago.



Agreed!!!
I actually thought it was written centuries ago...


----------



## Andres (Jul 31, 2013)

This about sums it up...



> Although not all PCUSA churches are theologically liberal, the denomination by and large is. Liberalism and wrath go together like oil and water; they don’t mix. And historically speaking, one of them eventually has to go. When wrath goes, so does the central meaning of the atonement of Christ—penal substitution. At the end of the day, the cross itself is the stumbling block, and that is why the PCUSA cannot abide this hymn.


----------



## SolaSaint (Aug 1, 2013)

It shows their lack of the knowledge of God, His attributes. Remove God's wrath and it is no more God we are worshipping.


----------



## KMK (Aug 1, 2013)

SolaSaint said:


> It shows their lack of the knowledge of God, His attributes. Remove God's wrath and it is no more God we are worshipping.



In other words,, it shows their disdain for the 3rd Commandment. They may think it is no big deal, but God will not hold them guiltless. Their behavior should cause us to rededicate ourselves to the hallowing of His name that we don't join them on that slippery slope.


----------



## SeanPatrickCornell (Aug 1, 2013)

N. Eshelman said:


> Sean, I hope that was tongue in cheek.



I admit that text sometimes doesn't carry intent well, but honestly, I don't see how it could have been taken any other way.

Nevertheless, yes, it was tongue in cheek.


----------



## DMcFadden (Aug 1, 2013)

Hmmm. You do know who trains more PCUSA pastors than any of their own ten seminaries, don't you?

Although N.T Wright claims to hold "some form" of the penal substitution view within the context of his larger Christus Victor approach, you've got to wonder.

Wright, himself, comments on the song, "In Christ Alone," when he writes:



> It is all too possible to take elements from the biblical witness and present them within a controlling narrative gleaned from somewhere else, like a child doing a follow-the-dots puzzle without paying attention to the numbers and producing a dog instead of a rabbit. This is what happens when people present over-simple stories, as the mediaeval church often did, followed by many since, with an angry God and a loving Jesus, with a God who demands blood and doesn’t much mind whose it is as long as it’s innocent. You’d have thought people would notice that this flies in the face of John’s and Paul’s deep-rooted theology of the love of the triune God: not ‘God was so angry with the world that he gave us his son’ but ‘God so loved the world that he gave us his son’. *That’s why, when I sing that interesting recent song and we come to the line, ‘And on the cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied’, I believe it’s more deeply true to sing ‘the love of God was satisfied’, and I commend that alteration to those of you who sing that song*, which is in other respects one of the very few really solid recent additions to our repertoire. http://ntwrightpage.com/sermons/Word_Cross.htm



I guess he doesn't like the line in the hymn any more than the PCUSA.


----------



## irresistible_grace (Aug 1, 2013)

DMcFadden said:


> Hmmm. You do know who trains more PCUSA pastors than any of their own ten seminaries, don't you?



No! Who?


----------



## Scott1 (Aug 1, 2013)

This modern adaptation of one hymn, of course, is not the point.





> Revelation 3
> 
> 3 And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.
> 
> ...


----------



## augustacarguy (Aug 1, 2013)

Proud of the hymn writers for standing firm!


----------



## Bill The Baptist (Aug 1, 2013)

Andres said:


> This about sums it up...
> 
> 
> 
> > Although not all PCUSA churches are theologically liberal, the denomination by and large is. Liberalism and wrath go together like oil and water; they don’t mix. And historically speaking, one of them eventually has to go. When wrath goes, so does the central meaning of the atonement of Christ—penal substitution. At the end of the day, the cross itself is the stumbling block, and that is why the PCUSA cannot abide this hymn.



"So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth." -Rev. 3:16


----------



## DMcFadden (Aug 1, 2013)

irresistible_grace said:


> DMcFadden said:
> 
> 
> > Hmmm. You do know who trains more PCUSA pastors than any of their own ten seminaries, don't you?
> ...



A certain 4,500 student school located in Pasadena and founded in 1947 with a PCUSA president who recently took over from the retiring president this summer (also alma mater of John Piper and Rob Bell - M.Div., Kim Riddlebarger - Ph.D., and Rick Warren - D.Min.). I would not think that problems with "In Christ Alone" would come from grads of this school, however.


----------



## Backwoods Presbyterian (Aug 1, 2013)

Don't forget James White received an M.A. from that school as well.


----------



## jwithnell (Aug 1, 2013)

As I write this, my son is sitting on the couch with the red Trinity hymnal. Selections in a hymnal can be critically important.

Growing up, I had a strong background in Lutheran and Presbyterian hymns, so when I was introduced to the older Trinity Hymnal, I was surprised by the number of hymns I didn't know at all. Turns out the forerunner to the PCUSA made a point mid-century to revamp the hymnal to meet modernist sensibilities.


----------



## KMK (Aug 2, 2013)

Backwoods Presbyterian said:


> Don't forget James White received an M.A. from that school as well.



And my uncle, Ross Arnold!


----------



## DMcFadden (Aug 2, 2013)

KMK said:


> Backwoods Presbyterian said:
> 
> 
> > Don't forget James White received an M.A. from that school as well.
> ...



Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . and my wife . . . and me . . . and . . . 



> Leith Anderson (D.Min), former president and current president of National Association of Evangelicals.
> Rob Bell (M.Div), author of the acclaimed Velvet Elvis, founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church.
> Dr. James Brenneman, (M.Div) President of Goshen College
> Bill Bright (B.D), founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.
> ...



I still think it stinks that the Presbyterians from Backwoods Presbyterian's old neck of the woods in the mainlines did not like the Christology of the song.


----------



## dean iii (Aug 3, 2013)

Interesting that so many folks today are ashamed of God because he is angry at sin. Of course that answers the question why so many who profess to believe think nothing of a little sin in their own lives.


----------



## Jake (Aug 3, 2013)

Jack K said:


> "In Christ Alone" is one of few songs I can think of that's just a decade or two old but is rich enough in content that the words _sound_ like a surviving hymn from hundreds of years ago.



And if it does survive for a few hundred years, it could have a chance in a future Trinity Hymnal! After they fix it theologically themselves, that is. 

(Note: I am aware of some more modern selections in the Trinity. And most even somewhat reformed churches I have sang this song in have made a change from "every sin" to "all our sin" or "all my sin")


----------



## Backwoods Presbyterian (Aug 11, 2013)

The PC(USA) responds...

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) - News & Announcements - Presbyterian Hymnal producers respond to misinformation


----------



## Marrow Man (Aug 11, 2013)

Backwoods Presbyterian said:


> The PC(USA) responds...
> 
> Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) - News & Announcements - Presbyterian Hymnal producers respond to misinformation





> Other views of the atonement are represented as well. These models do not reject the reality of God’s wrath, but they do not see the cross as an expression of it.


----------



## calgal (Aug 11, 2013)

Marrow Man said:


> Backwoods Presbyterian said:
> 
> 
> > The PC(USA) responds...
> ...


If God is wrathful they just might be in a world of hurt.......so they try and present a fuzzy wuzzy deity?


----------



## Marrow Man (Aug 12, 2013)

calgal said:


> If God is wrathful they just might be in a world of hurt.......so they try and present a fuzzy wuzzy deity?



The whole denomination (of which I was once a member) is in a world of hurt. But being in a world of hurt might be a good thing, if it drives them to repentance and the cross.



> Before I was afflicted I went astray,
> But now I keep Your word.
> ...
> It is good for me that I was afflicted,
> That I may learn Your statutes. (Psalm 119:67, 71)


----------



## Eoghan (Aug 12, 2013)

I originally thought that the reason was unorthodoxy in the hymn (not the church!)


----------



## Cymro (Aug 12, 2013)

Rabbi Duncan wrote, 'undoubtedly all errors are abused truths, and half a truth is half a lie.'
Also, it may have been him (sounds like) that wrote, 'wheat and arsenic ,wheat and arsenic,
it depends on the proportions.'


----------

